An unfamiliar photograph and a lost cottage

Sometimes you come across a picture which you know has rarely seen the light of day and yet must at one time have been familiar to everyone in the township. 

It’s of the parish church looking north from the meadows.

To our right is the back of the old Bowling Green Hotel and in the distance framed between the church and the large house is the barn of the Higginbotham’s who lived on the green and had farmed here since the 1840s.

It is a pleasant enough rural scene but has undergone some alteration.

To the right of the large brick house stood a one up one down cottage which had become run down.

Someone and I guess it was the company who issued the postcard had painted it out by extending the bushes and trees behind the pile of bricks.

The building can just be made out in a monochrome copy of the same photograph dated sometime in the 1890s and originally owned by a May Boardman.

Our postcard issued by H.Burt of Chorlton was sent in the May of 1906.

Picture; from  the collection of Rita Bishop

Today at The Lloyds .......Your chance to ge a signed book of Chorlton pubs and bars

From 2 in the afternoon till 6, we will be in the pub signing that new book which can be purchased from us for just £14.99.

“No destitute child in the city need be without food and shelter” ....... the story of our children’s charity

In 1912 Manchester was by any criteria a fine example of enterprise, innovation and success.

It had built on its earlier history as a centre of textile production, diversified into engineering and with brash confidence built a canal which linked the twin cities to the sea.

In its exchanges intelligence and commodities were traded with the rest of the world, and if you wanted evidence of that trade you only had to stand in the Great Chamber of the Town Hall and gaze on the coats of arms of the countries, cities and towns that we dealt with.

But in that great centre of wealth there was also grinding poverty and just a short walk from the opulence of the fine buildings of commerce were dark narrow streets and even narrower enclosed courts where “poverty busied itself.”

And still in 1912 there were children who were destitute, relied on selling matches and newspapers on the streets and in some cases were at the mercy of uncaring parents.

For over four decades the Manchester & Salford Boys’ and Girls’ Refuge had cared for these children, offering an instant bed for the night, along with homes, specialising in vocational training, holidays by the sea, and for some the offer of a new life in Canada.

All of which is the trailer for an exciting new exhibition at Central Ref featuring some of the costumes, art work and research undertake by a group of students who were engaged in finding out about the work of Manchester & Salford Boys’ and Girls’ Refuge.

“The display contains artwork created by young people from the Together Trust around the children who were emigrated from Manchester to Canada. After learning about some of their stories the young people did a number of artwork pieces, from big pictures that represented each of the children from the case studies, to smaller pictures exploring other people who might have lived at the time.”*

And if you want to know more I suggest you follow the link to their blog, and when you have done that get down to Central Ref.

Location; Manchester

Pictures; courtesy of the Together Trust


* Saving the Children, Work of the Boys‘and Girls’ Refuges, Manchester Guardian, April 12 1912

** Deep Pockets and Dirty Faces at Manchester Central Library, 

Catching up on the demise of the Odeon

Like Andy who took this picture, I thought we would have lost the Odeon by now.

Last week he took a series of photographs which were featured on the blog and we both though his return trip would pretty much see it done and dusted.

But not so, the facade still stands and the progress is slow.

Location; Manchester


Picture; the Odeon, 2017 from the collection of Andy Robertson

The Manchester Barnardo boy who joined the Canadian Expeditionary Force in 1916 .............. stories behind the book nu 4

An occasional series on the stories behind the new book on Manchester and the Great War.*

William, circa 1916-1918

I first came across William Phillips after I had made an appeal across Canada for stories of men and women who had been born in Manchester but had served in the Canadian army or Red Cross during the Great War.

And almost by return of post Patricia Bronson sent me the story of William Phillips who had been born in Manchester, was sent across the Atlantic by a children’s charity and volunteered for the Canadian Expeditionary Force in 1916.

He had survived the war, returned to Canada, and married Violet.

Patricia remembered them as “a wonderful couple.  They had both come to Canada under the BHC Immigration scheme [and]  lived out their lives in the Village of Bethany, Manvers Township and are buried at St. Mary`s Anglican Church Cemetery, Lifford, Manvers Township.

At this point I do not know the family circumstances that sent them to Canada.”

Between us we had managed to discover that he had been born in Fallowfield in 1897, that his father was widowed and that he had two siblings one of who was living off Cheetham Hill Road in 1916.

Added to which he was one of the 100,000 British Home Children migrated to Canada between 1870 and 1930.

Some had spent their early years in care while others came from abusive or neglected backgrounds and a few were given up by their parents who because of ill health, or poverty were desperate for their children to have a better life.

Violet and William

Overseeing the migration policy were a number of children’s charities often working in partnership with the local Poor Law Unions.

We both knew there would be more but had yet to begin looking and that is where my friend Tricia stepped in and took the story further than I could have hoped.

She had “found that his mother was Elizabeth nee Bradbury who died 1900 and his father James Henry had died in 1903.

So he would only have been six when he was made an orphan which might explain why he entered the orphanage.”***

It is impossible to know whether his siblings joined him.  Barnardos will not divulge their records to non family members but given that in 1903 his sister Elizabeth Alice was14 and Harold 13 I doubt that they would have been in care for long if at all.

In 1911 Elizabeth Alice was staying with her uncle and aunt in Irlam and Harold was married and living in West Gorton.

Leaving for Canada, on the steps of Manchester Town Hall, 1897   

As for William at the age of just nine he was migrated by Barnados to Canada sailing from Liverpool to Quebec in 1906.

It is a familiar story and one that those of us with a BHC relative will readily identify with.

My great uncle went over in 1914, failed to settle on any of the farms he was placed on and ran away to join the Canadian Expeditionary Force in 1915.

Like William he returned safely to Canada but we lose him after 1925.

If he did marry we have yet to find out and I doubt we ever will.

William we know did and it was not uncommon for children migrated to Canada to fall in love and marry a fellow BHC which William and Mary did in 1926.

William's attestation papers, 1916

The romantic in me is pleased that William found Violet and they were well regarded.

Sadly his siblings fared less well.

Harold had also joined up but was killed on the Western Front on August 10th 1918 and is buried in the Allied war cemetery at the village of Rosieries on the Somme.

He died during the successful action to regain the village from the Germans.

Elizabeth married Joseph Harrison in 1919 and died six years later.

They had no children.

But the search is not quite over because Harold and his wife Francis had two children and while both will now be dead there may still be living relatives.

Picture; William Phillips in military uniform,  circa 1915-18,  with Violet, date unknown and his Attestation Papers, 1915, courtesy of Patricia Bronson, Manchester children leaving for Canada in 1897, courtesy of the Together Trust

*Manchester and the Great War, Andrew Simpson, was published in February, 2017, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/A%20new%20book%20on%20Manchester%20and%20the%20Great%20War

**Patricia Bronson

*** Tricia Leslie

The Seymour on Upper Chorlton Road ........ the one we missed out

Now as debates go between Peter and me the discussion whether to include the Seymour in the Chorlton Pubs and Bars book went on for some time.

The Seymour, circa 1960

On one level leaving it out made perfect sense.

It was after all never in Chorlton and its only claim to Chorlton is that it stood on Upper Chorlton Road.

But then there will be many who having tired of the Royal Oak and the Lloyds set off on the adventure which took them to West Point and the Seymour.

I suppose there will be some who do not know that once there was a pub at the junction of  Manchester Road, Upper Chorlton Road and Seymour Grove.

Mr and Mrs Gratrix's house, 1910

It stood on the site of what is now a block of flats and was a pretty impressive pile, which is just as it should be, given that from sometime in the early 1860s if not earlier it was the home of Samuel Gratrix.

Mr Gratrix was a wealthy old cove and in his large garden of 17 acres his wife grew orchids which drew special attention from The Orchid World, which having praised Mrs Gratrix for “looking after the wants of these delicate and youthful Orchids” , turned to Mr Brown their gardener,  “who has charge also of the 17 acres of grounds and shows fully his capabilities as an experts Orchid grower, and the many rare and beautiful plants which he is entrusted to care for”.*

All of which offers up more than a few stories about the Seymour and so perhaps we should have included it in the last section on the lost pubs of Chorlton and that bit of Whalley Range which is very near to Chorlton.

Had we done so, we might have written about the origins of the name West Point and reminded people that the area had also been known as the Flash, and was for a while where the trams terminated.

Of course all these interesting historical facts along with how we wrote the Chorlton Pubs and Bars book will be revealed this coming Saturday, when we will be in the Lloyds Hotel.

The plan is simple.

From 2 in the afternoon till 6, we will be in the pub signing that new book which can be purchased from us for just £14.99, which Peter tells me is the price of a round of drinks and is cheaper than a train ticket to Wigan.

Pictures; The Seymour Hotel circa, 1960 from the Lloyd Collection, the house when owned by Mr Samuel Gratrix, from The Orchid World, Vol 1 no. 1910-1911, 

*The Orchid World, Vol 1 no. 1910-1911, pages 154-8

Outside GMex admiring the open space and the Midland

Now I know it’s no longer called GMex and also on a cold wet and windy January day the open space in front of the exhibition centre is not so appealing.

But on a hot day in May with plenty of sun it is not a bad place to be.

It does after all command good views of the old railway station and the Midland Hotel and also allowed Andy to comment “that building seems to be taking a lot of time to get demolished!”

It’s the one in the distance and I have to agree.

I did try to remember what it was called but that has defeated me.

For those with longer memories GMex was Central Station which closed only months before I arrived in the city in the September of 1969.

I wandered around it when it was a car park and later toured the site with the late John Smith when the conversion into the exhibition centre was well under way.

And that is all I want to say, except that I once did have tea in the Midland.  It was back in the 1970s and like Andy's building my memory of the event is very hazy.

So that really is it.

Location; Manchester







Pictures; outside GMex, May 2017, from the collection of Andy Robertson