Walking in Alexandra Park in the summer of 2014

Now yesterday I was reflecting on Alexandra Park and the Whalley Hotel.

And as promised I have decided to post some of Andy Robertson’s pictures of the park during its recent make over.

Some of the money went to restoring the lodge, and some on clearing back overgrown bushes and trees as well as improving the lake.

There are now more benches throughout the park as well as new play area, and tennis courts.*

And as ever in the run up to the parks grand reopening at the end of August Andy was there to record the transformation.

So over the next few weeks as we go into that mellow part of the year with warm sunny days I shall post a series of his pictures of the a work in progress.


All of which just leaves a visit to see the finished work before too many of the leaves have fallen.


Pictures; from the collection of Andy Robertson

*Alexandra Park to fully reopen after £4.5m revamp, July 28 2014, Amy Glendinning
http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/alexandra-park-whalley-range-fully-7519767

Celebrating Alexandra Park and remembering the Whalley Hotel.

Parks and pubs are pretty much places we take for granted.

I used to pass Alexandra Park regularly on the bus and when I varied the route swapped the trees and flowers for a view of the Whalley Hotel, neither of which sadly I regularly visited.

All of which is a great shame.

The park has been there since 1868 and has just had its makeover which has not been without a bit of controversy.

But back in 1868 there will have been those who muttered at the expense, the encroachment on open countryside and the size of the flowerbeds.

During those 146 years it has been a wonderful resource drawing in generations of people and it has also been the venue for everything from carnivals to demonstrations.

Its closeness to the city centre made it a good choice for protests meetings with marches which began in Manchester and ended in the park.

In 1902 upwards of 20,000 people marched to the park demonstrating against the Education bill, while six years later a large meeting in the park closed a weekend of activities calling for the extension of the vote.

Now I wasn’t around for either of those but I did march in a huge anti racist demonstration through the city sometime in the 1980s from Strangeways to Alex Park.

And at different times the park has also been the destination for Whit Walks, hosted Fun Days and just been somewhere to go on a summer’s day.

For some I suppose that morning stroll in the park might be followed by an afternoon in the Whalley Hotel which is not that far away.

It has for over a century and a bit been another of the landmarks of the area and there will be plenty with fond memories of the place.

From the days of the horse drawn bus to the Corporation tram it was one of those places you saw as you left Brooks Bar for Chorlton.

And in 1951 the departure of Whalley Summer as publican gave the Manchester City News one of those headlines you just don’t ever forget.

“Wally of the Whalley” Says Goodbye appeared in the Manchester City News for November 16th 1951 and featured Mr and Mrs Summer who had run the Whalley Hotel for four years.

Mr Wally Summer and his wife Ethel were leaving Manchester for Anglesey, where they were to take over the Anglesey Arms by the Menai Bridge.

“It's going to be a wrench leaving” he told the City News, “we’ve made hundreds of friends since we came to Brooks’ Bar.  I’ve been amazed at the number of people who have come up to wish us luck.”*

I rather wish I had been around to do the same, but given that I was only two at the time I shall content myself with the thought that there will be plenty of people with pictures and stories of nights in that pub and days in the park which would stand beside the tale  of Mr Wally Summer.

Now I am sure some of these will be covered by the Alexandra Park Heritage group who I am told have some fascinating archive material, and no doubt these will be matched by some equally fascinating material from the Whalley Hotel.

All of which just points to that simple observation that you should never take your park or pub for granted.

Pictures; Alexandra Park, 2013 from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and the Whalley Hotel late 19th century from the Lloyd Collection

*Manchester City News November 16, 1951

Coming next; the Park during its make over courtesy of Andy Robertson

The Currzon Cinema 1936-2008

Now I know when I am at the reaches of my knowledge and so rather than state the obvious with this picture by Andy Robertson or worse get the facts wrong I shall just post the picture and wait  for someone from Urmston to tell me more.

Anything will do, from memories to pictures and of course stories.

And I expect more from Andy on Urmston so be prepared.
 Picture; from the collection of Andy Robertson

On Chester Road with Andy Roberston

Now there will be lots of stories about Trafford Press and the adjoining buildings  running along Chester Road to Empress Street.

Once they were all busy hubs of old fashioned industries.

I am grateful to Andy Robertson who continues to record the changes to the city and the surrounding area and in the fullness of time I bet those stories will feature here on the block.

Pictures; courtesy of Andy Roberston

Wearing Hospital Blues in Flixton Red Cross Hospital sometime during the Great War

Now I am back again with another of those Red Cross Hospitals from the Great War.

They are a tiny bit of the history of that conflict which I knew nothing about until quite recently.

I first came across them when I discovered the existence of one in Chorlton on Edge Lane which was quickly followed by another on Manchester Road.

Both were located in the large Sunday School buildings beside local churches and the Manchester Road one is still there today now home to the Edge Theatre Company.

Others were in private homes donated for the duration of the War by their owners, and here is Wibbersley Red Cross Hospital in Flixton.

At present I have no idea if the house still exists or even exactly where it was, but I know someone will.

In the meantime I shall close with the comment written on the back.  It is undated and unsigned but offers up a little about the house.

“This is the matron standing in front of the House.

This photo was taken soon after it was opened.  You will see the soldiers are in Hospital Dress, but of course they have to wear Hospital Clothes now.”

The distinctive blue uniform was made up of a blue single-breasted jacket with a white lining, blue trousers, a white shirt and a red tie.

They were often known as Hospital blues or ‘Convalescent Blues‘ and were made of a flannel and flannelette combination.

I doubt that they were that popular given that most were ill fitting because they came in just three standard sizes.

But they would have been a familiar sight in the streets of all our towns, cities and villages.

Picture; Flixton Red Croass Hospita, from the collection of David Harrop

Of fishing boats, fields and hotels

I suppose there must have been a time when there were far more fishing boats in the harbour than today. 

I counted a few along the landing stages and there might have been more out at sea but I never saw them.  For the rest it was a mix of pleasure craft ranging from sleek sailing yachts to big powered boats.

But then according to the guide books Alghero had always been a trading port and in its time would have seen the ships of Genoa Catalonia and a host of other Mediterraen.

And I guess there would have been a mix of different languages spoken in ad around the harbour, so in that respect little has changed.

In the summer months the predominate language would be Italian, with a sprinkling of English, French and languages from half a dozen other northern European countries.
In the winter, with all of the tourists gone it would be easier to pick out the sound of Catalan or at least a version which has evolved over the 800 years since the first settlers from Catalonia arrived and displaced the original inhabitants.

My fishing boats look strangely out of place very much an anachronism in the Alghero of today.  But there are still a few vestiges of that older time.  Amongst the fine new apartments and hotels to the east of the beach are a few open patches of land and they are still being cultivated.  There is also what I take to be an old stone barn which has been given a coat of cement.  Its use has changed over time and it seems to have become a store house and perhaps even a factory of sorts.

And now it stands neglected and I wonder how long it will be before it and the surrounding land falls to an enterprising man of capital who sees the potential for another hotel.
But I might just be wrong for much of this land to the east of the coat was marsh and was only drained during the Fascist era.

Still judging by the holiday apartments and hotels dating from the 1970s it might well be deemed ancient enough.

Of course the fort and the churches are old and I suspect must in places date back to the 11th century.  In time the place was entirely enclosed by tall walls of which only the eastern side looks out on land.  And that helps explain those narrow streets with their tall buildings.  Given the limit on space the only answer is to build high ad close together.  But those are stories for another time.

Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Hough End Hall and a story from the Second World War all courtesy of the V&A

The Hall in the mid 1960s

Now I wanted to include a  fine pen and ink and watercolour painting on paper of Hough End Hall  made in 1940 and now in the collection of the V&A.

It is a picture which I have never seen before and fills a gap in the Hall’s history.

More so now that there is a campaign to buy it and use it as a community asset.*

But  sadly the V&A have not yet been back to me to permit the use of the image which is a shame given that I wrote to them way back in early June.

So at present I have included more of those wonderful photographs of the Hall by Roger Shelley taken in the mid 1960s.

There are plenty of photographs from the late 19th century a few from the early decades of the 20th but nothing from the 1940s.

So this is a find and more so because it led on to a fascinating piece of wartime history which I only vaguely knew about.

And here I can do no better than quote from the V& A’s site which tells the story of how in the midst of a war we had the vision to commission artists to record some of our most important and often neglected buildings.

"This work is from the 'Recording Britain' collection of topographical watercolours and drawings made in the early 1940s during the Second World War. 

In 1940 the Committee for the Employment of Artists in Wartime, part of the Ministry of Labour and National Service, launched a scheme to employ artists to record the home front in Britain, funded by a grant from the Pilgrim Trust. 

It ran until 1943 and some of the country's finest watercolour painters, such as John Piper, Sir William Russell Flint and Rowland Hilder, were commissioned to make paintings and drawings of buildings, scenes, and places which captured a sense of national identity. 

Their subjects were typically English: market towns and villages, churches and country estates, rural landscapes and industries, rivers and wild places, monuments and ruins. Northern Ireland was not covered, only four Welsh counties were included, and a separate scheme ran in Scotland.

The scheme was known as 'Recording the changing face of Britain' and was established by Sir Kenneth Clark, then the director of the National Gallery. It ran alongside the official War Artists' Scheme, which he also initiated. Clark was inspired by several motives: at the outbreak of war in 1939, there was a concern to document the British landscape in the face of the imminent threat of bomb damage, invasion, and loss caused by the operations of war. 

This was allied to an anxiety about changes to the landscape already underway, such as the rapid growth of cities, road building and housing developments, the decline of rural ways of life and industries, and new agricultural practices, which together contributed to the idea of a 'vanishing Britain'. 

Clark also wanted to help artists, and the traditional forms of British art such as watercolour painting, to survive during the uncertain conditions of wartime. He in turn was inspired by America's Federal Arts Project which was designed to give artists employment during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

The roof of the Hall

Over 1500 works were eventually produced by 97 artists, of whom 63 were specially commissioned. At the time the collection had a propaganda role, intended to boost national morale by celebrating Britain's landscapes and heritage. 

Three exhibitions were held during the war at the National Gallery, and pictures from the collection were sent on touring exhibitions and to galleries all around the country. 

After the war, the whole collection was given to the V&A by the Pilgrim Trust in 1949, and it was documented in a four volume catalogue published between 1946 and 1949. 

For many years the majority of the collection was on loan to councils and record offices in each county, until recalled by the V&A around 1990. 

The pictures now form a memorial to the war effort, and a unique record of their time.”**

So there you have it, a bit of our time past I only vaguely knew about, a fine new picture of the Hall and a whole treasure trove of other paintings to view.

Not bad for one day.

Picture, the Hall in the mid 1960s from the collection of Roger Shelley, https://www.flickr.com/photos/photoroger/

*Hough End Hall Lets Make it Ours, https://www.facebook.com/groups/houghendhall

**Hough End Hall Manchester  Recording Britain, http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O596771/hough-end-hall-manchester-recording-watercolour-dawson/