When you can't get to London ......... the newsleter of the London Transport Museum

Now I now that London Transport does not serve Chorlton, but it was what I grew up with and I have never quite lost my love of the old red Routemaster buses or their even more old fashioned predecessors.

Having said that while as a child I delighted on travelling on the Underground now I no longer feel as happy on the Underground.

Either way the London Transport Museum is a fascinating place to visit as is their newsletter.*

So even if you don’t fancy London there is a lot in both the publication and the online site.

Like this example of the hundreds of posters and photographs produced during its history.

This one dates from the 1950s.

Pictures; from the London Transport Museum collection




*http://uk-mg42.mail.yahoo.com/neo/launch?.partner=sky&.rand=b6k89c92qtno6#mail

Stories of what millions of women were doing to help their communities

People Need You, © WRVS Archive & Heritage Collection

I collect online archives on the simple premise that you never know when you might need them.

So I was quite pleased to read that the Women’s Voluntary Services have launched an online catalogue containing “records of over 70,000 Narrative Reports, 4,500 photographs, and 300 posters” http://www.wrvs.org.uk/about-us/our-history

Now the purist might argue that this is no substitute for trawling the original records and holding them in your own hands, but given the locations of many of these archives that is not a realistic proposition so for any of us in a hurry and a long way away from where they are situated, an online archive is pretty neat.

And those offered up by the WRVS are fascinating.

“Originally founded in 1938 as the Women’s Voluntary Services for Air Raid Precautions, WRVS is the largest volunteering organisation in British history. This year, 2013, WRVS will be celebrating its 75th anniversary.

WVS was initially formed to help recruit women into the ARP movement assisting civilians during and after air raids by providing emergency rest centres, feeding, first aid, and perhaps most famously assisting with the evacuation and billeting of children.

© WRVS Archive & Heritage Collection

By 1943 the organisation had over one million volunteers and was involved in almost every aspect of wartime life from the collection of salvage to the knitting of socks and gloves for merchant seamen. 

After the war WRVS transformed to become a leading organisation in the field of social care, pioneering the practices that formed the cornerstone of modern social services.”*

So in an interesting article Matthew McMurray the WRVS Archivist outlined just exactly what was on offer.**

These include the Narrative Reports which in “essence a giant diary [of] over 450,000 reports .... covering the period from 1938 through to 1966, written by WVS/WRVS centre organisers in over 2,000 offices in every major town in the country.  

© WRVS Archive & Heritage Collection

They tell the stories of what millions of women were doing to help their communities, tracking changes in types of work, social attitudes and social change over 58 years.”

It is searchable by town, county or country as well as keywords, such as ‘meals on wheels’ or ‘clothing exchange’ and in some cases by individual names.

Looking at Manchester there are 75 entries running from 1939 through to 1978 and covering everything from disinfecting gas masks at the outbreak of the war to a children’s day trip to Southport in 1978.

And there are fact sheets and material for schools.  All in all a nice addition to our historical knowledge.

*Our Story, http://www.wrvs.org.uk/about-us/our-history
**Matthew McMurray WRVS Archivist, writing in Local History News, Magazine of the British Association for Local History Nu 106, Winter 2013, www.balh.co.uk

Pictures; courtesy of WRVS Archive & Heritage Collection

Walking the past

I never tire of history and I remain a fan of all the many ways that the past can be brought out of the shadows.

Now the walk and talk has to be one of the best.

After all you get to listen to an expert and see the places where things happened and most of the time the sun shines.

All of which is a lead in to a series of guided tours of Manchester’s history by Emma Fox.

Emma lives in Chorlton is part of Manchester Guided Tours and is a Manchester Green Badge Tour Guide.  She offers a range of trips, some walking, some by coach some even by bike along with tunnel & boat tours.

She tells me that they can be "bespoke private tours given on a variety of fascinating themes for business organisations, social groups, educational establishments, conferences, sports fans, birthday activities."

Currently she offers trips around the Print Works, Southern Cemetery, our waterways and the Gangs of Manchester and more.

And so rather than read this you can go to http://showmemanchester.eventbrite.com/ or either
call her on 07500 774 200 or email showmemanchester@yahoo.co.uk for further information.

Picture; Southern Cemetery courtesy of Emma Green

A Chorlton Walk, Southern Cemetery, May 19, 2.30 pm, part of Chorlton Arts Festival

A pretty big bit of railway history, the Great Western and a new book by Andrew Roden

Now if you are of a certain age then the romance of the old steam railway will be a powerful pull.

I suppose it is the infinite variety of locomotives from the old “seen it all done it all” shunting engines which worked pushing and pulling freight wagons to the powerful and sleek express locomotives which thundered past carrying people to faraway places.

And in my case it all comes piling back whenever I encounter that mix of warm oil, steam and smoke or the rhythmic noise of a passenger loco as it pulls out of a station.

For my father’s generation there was also that fierce loyalty to a particular railway company which for him was the LMS and for his friends an equally passionate adherence to the LNER or the GWR.*

It was something I couldn’t quite understand.  But then I was born a year after the railways had been nationalized and so all I ever knew were green and black locomotives with their British Railways logo of a lion holding a wheel astride a crown.

Looking back this fierce loyalty shown by dad was even odder given that most of these great railway companies were a pretty short lived bunch.  The LMS, LNER and Southern Railways were all formed in 1923 in a unromantic bid to merge smaller companies into profitable businesses.

At Tiverton Junction on August 8 1962

Only the Great Western Railway could be said to have a long pedigree which I have to confess I knew little of.

It was founded in 1833, and began running services from London to the south west and west of the country from 1838.

It wasn’t the oldest but its GWR name spanned the great age of steam right up to nationalization in 1948.

So it is perhaps timely that I have in my hands a new history of the GWR, which for its friends was “God’s Wonderful Railway” and for those less sympathetic, just the “Great Way Round”  

Great Western Railway by Andrew Roden covers the 175 years of the railway's history from Small Beginnings to the Great War and the Last Few Years.

At Reading in March 1943, with women oiling the track

It is a book I will come back to as the blog moves out of the homelands of the old Liverpool and Manchester Railway and the LMS into the heart of the west with the GWR.

Along the way I hope there will be stories drawn from Mr Roden's book of the great GWR railway stations, the love affair with the broad gauge, and the “Night Riviera” to Cornwall, and of course Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

And judging by the opening sections any one wanting to by pass me and go straight to the book will not be disappointed.

There is a lightness of touch in the writing which still delivers a fine amount of detail about the GWR.  My own favourite is the account of  the journey on the overnight sleeper to Penzance in 1902.

Passengers boarding the Cornish Riviera at Paddington Station in 1914

Starting with  the preparations for departure, the assortment of travellers and  the long journey to the south west.

But this isn't a descent into a bout of romantic tosh for here back on Paddington Station waiting to depart is a place which "is not the pristine station of 2010 complete with polished floors.  The Paddington of 1902 is a much grimier affair despite the best efforts of an army of cleaners - there are simply too many steam locomotives emitting too much smoke to keep pace, and London's dirty air doesn't help either."

This is how I like my history so there it is, a snip at £8.99 it is one to read.

Pictures; courtesy of Aurum Press, www.aurumpress.co.uk

*London Midland Scottish, London North Eastern Railway, Great Western Railway,

** Great Western Railway, Andrew Roden, Aurum Press, 2010

When they demolished Withington Library

The demolition of the old library, 1925

I am on Wilmslow Road almost at the junction with Welllington Road and I am looking on as workmen demolish Withington Library.

Of course the date is important.  It is a spring day in the May of 1925 and the City Engineers caught the moment when the old temporary library was being demolished for the one we know today.

It is one of those tiny little stories which I like to write about and it started with another picture from the decade before, showing Wilmslow Road on a summer’s morning.

What caught my eye from this earlier picture was the absence of the Carnegie Library.

Now this did not surprise me because it had been built in 1927 in fulfilment of a promise made when Withington along with Chorlton, Burnage and Didsbury voted to join the city in 1904.

But the promise was a long time coming.  Chorlton got its library in 1914, Didsbury in 1915 and Withington in 1927, leaving Burnage having to wait till 1931 when it got “a travelling library station” in a converted bus.

Now Chorlton had got its own temporary library in a rented house on Oswald Road in 1908 but what I didn’t know was that Withington had been given a similar temporary solution in the October of 1911.

The wall and railings of number 50 Wilmslow Road in happier times

And it was there in my earlier picture showing up as just the wall and railings of the private residence which was to become the library.

There were three of them and they were pretty grand places consisting of anything between 11 and 13 rooms a piece and gardens stretching back to Wellington Road.

They were the homes of professional people, including a dentist and a photographer.

But in October 1911the end house became a temorary library with 1861 books and a newsroom and also contained the post office which in the words of made it "small and indaquate" as a libray.

The post office moved out in the March of 1924 to just opposite and moved again in the November of 1927.

Number 50 Wilmlsow Road May 1925

All of which is quite intriguing and takes me off in new directions not least of which is why the Stephen family who lived here in the April of 1911 should have all moved on by December leaving the property to become a post office.

And for that I shall have to wander into town and look over the old street directories for the years from 1911 till 24.



Pictures; of Wilmslow Road circa 1911 courtesy of Mark Fynn, http://www.markfynn.com/manchester-postcards.htm and the demolition of Withington Library, City Engineers Department, May 9 1925, m41842, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council

On Smedley Lane in 1965, buying at the corner shop

I doubt that W. Kay realized that within a few decades of this picture being taken corner shops like this would have had their day.

Now I bet someone will comment that they have one just like it at the end of their road, but I rather think this will be the exception.

Once they were everywhere.  Mostly they sold a mix of food and cigarettes and some also sold alcohol.  And long before the phrase “open late” appeared over shop doors these places could be relied on to sell you a bottle of milk, a tin of beans and a couple of eggs hours after the supermarkets closed.

And that is the point as the supermarkets stayed open longer, offered a bewildering choice of food from across the globe and competed with each other to push prices down shops like this were pretty much doomed.

But once they were everywhere.  As late as the 1970s it was still possible to walk down Beech Road from the bus station and pass four before you hit the main line of shops, while on the green, on Crossland Road and on Ivygreen Road and the smaller roads off there were more.

This one taken by W. Kay in 1965 was on Smedley Lane.

I first saw it on that excellent facebook site, Kennet House and The Woodlands Estate.*

It is a perfect example of the type of shop most of us will have used.

Leaving aside the jars of sweets, tins of food and household cleaning materials the shop front is dominated by adverts for cigarettes, ice cream, nylons, and frozen food.

All these products had a long shelf life and were likely to have been bought in small quantities.

This was after all still a period when people shopped on a daily basis, were unlikely to have a freezer or perhaps even a fridge and were paid weekly.

So the very idea of stocking up for the full seven days ahead was a practice yet to have its day.

And that makes pictures like this more than just a warm nostalgic tale of past times but a vivid social comment.  The small corner shop survived because for most of us that was how you bought your food.

You bought the meat from the butcher, moved on to the greengrocer, and ended up at with a loaf of bread from the bakers and a few tins from the grocers.

And then if something had been missed one of the children was sent off to the corner shop and managed to lose the change from the money for the baked beans to buy a bar of chocolate or some chewing gum.

Usually the chewing gum came from one of those slot machines.  These could be found outside shops and on station platforms and the design hadn’t changed in half a century.

Unlike their modern equivalent these were simple affairs and lacked few moving parts.

The cover was just a painted box and without a glass panel you pretty much took a chance that when you put your money in the slot there would be chewing gum inside and the mechanism wouldn’t jam.

Such was shopping at a corner shop in the decades before the bright big supermarkets.

Picture; corner shop, Smedley Lane, W. Kay, 1965, m16929, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council

“No churns, no porter, no cat on a seat, At Chorlton-cum-Hardy or Chester-le-Street”

Loco 73000 at Chorlton in 1955

For just 87 years it was possible to catch the train from Chorlton and under 15 minutes arrive in the heart of the city.

And as a way of remembering those 87 years Roy Chapman will talk on “The Lost Railways of South Manchester” today at 1.30pm, at Wilbraham St Ninians Church, Chorlton.  The meeting is hosted by the History Group

I have always liked the idea of getting from Chorlton into town in a matter of minutes. It was what made where we live so attractive to the families of those who lived here in the years after the railway arrived.

For some it was the advantage of being able to travel home from the city centre for lunch and be back in time for the afternoon session.

The first tram through Chorlton, 2011, © Peter Topping

So the tram for me just ticked loads of boxes.

Not only is it quick but it recreates a little bit of how we used to live.

The new railway was so popular that during its first five years the number of season ticket holders rose from 200 to 600.

And the railway didn’t just mean passengers there was also the goods side.

Today on the site of Morrison’s and stretching down along Albany Road down to Buckingham Road were three railway tracks and the businesses which relied on the railway to bring the goods.

Of these coal was the most obvious. From here operated the coal merchants like Norman Bailey. More than one old friend remembers being sent down to pay for the order of coal.

And then there was also the livestock. The Bailey’s also had the farm at Park Bridge and brought their pigs from the station down to the farm well into the 1950s.

Now Peter’s painting of the tram brings back the excitement of travelling on the railway. Peter as you know paints the pictures and I add a story.

Regular service resumed, at the Metro Station in 2013, © Peter Topping

I always think it has a sleek look which is in contrast to the big powerful engines of steam.

And it was while I was thinking about a train story that I came across the 1955 picture of Loco Number 73000 passing through the station.

In the background is the station and the marshalling yards and beyond them Albany Road.

And now its the tram which has reawakened the old line and put to rest Slow Train that old Flanders and Swann song lamenting the loss of so many branch lines during the Beeching cuts. Written in 1963 it is as much a comment on the end of these railway lines as the passing of a way of life.

“No churns, no porter, no cat on a seat,
At Chorlton-cum-Hardy or Chester-le-Street”

Chorlton survived the cuts in 1963 only to close 4 years later and 44 years later it’s possible ride the line again. Not a bad way to close the story on Peter's painting.

Pictures; © Topping 2013 www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk & Loco Number 73000 passing through Chorlton Station, 1955, the Lloyd collection