Back with Westonby and the Twilight Sleep Home

As stories go it is more of a postscript but Westonby and the Twilight Sleep Home just refuses to go away.

Westonby was a big Edwardian house on the edge of Chorlton and passed from private residence to become the Old Trafford Twilight Sleep Home.*

Now the Twilight Sleep Home is not the zippiest of names and has feint comic overtones, but it takes you back to one of those fashionable medical practises of the late 19th and early 20th centuries centring on the attempt to find a painless way for giving birth.

The standard approach had been to administer chloroform but in Germany experiments had been undertaken to see if women could give birth while asleep.  The mother was given a mix of morphine and scopolamine and early results were so promising that by the early 20th century the method had been adopted in the USA and Canada.

Our own Twilight Sleep Home opened in 1917 on Henrietta Street in Old Trafford and moved to Westonby sometime in 1921 or early 1922.

It advertised itself as offering “Painless Childbirth” and featured regularly in the classified section of the Manchester Guardian until 1927.  During those ten years its name varied slightly but always retained Twilight Sleep.

And I thought I had all but exhausted the story but then when you least expect it the Twilight Sleep Home bounced back, and not in a way I had expected.

I was talking to my new friend Ann who has lived in Chorlton all her life and was helping me out at a recent talk at the Post Box Cafe.

The conversation roamed across events in the township over the last 70 years during which I mentioned Westonby and the Twilight Sleep Home, and of course you have guessed it was the type of birth Ann’s parents had opted for.

Now Ann had been born at the Twilight Sleep Home on Upper Chorlton Road, but she knew of Westonby and remembered it as the Chorlton Nursing Home.

All of which takes Westonby a little further in to the 20th century.

I had assumed that when the practice of giving birth asleep fell out of favour in the 1920s our house ceased to offer the service.

This was an assumption which seemed to be confirmed by the absence of adverts for Twilight Sleep Homes in the Manchester Guardian after the late 1920s and yet a full decade later Ann was born at the Twilight Sleep Home on Upper Chorlton Road.

All of which goes to reinforce those simple observations that there is a lot more history out there and a pointer to me to go back to the Directories and search for Westonby from the 1920s.

Pictures; of Westonby and Edge Lane, 1914, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, m17757 and the OS map of 1907.


*Westonby  http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Westonby

** The Post Box  http://www.thepostboxchorlton.co.uk/ and https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Post-Box-Chorlton/565302550152568 0161 881 48

Walking east towards the High Street in 1870

We are walking east towards the High Street in the summer of 1870.

Ahead of us is the old church and to our right the Chequers Inn and on the left the railings of the old Vicarage Field.

I am being thoroughly lazy today and have decided not to research the pub and its landlord in 1870 other than to say that there had been a pub on this site for a long time.

But I am intrigued by the signs on the gable end and may well explore these at a later date.

Picture; the old vicarage, from The story of Royal Eltham, R.R.C. Gregory, 1909 and published on The story of Royal Eltham, by Roy Ayers, http://www.gregory.elthamhistory.org.uk/bookpages/i001.htm

Back in Platt Hall with Christian Dior and the gallery of costumes

It is one of those places I haven’t been to for years, which is a shame, because Platt Hall and its costume gallery are well worth a visit.

It was built in 1746 and replaced an older timber farmed building which had been the home of the Worsley family.

Now the interiors are still pretty stunning including the main staircase and entrance hall.

It reopened in 2010 following a major £1million renovation project.

"Entirely funded by Manchester City Council, the Grade 2* listed Georgian house has had a much-needed makeover, including essential repairs and improvements behind the scenes.

The public facilities have been updated too. 

The costume displays have been refreshed and there’s a new changing exhibitions gallery, improved disabled access and a large lecture room and workshop space.

The Gallery of Costume houses one of the most important costume collections in Britain, second only to the V&A in London. It contains over 20,000 fashion items from the 17th century to the present day."*

Now I have always liked the 18th and early 19th century displays but we were drawn by the new exhibition, Christian Dior: Designer in Focus which runs from now till January 2014

“Christian Dior's brief but supremely influential career began with his iconic 'New Look' in 1947. He reigned supreme in Parisian fashion for ten years until his untimely death in 1957.

This unique exhibition features Paris and London couture, many outfits recently acquired by the Gallery of Costume. Stunning displays include day, cocktail and evening wear, and represent many of Dior's seminal collections."**

Pictures; of Platt Hall from the collection of Andrew Simpson and the interior courtesy of Manchester City Council
*Manchester City Council
**Manchester City Council

In the police lock up on Eltham High Street

The Cage, circa 1909

Following on from our map of Shooters Hill I thought I would present you with another image short on text.

This is the ‘Cage’ or lock up which stood on the northern side of the High Street close to the Presbytery of Christ Church.

The Presbytery was once Eagle House but more about that later. In the meantime  I shall turn to the historian, R.R.C.Gregory whose descriptions of the places and people of Eltham can not be bettered.

So while he may not have had the advantage of online resources to track the individuals who lived here he could call on the memories of people who had been born in the opening decades of the 19th century and who in turn could fall back on stories from earlier generations.  Writing in 1909 when the lock up was still on the High Street Mr Gregory commented

‘Prisoners could be not accommodated in the old [police] station, so had to be taken to the “Cage” or Lock-up,” which is still in existence, at the entrance, on the right, to the wood-yard, near the old Workhouse.  “The Cage” in fact, is in the corner of the garden of Eagle House.  The entrance is from the High-street, where the door may be seen, secured by a padlock.’

Pictures; “the Cage” from The story of Royal Eltham, R.R.C. Gregory, 1909 and published on The story of Royal Eltham, by Roy Ayers, http://www.gregory.elthamhistory.org.uk/bookpages/i001.htm 

*R.R.C. Gregory, The Story of Royal Eltham, 1909

Who owns our history?

It is an interesting question made more so by the explosion of interest in family history and the disturbing if confusing news that Barnardos may be considering destroying its entire collection of old photographs of children who were in their care.

John Kelly September 1885 before being admitted into the care of  the Trust

In the space of less than a decade the number of resources available online for the historian to crawl over has been immense.

It ranges from census material to parish records and on through wills, tax details and books long out of print most of which were beyond the hands of any but a few scholars.

Of course much has been lost, including many of the records of the Workhouses, hospital documents and sadly some parish records.

So for all that I can access there is much that I can’t.

And not for the first time I have pondered on how this could have happened.

In some cases it is of course just rotten bad luck, which allowed vital records to be stored in a building prone to water damage or to later enemy action in two world wars.

Then there is just that simple fact that today’s officials are not always aware of what the historian of the future will regard as important.

Who in the mid 19th century could predict that the salaries of cotton workers or the transit records of a railway company could be of any interest?

Then I suppose it is the sheer volume of information which before the digital age prompted frightening storage issues.

And all of this before we consider the question of confidentiality.  As much I would want to read my great grandmother’s health records I do wonder if I would want my intimate information on show for all to see.

So I have welcomed the latest post from the archivist at the Together Trust which grapples with some of the practical issues surrounding the records of children who went through their care.*

John Kelly, Arpil 1886

For anyone wanting help from the Trust to track family members there is a rich source of information along with expert assistance from the archivist,.

These include reports and pictures of the children admitted into the care of the Trust like young John Kelly who found his ay in their care in 1885.

But out there it can still be bewildering charting your way through the official records hoping that material has not been lost or destroyed, that it is available to be searched and above all that it does not cost too much.

There are self help groups and the cost of accessing online records is getting cheaper and more is available.  I have always been very pleased with ancestry.co and marvel at how much they have made available and will do so.

But  some things remain locked away, others are restricted and some have just gone forever.

So in some ways I am less concerened with who owns the records, after all most are in the public domain even if they cost, but it is more the issue of who has the say in what survives which really is about the control of our past.

*Picture of You http://togethertrustarchive.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/picture-of-you.html#more

Picture; courtesy of the Together Trust, http://www.togethertrust.org.uk/

Chorlton Cricket and the search for its history

Chorlton Cricket Club has a long history but even I was not prepared for just how long.

I first came across the club when I was researching Hardy Cottages which stood on Hardy Lane and were popularly known as the block because of their shape.

The cottages were close to the cricket ground and may have been built sometime in the 1870s.  At that time Hardy Lane was much a narrow country lane which ran from Barlow Moor Road and just petered out a little past Hardy Farm.

My old friend Oliver Bailey had lent me a picture of his uncle with some of the cricket team and I always had a mind to take it further.

And  Philip one of my new face book chums put me in touch with one of the stalwarts of the club.  This was Derek who first played for the club as a junior in 1942 aged 11.

I had tracked the club back to the early 1890s where they regularly appeared in the sporting pages of the Manchester Guardian.  It never occurred to me to push the search back any earlier.

If I had I would have discovered that the club was formed in 1885 and their first home was that wonderfully named Cow Lane.

Cow Lane ran from Edge Lane up on to the Isles, but was lost in the late 19^th century after Wilbraham Road was cut in the 1860s.  The line of the lane is there and today is under Hampton Road.

It is a little difficult to locate exactly where on Cow Lane the club was. The OS map for 1888-93 shows what might be a club house just before Hampton Road bends to the west.

At that time the area was dominated by Hampton House which was set back from both Edge Lane and Cow Lane in its own grounds.

The club moved in 1901 to Hardy Lane and here it stayed.  All of which opens up a whole series of intriguing questions, from where exactly the club was on Cow Lane to why it moved.

Sadly Derek died before I could meet him but our conversations on the phone revealed a rich history of the club and the area.

Pictures; Norman Bailey circa 1919-1920, courtesy of Oliver Bailey, Hardy Lane and Hardy Cottages courtesy of Carolyn Willits, and Cow Lane from the Lloyd collection

Old houses and forgotten stories, four houses on Wilbraham Road in 1911

Gable Nook today

Now I have passed this place loads of times and never given it a seconds thought.

I know that today it is a nursery but would be hard pressed to remember when the business started up.

It  is still a pretty impressive building and its business potential was not lost on Mr Alfred Mumford M.D., M.R.C.S.A., L.S.A, Surgeon who was here from the beginning of the 20th century and turned part of this 12 roomed property in to  a doctor’s surgery.

After all the house which was known as Gable Nook, commanded a prominent position on the corner of what was a busy road, facing as the railway station.

These were developments mirrored opposite where an equally fine row of late Victorian houses running from Albany down to Keppel Road lost their elegant front gardens and became shops.

Gable Nook extreme left circa 1900

And round about the time that Mr Mumford was converting Gable nook into a surgery, Dovedale or number 5 had become a hosiery shop and number 7 the post office, leaving only number 3 with its equally fine name of Mayfield as a private residence.  But not even Mayfield could buck the trend, and a year later two shops had been added to its front which in turn was replicated at number 5.

Many of the original occupants were professionals; a few owned their own businesses and a lot more worked in the offices and big shops of Manchester.  They were attracted here by a train service which could whisk them into the heart of the city in under 15 minutes and the fields, farms and open country which for many was even closer.

from the Slater's Manchester, Salford and Suburban Directory 1911

So along with a surgeon and his family at number 1 the remaining three were the home at various times to a retired cotton merchant, a widow “living on her own means”, Edward Ireland who had  a number of photographic studios in Manchester, and a doctor, dentist and a oil trader.

And the size of the houses reflected the inhabitants.  Number 1 had twelve rooms, 3 and 5 eight rooms and number 7 9 rooms.

Each had cellars, a decent front garden and a longer one at the back stretching down across what is now the sorting office and yard.

But like other stretches of property in this new part of Chorlton they were soon developed with the addition of shop fronts and perhaps with an eye to even greater profits the owners sub divided the shops.

Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson and the Lloyd collection