One hundred years of one house on Well Hall Road, part 3, looking for the first residents

Our house today

This is where we lived  in for thirty years.

We moved into 294 Well Hall Road in March 1964 and while us kids slowly moved out over the years it remained my dad’s home till 1994.

And so I have decided to explore its history.

I can’t say I have ever thought of the people who lived their lives in our house but now I think it is time to start.

After all we accounted for just under a third of its existence and so I have begun to look for the people who were there before us.

Now  most of the spade work is being done by my friend Jean who has already been down to the Heritage Centre at Greenwich and trawled the street directories from when the estate was built.

And Jean will be back there looking for connections between the first occupants and the personnel records of the Royal Arsenal during the Great War.

The first of those residents was Basil Nunn who lived in our house until 1919 and was followed by Alfred W Rendle who stayed there until 1928.

I have great hopes that much more will be revealed for of course once you have a name then lots follow.  I have already started looking at the electoral registers for the period, and in time there may be the odd newspaper story, baptismal and marriage record and perhaps even someone who remembers them.

Added to this I will be able to conjure up the family who occupied our house and give a different context to the rooms we took for granted including how those rooms looked originally and how they might have been used.

The Bullet Factory, the Arsenal, circa 1916

And not for the first time during the search I have lapsed into a bit of idle speculation, pondering on which part of the Royal Arsenal Mr Nunn and perhaps Mr Randel worked in and whether they took the tram or cycled to Woolwich.

In turn I have thought about what they did to the garden and whether Mrs Nunn or Mrs Randel complained about the steep staircase which runs up the centre of the house, and how many times in a day they had to use them.

But all of that is a flight of fancy and rather stops me from the serious business of finding out more about the house and the first families who lived there.

So while Jean beavers away I shall go digging for any evidence of what the house might have been like when brand new and Mr Nunn moved in.

Research by Jean Gammons

Location; Well Hall, Eltham, London

Pictures; 294 Well Hall Road in 2014 courtesy of Chrissie Rose and inside the Royal Arsenal from the collection of Mark Flynn, The Bullet Factory, W H Kingsway, http://www.markfynn.com/

*One hundred years of one house in Well Hall, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/One%20100%20years%20of%20one%20house%20in%20Well%20Hall

Snaps of Manchester number 5 ... in Albert Square with trams and horses

Of all of the snaps of Manchester I have featured this is one of my favourites.

We are in Albert Square sometime between the late 1920s and early 30s and we are at that cross over moment when horse drawn vehicles were about to become just that little less common.

In another decade they would be confined to milk floats and the rag and bone man.

But here they are still in use pulling a cart and a covered wagon.

In other respects it is a scene which I recognise from when I first arrived in the September of 1969.  In fact apart from the trams and their overhead cables and rails it is pretty much as I remember it.

Picture; courtesy of Sandra Hapgood

Down Edge Lane at Alderfield and Rye Bank in 1845 ............ avoiding Mrs White and Mr Gresty

Edge Lane 1845

Now that stretch of Edge Lane which runs out of the old township up to Longford Park is somewhere I don’t often visit.

And that is a shame because it was one of those parts of Chorlton which had some fine houses built during the last quarter of the 19th century with stories which have yet to be discovered.

But today I am drawn to what I might have seen in the 1840s had I walked the road out from the village and up to Longford House which had been the home of Thomas Walker, one time pillar of Manchester society but also a radical politician who campaigned for the abolition of the slave trade, supported the French Revolution and was indicted for treason in 1794.

The family lived at Barlow Hall from the late 18th century spending the summer there before moving back for the winter to their town house on South Parade which faces what is now Parsonage Gardens.  And it was there that a mob attacked Walker who was forced to drive them off by discharging a pistol in the December of 1792.

Walker survived both the attacks and was acquitted of treason, after which he retired to the new family home at Longford House where he died in February 1817 and was buried in the parish church on the green.

Edge Lane in 1893

Now had I walked along Edge Lane in the summer of 1845 Longford House would not have been visible from the road and I would have to content myself with gazing at the row of trees that bordered the lane and which ran out on all sides surrounding the estate from the prying eyes of people like me.

I suppose I might have wandered across the fields which lay to the east of the estate.

These were Alder Field farmed by Mary White and Rye Bank farmed by James Gresty and on to Reap Bank.

But I would have had to be careful, the first two were arable fields probably growing barley and William Chessyre’s Reap Bank was Meadow land and no farmers now or then is happy at people wandering over their crops.

That said I wonder just when those fields were given over to development.  By 1893 there were two grand houses on the site of Alderfield and what is now Alderfield Road had been cut, pretty much ending where it does today.

It shouldn’t be too difficult to track the history of those two houses using the rate books, directories and census records and from that begin to plot the development of this small area which was home also to one of our oldest Bowling clubs.

And with that I rather think there will be more stories to add to those that have already been told on this little bit of Chorlton.

Pictures; detail of the area from the 1845 OS map for Lancashire, and the OS map of South Lancashire, 1893, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/

Next; creeping development along Edge Lane and a few interesting people.

That little bit of Egypt in Sunderland …… Imperial stories ….. and personal memories

It’s odd how a name and a memory from over half a century ago sometimes pop back and remind me of a time long ago.

Tel-El-Kebir Road, 2022

The memory is of Tel- El-Kebir Road in Sunderland which I came across in the early 70s.

I was living just south of Sunderland in Seaham Harbour and for reasons now long lost we would regularly pass the road which resonated with me.  

I will have checked out the name as the site of a battle in 1882 in which a Franco British force defeated elements of the Egyptian army, and surmised the road was in honour of the victory.

At the time I took it no further, and today sitting in Manchester I don’t have access to the sort of detail which would offer up when the road was cut who decided on the name and what the residents thought at the time.

There are only 4 places named after the battle.  Two are here in the UK and two in Australia.  The Australian connection makes sense given that during the Great War Australian soldiers were based at a camp located at Tel- El-Kebir.

Of the British sites one is Hendon in Sunderland and the other is Pontypridd in Wales. 

Detail from the Storming of Tel-El-Kebir, 1883

The obvious explanation for the commemoration of the battle is a connection with those who fought at Tel-El-Kebir.  Now I know the names of some of the regiments which were there including the Black Watch, Gordon Highlanders and The Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders of the Highland Brigade, along with the Guards the 19th Hussars and units of Indian Army.

The Storming of Tel-El-Kebir, 1883

But as yet despite trawling the papers of the time I can’t find a “line of battle”, and so our road may just have got its name from an excess of Imperial enthusiasm.

The answer may lie in a local newspaper, or someone might come forward with the answer.

And given the times Tel- El-Kebir Road could just undergo a name change.

It is perhaps time for such a change and I doubt it will alter my memories. 

Location; Hendon, Sunderland

Picture; The Storming of Tel-El-Kebir, 1883, Alphonse-Marie-Adolphe de Neuville, National Museums Scotland, Accession number, M.1952.50 and Tel-El-Kebir Road, Hendon, Sunderland, 2022, courtesy of Google Maps & Google Earth

One day …. two pictures …..

Location St Peter’s Square

Pictures; one day …. two pictures, 2024, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

On Deansgate where it joins Blackfriars Street in the 1920s

The corner of Blackfriars Street and Deansgate has never been a popular one for photographers.

Now I know this because I have counted just three on the digital archive of the City and can think of just a few others I have seen in various collections.*

So I was pretty pleased when I came across this one which I think must date from the 1920s.

It did present a little challenge at first to identify exactly where it was because the caption just refers to Deansgate.

But the clue was Stewart and Stewart who were tailors, trading at 46 Deansgate which was on the corner with Blackfriars Street.  Theirs was a large enough business to extend from Deansgate along Blackfriars Street.

They were trading there in 1911 and with a bit of research it should be possible to follow them back and forwards through the 20th century.

As for the building I cannot remember when it came down and was replaced with the present red brick one.
I know it survived the Manchester Blitz so I guess it was just one of those that fell to the developers.

This was not the case with the building opposite which went on the night of December 24th along with the entire block stretching up St Mary’s Gate to St Ann’s Square and also included the Royal Exchange.

Happily some of the near neighbours of 46 Deansgate have survived including the building which once housed T. Hayward & Co. Glass & China.

All of which is a lesson in keeping an eye on the buildings we pass and so often take for granted.

Locatiion; Manchester

*Manchester Local Image Collection, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

Picture; Deansgate and Blackfriars Street, circa 1920s, courtesy of Sandra Hapgood

Stories of the Great War from Eltham and Woolwich ............. nu 2 losing your job on the Well Hall estate

Now I wonder how the individual stories of people living on the Progress Estate played out after the Great War*.

The estate as most people are aware was built for Arsenal workers.

The first to move into our house on Well Hall Road were Mr and Mrs Nunn from Ipswich.

He was a blacksmith by trade and in 1911 had been employed in an engineering works.

And it is perhaps easy to see the attractions of their new home over number 56 Rosebery Road in Ipswich which while it had a garden was one of these older mid terraced properties surrounding by similar drab streets.

But in the end it may have just been the work and the Arsenal, because in 1918 with the end of the war and only three years after they settled in Well Hall they left for Ipswich.

Now that isn’t surprising because there were 50,000 men and 25,000 women and girls employed at the Arsenal which was to be slimmed down to just 10,000 men with the Armistice.

Many like Mr Nunn returned to their pre war occupations and some efforts were made to help others including the large workforce of women and girls.

According to one source Miss Lilian Barker who had acted as Lady Superintendant of Ordinance Factories found work for some women and girls “in domestic service, nursing, shirt making and factory work .......Evening classes were opened in conjunction with the L.C.C., concerts, dances sports and entertainments organised by the Borough Council and even holidays at the seaside for both single women and mothers with children.”**

But despite such efforts unemployment rose and men and women who a few months earlier had been in high paid gainful employment were now looking to relief.

The concern and determination to do something was reflected in a variety of ways.  In March 1919 “some of the men discharged from the Arsenal but had not yet moved out of the hutments demanded rent reductions and prevailed on others to join them in a rent strike.”*

While women munitions workers demonstrated at only being given a week’s notice.

All of which begs the question of what happened to all those on the estate?

Unfortunately the census return for the years after the Great War are still closed but the 1939 register offers up some interesting insights into the occupation of those living in Well Hall.

At our house were Mr and Mrs Jarvis who had moved in 1929.  He gave his job as a “Technical chemist, Food and Chemical” which would suggest he was not employed at the Arsenal.

Likewise their near neighbours from 288 Well Hall Road up to 310 were engaged in a whole variety of occupations from clerical and sales work to printing, engineering, carpentry and hairdressing.

With more research it should be possible to get a full profile of the whole estate but that it’s a snap shot a full decade after the war.


Pictures; 294 Well Hall Road in 2014 courtesy of Chrissie Rose and inside the Royal Arsenal from the collection of Mark Flynn, The Bullet Factory, W H Kingsway, http://www.markfynn.com/ 

*One hundred years of one house in Well Hall, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/One%20hundred%20years%20of%20one%20house%20in%20Well%20Hall

*** The Woolwich Story, 1970, E. F. E. Jefferson.