Public Hall or Conservative Club?

The Conservative Club remains an iconic local land mark.  

Whatever you think of the politics of the place and there are many I know who refused to step into the building that has dominated the corner of Wilbraham and Manchester Roads for a century and more.

It was opened in 1892, on land granted by the Egerton estate and the building was paid for through an issue of shares.  What is interesting is that the shareholders consisted of the very wealthy  local professionals, tradesmen and farmers as well as domestic servants and warehouseman.

Which I suppose was partly a tribute to the political manoeuvrings of Disraeli with his brand of one nation politics and the astute way his government positioned itself ahead of the Liberals when it extended the franchise to sections of working men in 1867.  It may also have something to do with that old Tory paternalism which in the early decades of the 19th century saw leading Tories attacking factory conditions and the laissez faire politics of successive Whig governments.

But here I conceded I shall have to do more reading.  In the meantime I shall fall back on some research by my old friend Lawrence who has dug deep into the history of the building and points up the role of the Public Hall which was on the upstairs of the Con Club and was accessed by a separate entrance.

The “Public Hall” offered a venue for everything from amateur dramatics to political speakers and campaigns which in some cases ran contrary to the political views of the Con Club. Victor Grayson Socialist MP for Colne Valley spoke in the hall in 1908 and was heckled by members of the public, some I suspect who had made their way up from the Club below.  A number of drama groups also performed here along with a young John Thaw.*

“The architects were Darbyshire and Smith, who very well known especially for building theatres including the Palace in Manchester) and pubs like the Marble Arch on Rochdale Road.   The front entrance went into the Conservative Club and a side entrance on Manchester Road went upstairs to the Public Hall which had a stage.   

The capacity was given variously as 700 to 800. There was a separate entrance to backstage area, a caretakers building at the rear and kitchens in the basement with a lift system to bring food upstairs.

The foundation stone was laid on Saturday April 25th l 1891 by Cunliffe Brooks and Lady Brooks and there was a dinner and speeches in the Lloyds opposite.

A year later the Club was opened on Saturday April 23rd 1892 by Lord and Lady Egerton along with Lord Cross an old Tory grandee, who had been Home Secretary in the Disraeli Government.

And three years later the clock which had been paid for by  subscription was unveiled.  It  was made by William Potts & Sons of Leeds  had three faces was lit by gas.”**

It was the first public clock in Chorlton and takes us back to the fact that the building was more than just a Con Club.  For the best part of a century it had also been a public place and from this seems to have risen the confusion as to the name and purpose of the building.

Many old postcards from the early decades of the 20th century refer to the building as the Public Hall not the Conservative Club leading one local historian to wonder which it was.  I guess for many in Chorlton it depended on who you were and how you visited the place.

Now I could have featured one of the many old photographs but instead have chosen Peter’s painting of the Club shortly after it closed for the last time.  Peter as you know paints the pictures and I tell the stories so it seemed fitting that this should be the image to use, especially given that the future of the building is still in the realms of speculation.

Picture; The Conservative Club, September 2012, © Peter Topping, web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk  facebook: www.facebook.com/paitningsfrompictures

* John Thaw, 1942 –2002) was an English actor, who appeared in a range of television, stage and cinema roles, his most popular being television series such as Redcap, The Sweeney, Home to Roost, Inspector Morse and Kavanagh QC.
** read Lawrence’s blog at http://hardylane.blogspot.co.uk/

In the parish graveyard at Eltham

Eltham Church from the north, 1870

I can’t remember the last time I wandered through the parish churchyard but given that I left for Manchester in 1969 it will have been a long time.

Had I done so in 1851 there would have been plenty of gravestones to read many of which dated back to the 17th and 18th centuries.

Not that I intend to record them here.  Instead I want just to reflect on how the church would have appeared from the northern part of the graveyard.

And I have to agree with Sir Stephen Glynne who in 1830 wrote that it was of “a mean fabric, much patched and modernised; with scarce a trace of anything like good work, and from repeated alterations, the plan has become irregular.”*

But no less a place deep in the affections of many local people.

*Sir Stephen Glynne 1830, Churches of Kent

Picture; from The story of Royal Eltham, R.R.C. Gregory, 1909 and published on The story of Royal Eltham, by Roy Ayers, http://www.gregory.elthamhistory.org.uk/bookpages/i001.htm

Chorlton Conservative Club and that post card from Spain nu 2 ........... a new mystery

Now it is odd just how stories come about.

Yesterday a new friend in Spain sent me a post card addressed to "Miss M Calderbank, Chorlton Conser, Club, Wilbraham Road, Chorlton. C. Hardy, England."

There was no date and I doubted that I would ever know who Miss M Calderbank was, or how the postcard got back to Spain.

But within an hour of posting the story Annette, Della and Marie all replied with memories of Melody Calderbank.  Annette went to Levenshulme High School with Melody, Della remembered her parents Dick and Mona and Marie told me she would now be in her fifties which might date the postcard to around 1974.

But the best was that Melody's sister was also in touch commenting that "my sister is 66 now...... I'm 56...she married in 1972 when she left the Conservative Club...so post card could be older..."

Of course that just led to the mystery of how the picture postcard from Chris to Melody having arrived in Chorlton made its way back to Spain.

The answer is a bit more sinister and suggests that Miss M never got the card.  Emma who sent me the card wrote that, “la postcard was rescued with another hundred , more or less , of a factory that recycled papel. todas rescued postcards have ornaments with pictures of Gypsy dancing sewn , so I think someone post , many years ago stole to coleccion.hay postcards to many parts of the mundo.I try to arrive but that some difficult. Que joy arrives.”

So perhaps Melody never got to know of the holiday Chris had in Spain and in turn Chris may well have just mumbled something about the Spanish postal service.

All of which is a nice lesson i how even the most mundane events have a habit of offering up a story of how we live.

Today the message would have been sent as a text, or from anyone of a number of different social media platforms, included would have been a photograph of the beach and perhaps even a selfie.

It would have been instant unlike our postcard which even in the 1980s would probably have arrived long after the suntan had begun to fade.

And the same social media platform allowed Emma to find me and pass on the postcard which perhaps 47 years later will allow Melody to be reunited with the postcard from Chris and along the way has given me a new friend from Spain who I might add has a better command of English than I of Spanish.


Location; Chorlton & Spain

Painting; The Conservative Club  © 2012 Peter Topping

Web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk

Picture; the postcard, date unknown, courtesy of Emma Gilarranz Gutierrez

St Barnabas with a story few now know about

The church in 2014

Now despite growing up in Well Hall and passing the Church of St Barnabas, year in and year out I had no idea that it was actually built in Woolwich in 1859 and only appeared on our door stop in 1933.

And as we are into amazing revelations I didn’t know that it had been damaged in the war.

Now there are those like George Treadway who remembers it being hit and there will be many more who have fond memories of the church as a place of worship, a youth club and for its scout group.

So I would just like to thank Kristina Bedford* for the picture of the church in 1858, Chrissie Rose for her photograph taken earlier this month and George who remembered "St Barnabas Church by Well Hall roundabout in ruins [and seeing] it a flame from our house that night up by Van Dyke Cross."**

All of which just leaves me to quote from Discover Eltham and its Environs, by Darrell Spurgeon, 2000,

"Church of St Barnabus, 71, Rochester Way.  A Victorian Gothic church in red brick, designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott. 

The church in 1859

It was originally built in 1859 as the chapel of the Royal Naval Dockyard at Woolwich; it was dismantled and re-erected, brick by brick, on this site in 1933.  

The exterior is rather stark, with a bold apse, quirky turret and many lancet windows, along the side are four gables, each covering twin lancets.

The interior was transformed by Thomas Ford in 1957 after war damage.  

It is light and spacious with a wagon roof and large flowering mural by Hans  Feibusch on the apse ceiling; but is very strange (‘sickly wedding cake’ Pevsner) with 16 angels perched on the beams above the column in the square arcades.  

 The vicarage next door is a striking red brick house with a graceful ground floor bow.  Adjacent is the church hall, of 1938, renamed the Frankie Howard Community Centre in 1988."

Pictures; New Church Woolwich Dockyard, 1859, courtesy of Kristina Bedford and Church of St Barnabas, 2014, from the collection of Chrisie Rose

*Woolwich Through Time Kristina Bedford, Amberley Publishing, 2014

**Remembering Eltham,  http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/remembering-eltham.html

****Discover Eltham and its Environ, Darrell Spurgeon Greenwich Guide Books, 1992, revised and updated  2000

A Chorlton mystery under a Spanish sun

Now I have no idea who Mel is or was or when she received this postcard from Chris, but it’s an intriguing little mystery.

I am sure someone will know of Miss M Calderbank who either worked, or lived at the Chorlton Conservative Club.

And maybe even the surname of Chris who confided that “the sea is far to rough for the boat.”

What makes the postcard just that bit more interesting is that it was sent to me by Emma in Spain, which begs the question, of why was it not posted?

Or if it was how did it end up back in Spain?

All very intriguing and within the hour Annette, Della and Marie all replied with memories of Melody Calderbank.  Anntte went to Levenshulme High School with Melody, Della remembered her parents Dick and Mona and Marie told me she would now be in her fifties which might date the postcard to around 1974.

But the best is that Melody's sister has also been in touch commenting that "my sister is 66 now...I'm 56...she married in 1972 when she left the Conservative Club...so post card could be older..."

So not bad as a start and more to come.

Location; Chorlton & Spain

Picture; the postcard, date unknown, courtesy of Emma Gilarranz Gutierrez

A heap of lights … a place called the Edge ….. and memories of Sunday worship

The Edge Theatre on Manchester Road is one of Chorlton’s real jewels, which has entertained, captivated and enthralled audiences with some of the best small scale touring theatre in the country, alongside  productions made by [their] own wonderful in-house creatives”* since it opened in 2011.

Heaps of lights, 2025

And if you are between productions there is the Dressing Room, which is a café/bar, and meeting place which also boasts a walled garden for those days when the sun is cracking the paving stones.

Looking in at the Edge, 2023

On those occasions when I am Billy No Mates, I like sitting in the Dressing Room trying to imagine what it was like when it once accommodated 100 young Sunday School scholars, along with more young people spread out in the rooms off the main corridor.

The Wesleyan Sunday School opened in 1885, having started 80 years earlier on Beech Road in what had been the first Methodist chapel.

The present café might also have been one of the rooms used by the Red Cross who occupied the entire building during the Great War after the Wesleyans had offered it up as a voluntary hospital for serviceman recovering from wounds and illnesses.

It was staffed by a mix of volunteer nurses, cleaners, cooks and those engaged in administrative activities.  

Looking at the profile of the volunteers, they were drawn from the local communities, and mostly served for the duration of the conflict.

Over the years I have come across some fascinating items, from a silver cup presented to the Wesleyan in 1917 by a group of soldiers and a letter of thank you to a group of children who embroidered a special pillow.

At the Dressing Room, The Edge, 2025

And of course there is much more …. which is for another time.

Location; Manchester Road

Pictures; the Dressing Room at the Edge, 2025, and the gardens, 2023, from the collection of Andrew Simpson 

*The Edge, https://www.edgetheatre.co.uk/

Two elephants, a farmer’s son and a travelling circus ......... Part two

Yesterday I re ran the story of my old friend Oliver Bailey’s association with two elephants. *

To be more accurate it was Oliver’s father who was connected with the two elephants, but that was yesterday’s posting.

Today I thought I would share the remarkable account which Oliver has dug out from the introduction by the publishers to the book about the two elephants* and provide a link to the author's excellent blog on the story, http://www.jamieclubb.blogspot.co.uk/

Here you can read not only about the elephants but much more about the history of the circus.

'Salt and Sauce were owned and presented by some of the most famous show business people of their era. Their owners included Carl Hagenbeck, George William Lockhart, Herbet "Captain Joe" Taylor, John "Broncho Bill" Swallow, Dudley Zoo, Tom Fossett, Dennis Fossett, Harry Coady and Billy Butlin. Their presenters included Ivor Rosaire and Emily Paulo. Formerly members and believed to be the longest suriviving members of George William Lockhart's "Cruet", they were featured in various books, newspapers and magazines in their day, and are the focus of a new book "The Legend of Salt and Sauce".

The elephants were famed for their vast array of tricks, but also feared for their temperamental moods. Sauce (known as "Saucy" most of the time) killed George William Lockhart (her owner and trainer) in an accident at Walthamstow Station and Salt killed William Aslett (an elephant groom) when she attacked him in 1957 on Rosaire's Circus.

Despite both Salt suffering dropsy symptoms that had already killed two other members of "The Cruet" she went on to live for five decades. Her death was well documented in the Cambridge local press (source: The Legend of Salt and Sauce) when she accidentally got stuck in Vauxhall lake whilst touring with Ringland's Circus in 1952. 

After seven hours and with the aid of a crane she was freed from the lake, but suffered from pneumonia and died after a week. According to the local press over one hundred wreathes were left for her at the circus. It was predicted that her lifelong companion, Sauce, would die soon afterwards (source: Salt and Sauce were Separated by John D. Swallow), but she lived until 1960, dying from "natural causes".

The book tells the true story of Salt and Sauce, two Indian elephants, who arrived in Britain in 1902 and became involved in the live entertainment industry from the Music Hall scene to circus and finally Butlin's Holiday camp. This is the story of how the elephants became both feared and loved by some of the most famous people of their era, and how their story became mythical among the circus community."

* The Legend of Salt & Sauce: The Amazing Story of Britain's Most Famous Elephants
by Jamie Clubb with Jim Clubb  ISBN Number: 187290436X Publisher: Aardvark Publishing

Pictures; from the covers of the book courtesy of Jamie Clubb