One hundred years of one house in Chorlton ....... part 139 ….. just how many ways can you cook Parmigiana di melanzane?

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.*

Parmigiana di melanzane, 2021

I would be very surprised if Joe and Mary Ann ever came across aubergines.

Now I might be doing them a disservice, but they lived in our house from 1915 till 1973 which for most people in a tiny suburb of south Manchester was not a time of culinary adventure.

To be fair two world wars and a Depression were not conducive to exploring new foods cooked in different ways.

And here I can’t be sniffy because my experience of aubergines was very late in coming and only happened in the 1980s when I first started going to Greece.

I don’t count my student flirtation with tinned ratatouille which came from the local independent supermarket on Burton Road and contained a smidgen of aubergines.

Parmigiiana di maelanzane, 2022

After Greece it would be another two decades before I came across Parmigiana di melanzane made by Tina’s mum in the family kitchen in Varese, just north of Milan.

This was a revelation.  You take slices of aubergine, fry them in olive oil with or with out a dusting of egg and flour, then layer them alternatively with mozzarella cheese in a dish, top with tomato sauce and bake in the oven.

And after a decent interval they came to Scott’s house, but my attempts while good do not compare with Rosa’s who was born in Naples in 1940 and has been making the dish from as soon as she could.

This week she varied it, telling me that this was not the Neapolitan way but a version from Calabria.

The aubergines were sliced in two, the contents cut in criss crosses thane covered with mozzarella, cover in sauce and wacked in the oven.

It’s the way they are served in restaurants I guess because it is quicker, but as nice as it was I prefer the other way.

fagioli e pasta, 2022

At which point someone will mutter so what, or complain that this has little to do with a century of one house in Chorlton, but I think it does.

Partly because it demonstrates how our tastes have changed over that century, highlighting the growing availability of different foods, but also the culinary adventure many of us who grew up in the 1950s now take for granted.

Of course Brexit and rising inflation may dampen that demand, but those experiences are now out there.

To which I can now add another favourite which is fagioli e pasta, or beans and pasta, which is cheap, filling and nutritious, and a dish which its British variations might pull on potatoes rather than pasta and so tick a meal Joe and Mary Ann might have been familiar with.

Location; Beech Road and Italy

Pictures; Parmigiana di melanzane, 2021 7 2022, and fagioli e pasta, 2022, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*The Story of a House, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20story%20of%20a%20house

12 Hope Street Derby a home for 30 years and now a car park*

I always thought the name Hope Street was a cruel joke for how could there ever be any hope in a row of mean looking houses consisting of just four rooms an outside lavatory and shared yard?

On  still and quiet nights it was not only possible to hear the clunk of shunting engines from the nearby railway line but know when the people next door were rowing or the even more intimate moments of the couple at number 10.

It might of course be possible to conjure up some rosy picture of children playing in the streets safe from traffic under the watchful eye of a resident but this had more to do with an absence of gardens and parks and there was always the fear that the canal just a few streets away could prove fatal.

So the only hope came from the name.  Every town and city in the north had these shabby often poorly built properties.  They were put up by speculative builders often using the cheapest materials and were not meant to last.  The fact that many survived from the earliest years of the nineteenth century is less a tribute to the quality of the buildings as to a lack of sufficient money or the political will to clear them and build better.

But that is a little unfair and now looking back with the gift of a degree of maturity and some experience I have to admit that I was rather hard on Hope Street.
Some of the worst of these early 19th century slums had gone before the war and what was left may not always have been bad.  I started my married life in a two up two down, which with the addition of a bathroom and inside lavatory was cheap, and manageable with the extra bonus of being close to the town centre.

Now number 12 Hope Street would have built around 1830.  The street itself did not derive from some cynical landlord who took perverse pleasure in naming the place hope in contrast to the dismal surroundings but from the Hope family one of whom was Lord Mayor no less than five times.

Of course I cannot testify to the state of the brickwork or the quality of the other material used in its construction but I remember a comfortable home.

Like most of the houses of this design you entered directly into the front room and by the 1950s this was no longer the “best room”, used only for special occasions but a family room kept warm and cosy in the winter months where I could sit and play with my lead figures of animals, cowboys and soldiers bought from the local market.

Every morning grandmother would make the fire a method which both fascinated and terrified me, for once the kindling and coal were in the grate and the fire lit she put a sheet of newspaper over the front.  This allowed the flames to catch and drew the fire up the chimney.  It is a trick I have never dared copy with our own open fires, preferring to put the fire guard in place first and rest a sheet of newspaper on that.

My fear which if memory serves happened on one occasion was that the newspaper itself would ignite and with a sudden whoosh disappear up the chimney.  “That” my mother would soundly proclaim “could start a chimney fire which is the worst thing that can happen.”   To this day despite regularly sweeping our chimneys the fear of such a happening haunts me, but for an eight year old was a prospect of unimaginable terror.

The reverse was the need on those same cold winter days to visit the outside lavatory at the back of the shared yard.  This was an ordeal spared all of us at night as under the bed well into the late 50s were chamber pots which we used.  I defy anyone to want to slip out of a warm bed in the middle of a December night to cross an unlit yard.   My grandparents never lost the habit and in the 1970s under their bed in their last home in Chellaston were two chamber pots.

Hope Street was demolished in the 1980s.   With a little careful renovation perhaps the houses could have been saved.  Some at least of the people who were there in the 1950s remembered them with affection and told me of the community spirit.   They were mainly skilled and semi skilled working families who shared their densely packed neighbourhood with factories, print works and timber yards.

I may have been too dismissive of Hope Street but I still rather think that those who lived there may well have preferred the option of a greener spaces, easier to clean houses and an inside lavatory.

What they got was a car park. The home of my grandparents for 30 years is marked today by the corner of a wooden fence, which I have to reflect ain't no blue plaque.

Location; Derby

Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson and Cynthia Wigley, circa 1990s

*And what was once a car park in the 1990s was when I last looked am anonymous patch of grass, beside an apartment block whose living density far out matches the old Hope Street.

Private Samuel Spence K.i.A. 24th August, 1901 …. another story from Tony Goulding

This memorial stone marks the grave of James Duncan Spence and his wife Jenefer (née Naylor) and includes a dedication to their son Samuel who was killed in action at  Rooikopje, South Africa on the 24th August, 1901 during the 2nd Boer War. 

It is located in Manchester’s Southern Cemetery, Non-conformist section, Plot D 710. 

The Spence family came to South Manchester from Dublin during the first decade of the 20th century, although James Duncan was born in Dumfries, Scotland and his wife hailed from Lyme Regis, Dorset. They were married on the 17th January, 1872 at the district church of Ballybunion in the parish of Killiheney, Listowel, County Kerry, Ireland. Samuel was born on the 23rd July, 1883 at 7, Lower Sackville Street, Dublin. (1)

When the 1901 census was taken on the 31st March, Samuel had already landed in South Africa as part of the Imperial Yeomanry, a force drawn from all parts of the British Empire to combat the rebellion of the Boer Republics. He had left his family home at 124, Cowper Road, Rathmines, Dublin to enlist on the 11th February and, lying about his age to do so, he joined, according to his attestation documents, the 13th battalion of that force.  The record of his death however, includes a reference to him belonging to the 74 (Dublin) company, 8th battalion, Imperial Yeomanry. Samuel left behind in Ireland his father James Duncan, recorded on the census return as a “printseller”, his mother Jenefer, an older brother, William Naylor, who was a picture dealer and six unmarried sisters. (2)

Shortly after James Duncan and Jenefer Spence re-located to Didsbury with their remaining sons and three of their youngest daughters (3), James Duncan died on the 21st May, 1909 at 5, Lansdowne Road, West Didsbury, Manchester. He had suffered with blindness from before the 1901 census which recorded him as “blind”. Jenefer Spence survived her husband by more than 17 years, dying on 2nd November, 1926.

I had expected that this would conclude the story of this grave. However, further investigation revealed that two other people, not recorded on the headstone, were also interred in it viz. Miss Anne Jane Cantley on the 17th April, 1937 and Henry Parnell Heney on the 1st October, 1942. 

The family connection of the second of these interments was straightforward, he was the husband of Stella Edith Spence, the second youngest daughter of James Duncan and Jenefer

Christ Church, West Didsbury.

The couple had married on the 12th February, 1923 at Christ Church, West Didsbury and in the 1939 register are shown living at 95, Atwood, Didsbury, Manchester. 

Living with them was Stella Edith’s older unmarried sister, Jenefer, who appropriately perhaps considering the fate of her brother, worked for The League of Nations as a confidential secretary in their offices at 53, Barton Arcade, Manchester.  Mr. Heney, who was a sales representative, latterly in the pharmaceutical industry, died, a week shy of his 56th birthday on the 26th September, 1942. He left an estate of £1,140-14s-7d. (equivalent today to £37,535).

Despite there being no shortage of biographical detail available concerning Anne Jane Cantley’s, finding her connection to the Spence family proved to be problematic and at present still remains a mystery. 

Grafton Street, Dublin circa 1870

Anne Jane was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1863, her parents were Joseph Cantley, who was a hosier and glover of 79, Grafton Street, Dublin and Marianne (née Boon).

 Of her earlier life in Ireland little has shown up in the records; perhaps as she was the first-born daughter, she remained single in order to take care of h.er parents in their old age. 

By 1911 she had moved to England and is recorded in that year’s census return residing with her brother Joseph, a surgeon, at 398, Great Cheetham Street East, Broughton, Salford, Lancashire. 

Her nephew, Joseph Donaldson, was recorded as newly born; he went on to have a distinguished career in Law. (4) 

Anne Jane Cantley later moved to Kensington, London where the 1921 census shows her as the manageress of a large up-market boarding house at 44-46, Longridge Road, Earls Court. Later, she briefly owned another boarding house a short distance away at 28, Nevern Square. 

Joseph Cantley’s shop

This was, apparently a joint venture with Eduard Gustaaf de Lange which was “dissolved by mutual consent” from the 31st December, 1927 as reported in the London Gazette on the 7th February, 1928. Sometime after this Anne Jane returned to live, with her brother’s widow and her children at 43, Brooklands Road, Prestwich, Manchester where she died on Tuesday the 13th April, 1937, aged 74. 

Pictures: - Headstone of the Spence family grave from the collection of Tony Goulding

Christ Church, West Didsbury courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Archives, and Information, http://manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

79, Grafton Street, Joseph Cantley’s hosier and glover shop, this, also, was home to the Dublin School of Photography and the Studio of Frederick Holland Mares, National Library of Ireland on The Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:79_Grafton_Street..._(8248610379). 

Notes: -

1) Sackville Street and its extension towards the River Liffey, Lower Sackville Street, was renamed O’Connell Street, in 1924, by the newly established Irish Free State government with one of its earliest actions.

2) Samuel did have two other siblings an older sister, Margaret Anne, who had recently married on the 27th July, 1899, and a younger brother, Albert Harley, born on the 4th December, 1886 who was for some reason absent from the census return of 1901. Albert Harley later emigrated to the United States from the family home in Manchester in 1907.

3) Stella Edith, the second youngest child, remained behind in Dublin for the time being.

4) Sir Joseph Donaldson Cantley O.B.E. became a High Court Judge. He was educated at Manchester Grammar School and The University of Manchester. In his legal career he was the lead prosecutor in the final capital murder case prior to the abolition of the death penalty when the conviction of Gwynne Evans and Peter Allen for the murder of John Alan West led to their executions on the 13th August, 1964 at Manchester’s Strangeways and Liverpool’s Walton Prisons, respectively. Later as a judge Mr. Cantley presided over the sensational conspiracy and incitement to murder trial of the former leader of the Liberal Party, Jeremy Thorpe. His reputation and legacy were to a degree sullied by his summing-up in this case which was deemed by many to have been too skewed in favour of the defence following the accused acquittal.

One last look at the Clarion Cafe in 1908

I have decided to have one last look at the Clarion Cafe which was on Market Street and opened by Robert Blatchford on Saturday 31st October 1908.

It was a place I had no idea had existed, but must have been a pretty impressive place.

And so with that ever present wish to bring the forgotten past alive here are some pictures of the interior of the place from when it was opened in 1908.

According to Harry Pollitt, the Cafe was the work of ‘skilled men from eighteen trades built decorated and furnished’

The salon was imposing with a Dutch fireplace and ceiling lantern ships lanterns and the walls decorated with oak panels.

Pictures; courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, Clarion Cafe 1908, m57130, 

Back on Lausanne Road with another bit of street furniture and the memory of a street game

Now I am back with the street furniture of my youth but for once it is something that hasn’t vanished and I am pretty much sure still does the business it was made to do.

So long after the water troughs have gone and the old red telephone kiosk has become a rarity outside the tourist haunts you can still find those tall ventilation shafts.

They were for venting the sewers of the more obnoxious and even dangerous gasses which could accumulate down below.

I have written about them in the past and have been drawn back with memories of the one on the corner of Lausanne Road.*

Of course back when I was growing up there I took it for granted, after all I passed it every day on my way to Edmund Waller and then Samuel Pepys and like pillar boxes and telephone kiosks it was so much part of the scenery as not to even warrant a second look.

But now I wonder if they have a future.  It may be that they remain indispensible but given modern technology their days may be over and they linger on until someone decides they are surplus to requirements.

That would be a shame because the one on the corner with Belfort still evokes memories of hot summer days when the tar at the side of the road had gone soft enough to play with and for what seemed an eternity we would draw it out using discarded lolly sticks.

Back then there was little to distract this street pastime for few cars passed along Lausanne Road and after the milkman had been there was only the weekly bin lorry and occasional rag and bone man to interrupt us.

All a little different from this picture of Gatling Road in Plumstead packed full of cars which will have to stand it for Lausanne Road.

I chose it because it too has a ventilation shaft and also because I have never got round to taking a picture of that bit of Lausanne Road.

But maybe some has and I would welcome a picture of that piece of Street furniture I played beside.

Pictures; Gatling Road, Plumstead, 2012 from the collection of Elizabeth and Colin Fitzpatrick

*When a smelly sewer was just one too many, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Plumstead

A little bit of gentle fun at the seaside in the 1930s ............. no 20 "one tin bath”

A short series reflecting on a bit of gentle fun from the seaside.

Location; at the seaside in Wales

Picture; courtesy of Ron Stubley

Down on the Kent coast at the seaside in the 1930s

Now for reasons I won’t go into I never went on holiday to the seaside as a child.

Apart from one disastrous day at Dover waiting to meet my dad off the ferry with a coach load of returning tourists my summer holidays were spent with my grandparents in Derby.

Sand, sea under a Greek sun would be years away, but for those who could do the yearly break at a resort on the coast was a must.

So I am back with some old photographs of the way we used to do it during the middle decades of the last century.

The weekly paid holiday and relatively cheap train fares made the seaside holiday pretty standard.

In many parts of the country most of the factories would shut down for Wakes week and on mass it seemed large parts of our towns and cities exchanged grubby streets and noisy factories for the fresh sea air, fish and chips on the pier and the dreaded landlady.

Those who worked together, got on the same trains and went to the same holiday destinations. So much so that places like Blackpool talked of Glaswegian week and the beaches, trams and pubs would echo to the different accents of the different Lancashire mill towns throughout the summer.

All of which is a lead in to these two photographs of Harold and Alma Morris somewhere by the sea in Kent.

Both in their different way capture perfectly what those holidays were like.  Paddling in the water was just that with the trousers rolled up a smile for the camera and that knotted handkerchief, less a parody on more a reality.

And of course at some stage that pose on the shingles, prepared for a heat wave but mindful that even in June a British summer can prove a tad cold. Alma stares back at us with her towel over her legs, less a modest pose and more I suspect a necessity.

The other thing that strikes you are the cigarettes, this was after the period when most people smoked, when men’s fingers were stained yellow with nicotine and the upstairs on the bus offered up a dense cloud especially first thing in the morning.

I don’t pretend that these pictures are unique but these are less often seen than perhaps was once the case and they capture a way of leisure that has changed.

Many resorts couldn’t cope with the competition from cheap package holidays to destinations where the sun was guaranteed, and are now pale shadows of their former selves; others like Blackpool have reinvented themselves as the place you go for a weekend away or that all important stag or hen night.

So I am pleased Jean shared these pictures of her uncle Harold and aunt Alma doing the week by the sea.

Pictures; from the collection of Jean Gammons.