Standing in a less crowded Exchange Square

Now I am on a roll and here is another in the new series photographs using big glass windows and reflections.

That said this is also one of those pictures which captures a lost moment.

We are in Exchange Square, before the sweeping street furniture, and water feature and pretty much as it was when it was first finished.

The big wheel has yet to come to the city, and it is I think how I liked the square best.

Soon there will be the metro stop to add to the crowded space and for me something of its early simplicity has been lost.

Picture; Exchange Square from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Memories of a Chorlton childhood in the 1930s, part two a timetable, a first report and much more

An occasional series where people who lived in Chorlton describe the place they knew.

Jeanne aged 21

Jeanne Herring started at  Whalley Range School in 1937.

I featured the first instalment of her story a few days ago and this part two

That first year, 1937 opened up so many subjects and interests. I really got into my studies and took a deal of effort in presenting work carefully and on time. Both mother and father were interested in what I was doing. I was quite surprised one day when mother picked up my French book and started reading aloud with a good accent, she told me that her father had paid extra for her to have private French lessons.

I came in the first few in the summer exams so when I started again in September I was placed in the X form which meant we had skipped a year and I was now in third year.

Work intensified but I enjoyed everything, especially games. I played hockey at centre half for the junior school team but later switched my allegiance to netball playing at centre defence.

For a couple of years I was the form prefect.

I remember one school report said. “Jeanne has been a good prefect but she is rather talkative and sometimes noisy in the form room.”

I think this was because my favourite teacher, Miss Garner had walked into the classroom when I was standing on her teacher’s desk leading the class in a rowdy song at the end of term!

Jeanne and her brother in 1936, the dress cost 3s 11d

On wet days in the lunch hour we used to gather in the hall and someone would play the piano and we would have a singsong. It seems tame by today’s standards but we thought it was a great privilege.

At the end of first year I was allowed to have free uniform as well as free books. The school gave me a pink chit to take to John Barrie’s in St. Ann’s Square and get whatever uniform I needed.

The result was a wonderful new gaberdine coat, (the right brown) and an extra blouse. I also had a blazer and a panama hat for the summer.

I hated the hat for it had a high crown so one day when mother was out I cut the crown from the brim and overlapped it on the base making it shallower and hiding the join with the blue band and badge of the school. If mother knew, and she probably did for not much missed her, she never said anything. I must say the giving out of free tickets was handled very sensitively.

You were just stopped on the corridor by a teacher or a senior prefect and told the Head wanted to see you.  I was very much in awe of the Head Mistress, Doctor Arscott, as we all were.

She always wore her black gown and kept high standards of courtesy and discipline, it never even occurred to us to giggle and smirk at her surname!

Single file as we walked along the corridors, in silence, opening the doors for staff and senior prefects. The prefects were allowed to give punishment if you were noisy or too talkative. This was in the form of a book of additions and subtraction sums called cross tots and long tots.

Many are the time that I have had to do them which probably explains why I can add up columns of figures quickly!

Pictures from the collection of Jeanne O'Reilly nee Herring

Of bugs and builders and a little more about number 84 Chorlton Road

Number 84 Chorlton Road in 2014

I am always drawn to how old buildings reveal their secrets just by looking at their physical appearance.

And number 84 Chorlton Road is one of these.

I have passed it over the years and began writing about it when Andy Robertson shared some of his pictures of the place.*

It is and has been the builder’s yard of Thomas Griffiths from the 1870s.

Briefly between 1871 and 1876 it was the home of Joseph Griffiths whose father had founded the firm in 1843.  The Griffiths were originally from Cheshire but for a few decades during the middle of the 19th century they were living in Manchester.

In 1871 84 Chorlton Road was the family home of Joseph and Jane Griffiths and their five children.  Ten years later they have moved.

Numbers 84 & 86 in 1894

In 1894 the site was occupied by two semi detached properties beside the Manchester Tramways Company Depot which sat beside and behind the yard.

But the site remained theirs as it still is today.

Looking at the building reveals much that has changed.

There is still what looks like the front door and front room window of one of the houses but at some point the additional bits including the entrance were built along with newer build which may once have been a showroom.

Nor are the street directories of much help.

Back in 1876, the Griffiths seem to have moved out for while the firm is still registered at the address so is Thomas Quick who described himself as a clerk and may have been an employee who lived three and also at 84a was Henry Green photographer which would suggest the house has been sublet.

At 86 was Jane Smith “householder” which I rather think must be the other semi detached property. Beyond that heading down Chorlton Road to Brook’s Bar was still open land which by 1911 had been developed with a row of residential properties.

Now the extent to which these may have been pleasant places to live is conditional on how far the houses were affected by the Carriage Company’s yard which well in the early 20th century had a reputation as the origin of the bugs which seemed to invade the cinema close by.

It is one of those fascinating stories recounted in the Golden Years of Manchester’s Picture Houses.**

But more on that another time.

Revealing the story of the building from the yard, 2014

Number 84 Chorlton Road still has lots to reveal, and I guess it will be one of those projects which involve crawling over the directories for the period after 1876, and matching them with the Rate Books census returns and maps.

And looking at the rear of the building from the yard does offer up clues to how the house was transformed.

The entrance looks to be a later addition but the brickwork seems to be the same as the house and I guess may have come from the semi detached property which was demolished.

Later still showrooms to the left were added, a window bricked up and new window frames installed.

Of course I could be hopelessly wrong but tat only adds to to the story.

Pictures; from the collection of Andy Robertson, and detail of Chorlton Road in 1894 from the OS for South Lancashire, 1893, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/

*Sometimes things don’t change that much, nu 84 Chorlton Road, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/sometimes-things-dont-change-that-much.html

** *The Golden Years of Manchester's Picture Houses, Derek J Southall, http://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/index.php/the-golden-years-of-manchesters-picture-houses.html#sthash.K4JJYJv9.dpuf

One hundred years of one house in Chorlton part 42, changes

Christmas 1988

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.*

Now in the long history of our house, we were the first to have children here.

Joe and Mary Ann did not have any, Mike Lois and John had only just left college and were pursuing their first careers and the couple whose names I have forgotten and who lived here for just three years were passing through.

So ours were the first and with first events we did it properly with one of them being born upstairs in the big bedroom.

Twenty years ago home births were still very much the oddity despite it being the norm until the 1950s.

All of which marks the last thirty-eight years in the history of the house as something special from the first Christmas with toys under the tree to the children’s parties and the preparations for school and waving them away to college and university.

And now we have reached another milestone as the third of the four prepares to leave and set up home.

Christmas 2012

Now there is nothing odd in all of this I left home in 1969 and pretty much said goodbye to London.

But given that ours are the first four to have grown up in the place it does rather mark one of those moments.

Nor is it the only change, for just over a year ago we got new neighbours, the first in over 20 years.

All of which leads me to reflect on just how much happens when you live in a house for a long time.

In 38 years the place has had a number of “make over’s” some less successful than others and some just downright wrong.  Taking out the old airing cupboard in the bathroom was both stupid and a waste, while John’s decision to get rid of the two downstairs open fire places, and all of the picture rails did little for the house.

July 1975

That said I have never been convinced that the old fire places were that attractive but they were part of the design of the house and it is all too easy to ignore the original design.

We never knocked through and despite the popularity of ever larger kitchens/living rooms Joe and Marys Ann’s house still works best as separate rooms which open up possibilities for doing different things way from the noise and smells of communal living.

From the late medieval period people moved away from living together in one great hall to smaller rooms which offered up some privacy and I suspect were cheaper to heat.

So as our house empties of children I do have to wonder on how the place will change in the future, but will be guided by the original design of the Scott’s who were here from its beginnings till 1974.

Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson and Lois Sparshot

*The story of a house, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20story%20of%20a%20house

Out on Flixton Road catching the changes in retailing

Now the blog knows no boundaries and nor for that matter does Andy Robertson who was out on Flixton Road earlier last month and decided to take this shot.

There will be those who mutter that this is hardly the stuff of history.

But Andy has a keen eye for catching the moment, and the moment quite clearly is Electro Vapours which market their products as "a quality, non toxic e-liquid smoking alternative.”

Now I am not sure how long they have occupied number 146 Flixton Road but I do know that a few years ago it was a charity shop for the Rescue of Destitute Animals and I rather think may also more recently have sold fireworks.

As Andy mused, it will be interesting to see how e cigarettes fare in the future.

Picture; courtesy of Andy Roberston

Remembering the Great War ......... the exhibition at Southern Cemetery

Over the next few months many of us will visit museums and art galleries which will be remembering the Great War.

Most will be offering up large impressive exhibitions and have those interactive displays which are what we have come to expect.

And I am all for them, especially those touch screens which take you anywhere in the exhibition and make links with the battlefields of Europe and beyond as well the streets, factories and houses of those on the Home Front.

But as enticing as these are I have to say the small exhibition in the Memorial Hall in Southern Cemetery should be visited. 

The very smallness of the venue allows you to get very close to the letters, photos and other memorabilia from the Great War.

In one case were a series of porcelain tanks while in another was a photo of a young soldier with his wife and young daughter.

It is a picture we are all familiar with, and one that does not have a happy ending.

And of course there is no way of escaping from that simple observation that this is a place full of such stories. 

But mixed with the bleak reminders of death are many of the everyday objects which helped people through those four years, from the risqué postcards to brass plaques erected after the conflict to commemorate those who took part.

The exhibition has been put together by David from his own collection and as he says “may be the only one of its kind situated  in a cemetery.”

That said even if it were somewhere else it would still be a valuable contribution to what we know about the men women and children who lived through the war and a tribute to David’s efforts to save the material for all of us.

The Great War Exhibition is in the Memorial Hall at the entrance to Southern Cemetery.

Pictures; from the collection of David Harrop.

Restoring a bit of our historic landscape

I am a great fan of those cast iron and glass canopies which linger on in some of our old shopping parades. 

One of these is the one being restored by the  Friends of Lapwing Lane.

It has been a long two year project but the funds have been raised and the work began back in January.

In the early 20th century these canopies were everywhere, from shop parades to theatres and cinemas.

They added a bit of style to shopping and at the same time kept you dry.

But by the late 1950s they were becoming neglected and seen as old, expensive to maintain and not in keeping with the swish sleek appearance that many shop keepers wanted.

So, some were torn down leaving a gaping void in what had once been an elegant sweep of iron and glass, or they were each painted in garish colours which in time peeled and were not repainted.

Worse the broken panes of glass were not replaced and the resulting gaps let the rain through and speeded up the spread of rust.

All of which is a shame because each has a story to tell.

It starts with the name of the foundry where the pillars and framework were cast, and if you are lucky to the builder who erected the structure.

Along the way you can be presented with some surprises, like the canopy that adorned a south Manchester cinema.

I came across a photograph of that canopy with the name of the photographer and tracked the actual image to the East Dunbartonshire archive, which seems a long way from home.

But the canopy had been made by the Lion Foundry just north of Glasgow and its collection of documents and pictures are now held by the East Dunbartonshire Archive.

And that one photograph led me on to discover much about Charles Ireland who took the picture, and whose father had begun the business in the very early years of commercial photography.

So as they say never ignore the story behind the canopy, which brings me nicely back to Lapwing Lane and this painting by Peter Topping.

Peter painted it as part of the project to record how Didsbury has changed since the beginning of the last century.

Along with his images I researched the history of the places and of the people who lived there and these appear in the book, Didsbury Through Time.

Painting; © 2013 Peter Topping, Paintings from Pictures,
Web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk