Out in Chorlton .............. pondering on the fate of some old buildings

Now I am constantly surprised at how buildings I long ago thought were destined for demolition cling on in the old village.

And so it is with Mr Sharpe’s once fine house on Beech Road beside the old Wesleyan chapel.

It dates from the early 19th century is a place I have written aboutt plenty of times and continues to prompt discussions and questions about its past and its future.*

The latest flurry was last week and focused on the planning application to develop the property which seemed to be on target with the stripping of the roof extension and the dismantling of the stairs up to the front door.

But all has stopped, and in the same way nothing seems to have moved since the For Sale sign went up on the old stables on Stockton Road.**

I say stables because it looks to have once been a stable, with the hay stored at the top and the horse and carriage below. It is just possible to make out on the south elevation what would have been the entrance in the first floor for loading the hay into the building, and inside there would have once been a hatch to drop the hay down to ground level.

To the left the old entrance to the coaching area is still visible as is the half bricked up door giving access to the stables.

For as long as I can remember the building has been a motor repairs business, but despite being curious I never knocked on to get a look inside.

I had assumed that after Andy Robertson took a picture of the place last year things would have moved on apace, but apparently even once planning permission has been granted it can be years before anything happens.

Not so the little book exchange scheme on Beech Road which I had spotted ages ago but never took in.

Now book exchanges are more common than I thought and down in Lewisham there is one situated in an old red telephone kiosk.***

I like the idea and for years frequented Brian the Book on Beech Road partly because his collection of second hand books were always cheap and interesting but also because I liked the idea of recycling a book someone had enjoyed.

And that pretty much is it ............ another of those observations on what we choose to save.





Pictures; Beech Road, Stockton Road on a September day 2015, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Daniel Sharpe and 133 Beech Road, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Daniel%20Sharpe%20and%20133%20Beech%20Road

**That stables on Stockton Road, soon to be no more, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/that-stables-on-stockton-road-soon-to.html

***Down in Lewisham with an old telephone kiosk, Lewisham Micro Library and reflections on all those private lending libraries, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Lewisham

Watching the Second City Crossing

Now here is one of those pictures which soon  will be just a memory.

As soon as the first trams run down on the Second City Crossing all the disruption, noise and nuisance will be forgotten.

Pretty much as it was over a century ago when the Corporation was laying the track and cable for our first electric tram network.

And that is all I am going to say other than in time Andy Robertson’s pictures of changing Manchester will be a unique record.


Picture; laying the track for the Second City Crossing, August 2015, from the collection of Andy Robertson

Warm days in Nunhead Cemetery

Soon those warm summer days exploring Nunhead Cemetery will be over.

Already the mornings are cooler and as the nights draw in there will less opportunities to walk through the place.

So with that in mind here is another of those photographs from Sue Simpson taken in July









Picture; walking in Nunhead Cemetery, July 2015, from the collection of Sue Simpson

Places that passed me by .......... nu 2 Banfield’s Coach Garage on Nunhead Lane

Banfield’s Garage on Nunhead Lane is another of those places I went looking for and found had gone.

Dad in uniform in 1965 with his Glenton coach

Not that I ever really noticed it when I lived in Lausanne Road.

For a year between the September of 1961 and the summer of ’62 I would have seen it most school days but like so many work a day places it was just there in the background.

Had I connected it with the weekly school trips out to Ewell which for me and many others was an ordeal fraught with travel sickness it may have made more of a mark.

Now I have written about those trips before and the 40 or so minutes on one of those green Banfield coaches still sits at the back of my memory as the least pleasant part of being at Samuel Pepys.*

And perhaps because of that ghastly experience I had forgotten the name of the company and was hard pressed to even come up with the colour of the coach livery.

But now it’s all come back.

Banfield’s was established back in 1928 and like other coach companies of the period traded in the summer taking excursion parties and then  in the winter swapped the passenger body  for that of a lorry and operated on hire to the Transport Economy Clearing House hauling stuff from London to Birmingham.

This I know from a fascinating site by Chris Stanley which covers the history of the firm mixed with a shedful of pictures. **

And never one to steal another’s research I shall just say that as the firm prospered it moved from south west London to the Old Kent Road and in 1957 took over the London Transport garage on Nunhead Lane and the rest as they say is there to read on Mr Stanley’s site.

All of which led off to find out about that London Transport garage which dates back to 1911 when
“the National Steam Car Co Ltd opened a bus garage at 20-26 Nunhead Lane in South Peckham. 

The Clarkson steam buses were fired by paraffin and served routes from the area to Shepherd's Bush and Hampton Court. The company ceased operating in 1919 and the garage was acquired for petrol buses by first the London General Co and then the LPRT.

London Transport closed the garage in 1954. The garage was used from 1958 to the 1970s by Banfield's Luxury Coaches. After then it was used by a drinks wholesaler.”***

In 1999 plans were put forward for its demolition and despite opposition which were still ongoing in 2011 it has now gone although the clock tower was retained despite objections from the developers.

For those with a keen sense of the detail, the garage was still there in May 2011 but had been replaced with a set of houses by June of the following year.

Looking at the site I think the incorporation of the clock tower works as does the clock which is a neat close to the story.

Other than to say I wanted to use some Banfield coaches in the story but as yet I haven’t got permission which just leaves me to fall back on of dad in 1965 beside his coach.

Dad worked for Glenton Tours whose garage was on Brabourne Grove, but that is another story.****

Picture; Dad and a Glenton Tours Coach 1965 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

* Who remembers those long coach journeys out to Ewell for an afternoon’s sport?
http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/who-remembers-those-long-coach-journeys.html

** Banfield Coaches, https://www.flickr.com/photos/rw3-497alh/sets/72157635954245323/

***The old London Transport steam bus garage in Nunhead Lane, South East Central, May 2011, http://www.southeastcentral.co.uk/threads/the-old-london-transport-steam-bus-garage-in-nunhead-lane.1544/

****Glenton Tours, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Glenton%20Tours

Just what you find on Back Pool Fold

Now it is one of those things about many of our Victorian and Edwardian buildings that the architects paid some attention to the back of the places they were designing as well as the front.

Even though they were possibly seen by far fewer people and I guess less important ones there was still a nod to form and style.

That said the few times I wandered down Back Pool Fold I totally missed the back entrance to this building which fronts Chapel Walks.

And for those still not quite sure where we are Chapel Walks runs down from Brown Street to Cross Street where the old nonconformist chapel stood and that corner with Back Pool Fold is also home to Sam’s Chop House which alternates with Mr Thomas’s as one of the places we take my sisters to when they are up from London..

The building on the other corner is also a restaurant but has undergone a name change over the last few years.

In June it was Tango,s Bar and Grill, and back in 2012 was Bacchanalia and beyond 2008 I have no memory of what it was or for that matter when it first was converted into an eating place.

In 1911 when it was still listed as the Union Building it was home to number of businesses ranging from Garrick and Brockbank, metal merchants to the Union Assurance Society Limited and the Guardian Plate Glass Insurance Company.

And had I wandered down Back Pool Fold I would have across a number of other businesses from merchants, printers and even the Stock Exchange Restaurant to ponder on what Miss H L Rowntree did.

She was listed at no 3 Back Pool Fold but sadly there is no detail.

All of which brings me back to Andy Robertson’s two pictures and how the care and detail of the architect of the Union Building has been mangled by the air con machine and the bricked up entrance.

Of course this may not have been the backdoor, and given the number of other people doing business on Back Pool Fold it may have had its share of visitors going through the entrance underneath that inscription.

Not any more.

In time I will wander back down Back Pool Fold if only to see what else has been messed about.

Pictures; Back Pool Fold, 2015, from the collection of Andy Robertson

Places that passed me by .......... nu 1 the Livesey Museum for Children on the Old Kent Road

Now I never knew about the Livesey Museum for Children although I must have passed the building countless times.

It is on the Old Kent Road just past the Gas Works and there the connection begins because once a long time ago it was a free public library provided by Sir George Livesey, benefactor, designer and chairman of the South Metropolitan Gas Company.

He too was someone I never knew anything about and perhaps in time I will dig deep into his life and visit his grave in Nunhead Cemetery.

For the present I know he was connected with the gas company from 1848 till 1908, that there is a public hall and war memorial which bears his name along with a Professorship at the University of Leeds and interestingly enough “was instrumental in introducing a plan for sharing the profits of his company with his employees.”*

That said the plan hides a fascinating little piece of  history in which the initiative may have been  partly motivated by a move against the gas workers’ union, strike in 1889 and i turn the creation of the Telegraph Hill Park.**

Now I don’t know to what extent the creation of the free library in 1890 fits into the picture.

It lasted as a library till 1966 I could have visited it but never did.

Nor did I ever go to the children’s museum which opened in 1974 and showed a completely new exhibition every year aimed at children fewer than 12. Exhibitions explored such themes as Shelter, Energy, and Myths & Legends.

The museum had no permanent collection, but each exhibition featured objects and artwork on loan from Southwark Council's historic collections.

Sadly it closed in 2008 as part of budgetary cuts although the story doesn’t end there and I think this too will be something I return to

And in the meantime I am off to delve deep into the that gas worker's strike.

The history of the Labour movement  has long fascinated me and  and while I have written about the Chartists, the industrial conflicts here in the North and something of the Woolwich Labour Party I have never looked into what went on in Peckham and New Cross.

So I have Mr Livesey to than k for that along with Adam Burgess who first told me about the Livesey Museum and who went off and took the pictures.

Pictures; the Livesy Museum, 2015,  from the collection of Adam Burgess

*Sir George Livesey, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Livesey#CITEREFLayton1920

**The Gas Workers Strike in South London, Mary Mills, 2013, Greenwich Peninsula History, https://greenwichpeninsulahistory.wordpress.com/2013/08/01/the-gas-workers-strike-in-south-london/

The bank that was a pub on Deansgate .............. and a story I should have known more about

Now yesterday I was on Deansgate with the building which is at present Santander and like Andy who took the picture I was puzzled about its origins.*

Over the years I thought it might have been a pub or a mission hall, and to help us on our way Andy’s daughter dug out some pictures from the 1970s and 80s showing the building as a bank and later as part of the new office development which was being constructed in 1988.

If I thought more carefully I would have remembered that it had been the  Alliance and Leicester Building Society and perhaps gone looking on Pubs of Manchester which is that excellent site for all things to do with our pubs past and present.**

According to the site our building was indeed the Dog and Partridge which shows up on the old directories and maps of Deansgate

But the added bonus was a link to the memories of Pete Bradshaw who was born in the pub when in 1959. ***

All of which just leaves me to thank Dan Granata who posted a picture of the pub on facebook following my first story.

So there you have it ............ a fine bit of team and a lesson in always doing more research.

And for those interested in the vanished streets of Manchester there is a whole new story about what that office development wiped away, but as they say that is for another time and perhaps a few more of Andy's pictures

Picture; our building on Deansgate in 2015, from the collection of Andy Robertson

*Looking for the story of that building on Deansgate, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/looking-for-story-of-that-building-on.html

**Pubs of Manchester, http://pubs-of-manchester.blogspot.co.uk/#uds-search-results

***Pete Bradshaw, http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php/topic,471883.0.html