More info can be obtained by messaging the Clayton Hall Fb page, or emailing info@claytonhall.org
Saturday, 17 February 2018
The Clayton Hall stories ....... no 3 ...... Commemorating the Suffragttes
More info can be obtained by messaging the Clayton Hall Fb page, or emailing info@claytonhall.org
Friday, 16 February 2018
On rediscovering Dr Paton with the promise of another story
Now sometimes a story from a long time ago bounces back, unannounced with a fascinating new slant.
And this is exactly what has happened with Looking for Robert and Sarah Paton in Southern Cemetery.*
It had always been an odd story, in that it surfaced as a piece of research after my old friend David Harrop showed me a document relating to the burial of Dr Robert Paton in Southern Cemetery in 1912.
Added to which the gravestone was just around the corner from the Remembrance Lodge where David has a displays some of his extensive collection of Post Office memorabilia along with items from both world wars.
I always intended to take the story further but as you do got side tracked and never went back.
But yesterday Victoria got in touch to say she was also doing research on Dr Paton in connection with a court case at which was going to testify, but died suddenly aged just 46 before he could give testimony.
That prompted me to go looking for the family home which was on Rochdale Road which doubled as his surgery.
And as so often happens with research both Victoria and I have gained from sharing information.
I was able to send over Dr Paton's Order for the Burial of the Dead, which included his photograph, along with a picture of the headstone in Southern Cemertery.
In return Victoria was able to provise the address of the family home and in turn I found its exact location using the street directory and an OS map.
Sadly the house vanished a long time ago, although there is another property bearing the same name.
Hers is a much wider piece of research and in the fullness of time I hope she will share it as a blog story.
Location; Southern Cemetery and Rochdale Road.
Pictures; the headstone of Alexander & Sarah Paton from the collection of Andrew Simpson, extracts from
“The Order for the Burial of Dead” of Mr Paton,
*Looking for Robert and Sarah Paton in Southern Cemetery, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=Paton
It had always been an odd story, in that it surfaced as a piece of research after my old friend David Harrop showed me a document relating to the burial of Dr Robert Paton in Southern Cemetery in 1912.
Added to which the gravestone was just around the corner from the Remembrance Lodge where David has a displays some of his extensive collection of Post Office memorabilia along with items from both world wars.
I always intended to take the story further but as you do got side tracked and never went back.
But yesterday Victoria got in touch to say she was also doing research on Dr Paton in connection with a court case at which was going to testify, but died suddenly aged just 46 before he could give testimony.
And as so often happens with research both Victoria and I have gained from sharing information.
I was able to send over Dr Paton's Order for the Burial of the Dead, which included his photograph, along with a picture of the headstone in Southern Cemertery.
In return Victoria was able to provise the address of the family home and in turn I found its exact location using the street directory and an OS map.
Sadly the house vanished a long time ago, although there is another property bearing the same name.
Hers is a much wider piece of research and in the fullness of time I hope she will share it as a blog story.
Location; Southern Cemetery and Rochdale Road.
“The Order for the Burial of Dead” of Mr Paton,
*Looking for Robert and Sarah Paton in Southern Cemetery, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=Paton
Thursday, 15 February 2018
One hundred years of one house in Chorlton part 96......... Jack Harker
The continuing story of the house Joe and Mary Ann Scott lived in for over 50 years and the families that have lived here since.*
I have every confidence that Joe and Mary Ann would have known Jack Harker, because he was that sort of chap.
He and Ann lived on Wilton Road and later moved into Ivy Court on Beech Road and I first met them when I washed up in Chorlton in 1976.
They were regulars in the Trevor, never missing a night and sat at “their” table which was positioned between the bar and the door to the lavatories.
And when Jack discovered John was building a boat in the back of our house he offered to help, and that is how I came to know him and Ann because as we also drank in the pub every night it followed that we would end up sitting with them.
In the early days Jack would work on the boat during the day while we were all at school and also got in a few groceries, which made life that bit easier.
Then in the evenings he would report his progress to John around the table in the pub, while me, Mike and Lois chatted to Ann and got the beer in.
He seemed to know everybody and those he didn’t soon got a nickname which in the fullness of time was taken up by almost everyone in the Trevor, and as names do they clung to their owner.
But despite his popularity and his local knowledge, Jack only really told you what he wanted you to know about his life.
I know that he was baptised in St George’s in Hulme, and that he and Ann had been married before but went their separate ways and after the divorce found new partners only to meet up one night in the Robin Hood in Stretford and rekindled the romance.
It never occurred to me to ask about his early life and only once did I get an answer to what he had done in the war. The rest of his life was only lightly sketched in, and that was how it was.
Of course we were all still very young, and pretty much obsessed with our own lives which meant that our curiosity lasted about as a long as it took to drink a pint.
I cannot now, even remember when he died which happened one dark night after closing time and the regular visit to “Mr Chan’s” chippy on Beech Road. Having bought their fish supper, Jack collapsed and died.
We will have gone to the funeral but sadly that too is hard to remember.
I do however remember the impromptus sessions back at their house in Wilton Road after the pub.
There weren’t many of them and I suspect they were confined to Christmas time but Ann always provided a spread and we left in the early hours to wander back up Beech Road, missing the milkman by just an hour.
But leaving aside the meandering accounts of “lost evenings” there is the serious point that Jack along with so many others had a story to tell which has been forgotten.
He lived through two world wars, as well as the depression and lived in Chorlton long before the first bar opened its doors.
All of which makes me think that when we write volume two of the Quirks of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, he will be in it.
Pictures; Jack Harker, 1983, and in 1978, and the old parish graveyard from the collection of Andrew Simpson and Jack and the boat, 1977, courtesy of Lois Elsden
*The story of a house, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20story%20of%20a%20house
 |
| Jack in 1983 |
He and Ann lived on Wilton Road and later moved into Ivy Court on Beech Road and I first met them when I washed up in Chorlton in 1976.
They were regulars in the Trevor, never missing a night and sat at “their” table which was positioned between the bar and the door to the lavatories.
And when Jack discovered John was building a boat in the back of our house he offered to help, and that is how I came to know him and Ann because as we also drank in the pub every night it followed that we would end up sitting with them.
In the early days Jack would work on the boat during the day while we were all at school and also got in a few groceries, which made life that bit easier.
 |
| Jack and friend, 1979 |
He seemed to know everybody and those he didn’t soon got a nickname which in the fullness of time was taken up by almost everyone in the Trevor, and as names do they clung to their owner.
But despite his popularity and his local knowledge, Jack only really told you what he wanted you to know about his life.
I know that he was baptised in St George’s in Hulme, and that he and Ann had been married before but went their separate ways and after the divorce found new partners only to meet up one night in the Robin Hood in Stretford and rekindled the romance.
It never occurred to me to ask about his early life and only once did I get an answer to what he had done in the war. The rest of his life was only lightly sketched in, and that was how it was.
 |
| Jack and the boat, 1977 |
I cannot now, even remember when he died which happened one dark night after closing time and the regular visit to “Mr Chan’s” chippy on Beech Road. Having bought their fish supper, Jack collapsed and died.
I do however remember the impromptus sessions back at their house in Wilton Road after the pub.
 |
| A place full of Jack's stories, 1979 |
But leaving aside the meandering accounts of “lost evenings” there is the serious point that Jack along with so many others had a story to tell which has been forgotten.
He lived through two world wars, as well as the depression and lived in Chorlton long before the first bar opened its doors.
All of which makes me think that when we write volume two of the Quirks of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, he will be in it.
Pictures; Jack Harker, 1983, and in 1978, and the old parish graveyard from the collection of Andrew Simpson and Jack and the boat, 1977, courtesy of Lois Elsden
*The story of a house, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20story%20of%20a%20house
The Partnership ..... “it shall be the duty of the local authority to receive the child into their care”
The continuing story of one children’s charity, from its foundation in 1870 to the present day.
Like many of the those organizations involved in the welfare of young people the Manchester and Salford Boys’ and Girls’ Refuge migrated children to Canada, but it stopped in 1914.
That for anyone involved in the study of British Home Children makes it interesting, but its story after that date and through the last century into the present is equally interesting and reflects the changing policies and attitudes to child care on the part of the State and the children’s charities.
The extension of the Welfare State after the war brought local authorities in to partnership with the Manchester and Salford Boys’ and Girls’ Refuge.
For over half a century the State had been broadening its responsibilities to care for the citizen from “the cradle to the grave”, and in 1948 building on the recommendations of the Curtis Report the Government passed the Children’s Act which set out that local authorities should assume control for children under 17 who had been “abandoned by their parents or guardians, or were lost, or whose parents were incapable of providing proper accommodation, maintenance and upbringing”.
In pursuance of this new responsibility local authorities had to set up a Children’s Committee with a Children’s Officer.
The Curtis Report had been established to look at the provision of children “who are deprived of a normal home life with their own parents or relatives and to consider what measures should be taken to ensure that these children are brought up under conditions best calculated to compensate them for the lack of parental care.”
The report was critical of the poor conditions it encountered in some institutionalised homes along with a general lack of training given to carers.
It recommended that where possible young people should be adopted as a first choice and fostered as an alternative, but if they were placed in a home, these homes should contain a maximum of twelve children and ideally have no more than eight.
It also proposed that everything should be done to maintain contact with relatives, develop friendships outside the home and that siblings be kept together. Finally it recommended that children should be entitled to a religious upbringing which was appropriate to its background.
The Curtis Report had found some child care wanting and looked to serious changes, while the Children’s Act altered the relationship between all those charities working with young people and brought them into a national system of child care overseen by the State.
The upside for our charity was that it now received higher levels of funding which reduced the need to rely on generating its own income.
It also embraced the Curtis Report and from 1957 into the ‘60s embarked on a programme of creating a Family Group of Homes, known as the Belmont Group.
This was in accomplished in part by converting existing properties in the Children’s Village in Cheadle and by the purchase or construction of new homes across south Manchester.
Other properties which the charity had acquired through mergers and which were past their best were also sold off and the money used to fund the Family Group Homes project.
Location; Manchester & Cheadle
Pictures; from annual reports of the Manchester and Salford Boys’ and Girls’s Refuges, courtesy of the Together Trust, https://www.togethertrust.org.uk/
*A new book on the Together Trust, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/A%20new%20book%20on%20the%20Together%20Trust
** Children Act 1948, Part 1 Duty of a local authority to provide for orphans, deserted children etc
That for anyone involved in the study of British Home Children makes it interesting, but its story after that date and through the last century into the present is equally interesting and reflects the changing policies and attitudes to child care on the part of the State and the children’s charities.
The extension of the Welfare State after the war brought local authorities in to partnership with the Manchester and Salford Boys’ and Girls’ Refuge.
In pursuance of this new responsibility local authorities had to set up a Children’s Committee with a Children’s Officer.
The Curtis Report had been established to look at the provision of children “who are deprived of a normal home life with their own parents or relatives and to consider what measures should be taken to ensure that these children are brought up under conditions best calculated to compensate them for the lack of parental care.”
It recommended that where possible young people should be adopted as a first choice and fostered as an alternative, but if they were placed in a home, these homes should contain a maximum of twelve children and ideally have no more than eight.
It also proposed that everything should be done to maintain contact with relatives, develop friendships outside the home and that siblings be kept together. Finally it recommended that children should be entitled to a religious upbringing which was appropriate to its background.
The Curtis Report had found some child care wanting and looked to serious changes, while the Children’s Act altered the relationship between all those charities working with young people and brought them into a national system of child care overseen by the State.
It also embraced the Curtis Report and from 1957 into the ‘60s embarked on a programme of creating a Family Group of Homes, known as the Belmont Group.
This was in accomplished in part by converting existing properties in the Children’s Village in Cheadle and by the purchase or construction of new homes across south Manchester.
Other properties which the charity had acquired through mergers and which were past their best were also sold off and the money used to fund the Family Group Homes project.
Location; Manchester & Cheadle
Pictures; from annual reports of the Manchester and Salford Boys’ and Girls’s Refuges, courtesy of the Together Trust, https://www.togethertrust.org.uk/
*A new book on the Together Trust, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/A%20new%20book%20on%20the%20Together%20Trust
** Children Act 1948, Part 1 Duty of a local authority to provide for orphans, deserted children etc
Waiting for the story ......
Now I know there is a story behind this picture because I have been promised one.
We are on Oldham Street outside the Manchester Coffee Company last week, and something is stirring inside.
The photograph is another from the camera of Andy Robertson who maintains an excellent vigil on all things happening across the Twin Cities.
And last Saturday he took himself off across the Northern Quarter recording the changes to the area.
As everyone who reads the blog knows, Andy’s pictures are a fine record of what we have lost, what we might soon lose and what we have gained.
In years to come they will stand beside those photographers of the past who we all plunder to get a picture of Manchester and Salford as it was.
So for now, here is the picture and the rest as they say is on the way.
But for those who ask where the history is, number 33 Oldham Street was in 1911 occupied by "Craston & Son Hosiers".
Location; Manchester
Picture; Oldham Street, 2018, from the collection of Andy Robertson
The photograph is another from the camera of Andy Robertson who maintains an excellent vigil on all things happening across the Twin Cities.
And last Saturday he took himself off across the Northern Quarter recording the changes to the area.
As everyone who reads the blog knows, Andy’s pictures are a fine record of what we have lost, what we might soon lose and what we have gained.
In years to come they will stand beside those photographers of the past who we all plunder to get a picture of Manchester and Salford as it was.
So for now, here is the picture and the rest as they say is on the way.
But for those who ask where the history is, number 33 Oldham Street was in 1911 occupied by "Craston & Son Hosiers".
Location; Manchester
Picture; Oldham Street, 2018, from the collection of Andy Robertson
Wednesday, 14 February 2018
What we inherit and what we pass on ..... those two houses on Upper Chorlton Road
Now I know it is not an original observation that the homes we occupy are places that we hold in trust and that sooner or later we will pass them on to someone else.
And it really doesn’t matter whether it is a palace or a modest semi in the suburbs.
The question is how will the property fare on our watch?
Will we have left it in a better state and what will be the stories that we contribute to its history?
I can count five houses which I have called home, along with umpteen flats and bed sits.
Of the five two have been truly family homes where I was happy and where I think we made a difference.
And of these the last is the one we still occupy today after nearly forty years, and I suppose our contribution is that we are the first of the four to own it, who have had children running through the place.
All of which makes me reflect on the twin stories of numbers 198 and 200 Upper Chorlton Road which I have regularly written about.*
They were built in the 1870s when a large chunk of Upper Chorlton Road was still fields, experienced mixed fortunes which by the beginning of this century had left them unloved, neglected and pretty much in danger.
But they have had a new lease of life, being converted by a developer into a series of residences for the 21st century.**
I had the opportunity to wander around them during their conversion, wore the hard hat, watched as bits of unsympathetic and unsafe alterations were swept away and finally returned as the completed flats were finished.
The development has won an award and more than that has saved two grand old properties and made them homes again.
Location Whalley Range
Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson
* At 200 & 198 Upper Chorlton Road, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/At%20200%2F198%20Upper%20Chorlton%20Road
** Armistead Properties, http://www.armisteadproperty.co.uk/
 |
| the two properties just before the redevelopment |
The question is how will the property fare on our watch?
Will we have left it in a better state and what will be the stories that we contribute to its history?
I can count five houses which I have called home, along with umpteen flats and bed sits.
Of the five two have been truly family homes where I was happy and where I think we made a difference.
And of these the last is the one we still occupy today after nearly forty years, and I suppose our contribution is that we are the first of the four to own it, who have had children running through the place.
 |
| The first of the two to be completed |
They were built in the 1870s when a large chunk of Upper Chorlton Road was still fields, experienced mixed fortunes which by the beginning of this century had left them unloved, neglected and pretty much in danger.
But they have had a new lease of life, being converted by a developer into a series of residences for the 21st century.**
I had the opportunity to wander around them during their conversion, wore the hard hat, watched as bits of unsympathetic and unsafe alterations were swept away and finally returned as the completed flats were finished.
The development has won an award and more than that has saved two grand old properties and made them homes again.
Location Whalley Range
Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson
* At 200 & 198 Upper Chorlton Road, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/At%20200%2F198%20Upper%20Chorlton%20Road
** Armistead Properties, http://www.armisteadproperty.co.uk/
Tuesday, 13 February 2018
Scenes from a tram stop ......
 |
| Victoria, 2016 |
So here are some tram pictures.
I know where and when they were taken and have written about each one.
But viewed just as a photograph with just a location and a date any one can create their own tale wrapped around what they see and how they imagine the scene can spin off.
As a historian I have to say it may not be history but I have enough writing chums to know that such a project can be fun.
That said for me the stories will be factual and have a purpose, because later in the year I will be getting serious with the new book, The History of Greater Manchester By Tram – The Stories at the Stops*
 |
| Market Street, 2014 |
Each of the stops on the network will be painted by Peter and I will find a story for each, which tells a bit of the history of Greater Manchester.
The book will be ready for the summer allowing readers the opportunity to jump on a tram and travel the routes and in the process learn about where we live.
A few of the stories have already been written and some are slowly emerging as Peter and I set about the great adventure of travelling from Chorlton to Media City, across to the Airport and off to Ashton, Oldham and Rochdale in the east and Bury, Altrincham and Eccles.
We have even walked bits of the new route out to Trafford Centre.
 |
| Market Street, 2017 |
We did wonder about whether there would be somewhere with no tale to tell.
My friend David muttered darkly about one stop on the way to Oldham which offered just a car park and a sign.
But he underestimates us, and there will always be a story from the one about the 27 Steps to "The Dog, the Donkey and the car boot sale".
 |
| Market Street, 2015 |
Some were taken in high summer and others as November rolled into December and there was a promise of Christmas to come.
And for those who really want to know exactly where they were taken, the first was on Victoria Station and the remaining three at Market Street.
Location Manchester
Pictures; Scenes from a tram stop, 2014-2017, from the collection of Andrew Simpson
*A new book on the History of Greater Manchester by Tram, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/A%20new%20book%20on%20the%20History%20of%20Greater%20Manchester%20by%20Tram
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