Remembering Eltham

Now what I like about the blog is the way people share with me their memories.

So here are a few of the memories of George Treadway who was born in 1936 and grew up in Eltham.

As a ten year old in 1946 just after the war living in Vandyke Cross Eltham.

Things were quite hard our playgrounds were bomb sites,couple of local parks, St Barnabas Church by Well Hall roundabout was in ruins. (Could see it aflame from our house that night)

A small church on Woolwich Common in ruins, a crashed plane alongside it.
Eventually we had a greengrocer called Ben coming around the estate with his horse & cart selling what veg & any little fruit he could get because rationing was on.

I managed to get a Saturday job with him getting to take tenants orders to them sometimes getting a halfpenny tip.

We used to be out nearly all day going to local roads i.e. Vandyke, Keynsham Road and Gardens, Foisart Rd, Haimo Roadd and many more.

I think Ben used to give me a "Tanner" for the work and on the odd occasion if he had a banana for my ill dad.

But it was good fun most of the time.

Location; Well Hall, Eltham, London

Picture; from the collection of Jean Low

Catching the tram ............. another story from Barny

I'm not quite old enough to remember trams, but I can certainly remember the tram-lines that were set into some of the cobbled streets of Deptford.

LCC Tam, 1622,  route 40 from New Cross to Westminster, 2015

The things grabbed the wheels of my bike and threw me off on more than one occasion.

The last tram to rumble along London's streets arrived at South East London's New Cross depot in the early hours of 6th July 1952.

It was driven by John Cliff, deputy chairman of London Transport Executive, who began his career as a tram driver.

Trams had, all week, been carrying banners proclaiming "Last Tram Week" and special tickets carried the same message were also printed.

Conductors punched souvenir tickets and enthusiasts drove or cycled alongside the tram, Car No.1951, for the duration of the journey.

The tram's journey time was extended by almost three hours by crowds of cheering Londoners who surrounded it along the route from Woolwich to New Cross.

At New Cross depot the tram was greeted by LTE chairman Lord Latham.

"In the name of Londoners I say goodbye, old tram," Lord Latham declared as the vehicle entered the tram shed.

The first electric trams appeared on London's streets in 1901 following on from horse-drawn trams which were introduced in 1861.

By the 1930s trams were seen as noisy and dangerous to other road users.

In 1931 a commission of inquiry recommended trams be replaced by trolleybuses. These electrified vehicles did not need tracks, but many trams were temporarily reprieved by the outbreak of WWII.

The final phasing out of the trams followed the closure of the Kingsway tram tunnel three months before.

The tunnel which began in Kingsway and extended under The Strand was opened in 1906, housing two tram stations, Aldwych and Holborn.

Location; New Cross, London


Pictures;  LCC tram 1622, 2015, Crich Tramway Village courtesy of Andy Robertson*

*Crich Tramway Village, http://www.tramway.co.uk/

The Manchester Ballads...... songs of a city in the 1840s .... one to listen to

Now if you spend your time crawling over the history of Manchester in the 19th century or want to discover more about the people who lived and worked in the city Manchester Ballads is well worth a listen.*

It is one of two Radio Four programes which first aired in the summer and are repeated today and next week.

"The folk singer Eliza Carthy visits Chetham's Library in Manchester to find out about nineteenth century broadside ballads, and to see if she can find a new song to perform. 

She is joined by Andrew Biswell, Professor of English at Manchester Metropolitan University, who is an advocate of the cultural value of the ballads, which were printed on a single sheet and sold on the streets of Manchester.

She meets Michael Powell, Librarian of Chetham's Library, which is one of the oldest public libraries in the English-speaking world, and he tells her more about the collections of ballads there. 

Many of the ballads reflect the Irish community in Manchester and she goes to the site of Little Ireland with Professor Brian Maidment to find out more about the conditions there. 

Eliza also has a go at printing a ballad herself, with help from Graham Moss at the Incline Press in Oldham. She talks to Jennifer Reid, the self-styled 'pre-eminent broadside balladress of the Manchester region', who has collaborated with the artist Jeremy Deller. Jennifer and Jeremy describe their work on his exhibition at the recent Venice Biennale which includes some of the ballads."* 

Eliza asks her guests about their favourites then chooses one of her own to sing.

Location, Manchester

Picture; New Gates, a closed court off Corporation Street 1908, m08316, Red Plaque, 1994, Little Ireland, M Luft, m02593, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass 

*The Manchester Ballads, Radio 4, http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06fkm2g

See better days and do better things ......... out on Great Ducie Street with the the William Deacons’s Bank

Now Great Ducie Street is not somewhere I have been for a very long time and like Andy I wondered on what this building had once been.

Great Ducie Street, 2016

Andy wrote that “this is a building I missed 12 months ago when it was MOT/service time, probably because
I was walking too near it. It is one of the more interesting buildings still left in the area and
as per usual I assumed it was an old pub.”

But not content with leaving it there he went looking in the Manchester’s digital archive and discovered that back in 1964 it was once a branch of Williams Decaon’s Bank.

Great Ducie Street, 1964

At which point I could launch into a history of the bank but will just point out that in various forms it dates back to the 18th century was various acquired by the Manchester & Salford Bank in the 19th century by the Royal Bank of Scotland into the 20th.

It was proudly cashing the cheques and looking after the accounts of local people in 1911 when its neighbour through that big arch was Arnold Henry Vernon, artificial teeth manufacturer which I reckon is as good a business as any.

By 1964 despite the open land to south of the building I have no idea if artificial teeth still left by van under that arch but during the last decade it has been a series of car wash operations.

Of course as ever there will be someone who can supply the answers.

Location; Manchester

Picture; Great Ducie Street, 2016 from the collection of Andy Robertson and in 1964, G Gray, m02027/8, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

My Manchester

Now for no particular reason other than I took them and they are of Manchester, here is a short series celebrating places I like.

All have appeared before and some a long time ago.


Pictures; around Manchester 2002-2016

In Ontario with our cousins ................ exploring a landscape and a shared British Home Child

Now there is something about looking out across a Canadian landscape that one of your family might first have encountered a century ago on first arriving as a British Home Child.

And even more so when in my case our Saul repeated the experience on a long three month holiday away from Europe.

Of course if I am to be strictly accurate great uncle Roger was put to work on farms in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, finally settling in British Columbia while Saul looked out on the wilds of Ontario.

But everyone is allowed a bit of license especially when dealing with a country as vast as Canada.

Added to which I have to say I am falling in love with the place.

Not that I could or would want to shake off being a European, this is where I was born and spread out across my continent from the highlands of Scotland, into the dark forests of northern Germany and down on to the Bay of Naples is where my extended family call home.

But that decision by the Derby Poor Law Guardians to send great uncle Roger across the Atlantic began our connection with Canada.

It was a story I only stumbled on a decade ago when a set of old letters from his sister revealed that “none of us received much education; we were in the homes until twelve.  

Jack was apprenticed to Chatsworth House to be a blacksmith.  Mother got his release at 14 and apprenticed him to Fletchers where he stayed excepting war years.  

Roger was sent to Canada at 16 he ran away from where he was took the name James Rogers and got into the army your grandfather was sent to the navy, when he was around 17 he joined the army.”  

That said it would not be Roger but his sister who cemented the link because she went out from Britain in 1925 having been helped by him and one of those Empire schemes.

It is a story I keep going back to and one that has new meaning as one of their great nephews has made it to Canada and been embraced with warm hospitality by our cousins.

Chris, Andrea and their two sons showed Saul a wonderful time and for that I will always be grateful.

I never met either great uncle Roger or his sister who was Chris’s grandmother and our great aunt Dolly so it is fitting that the bonds have been renewed through another generation.

And for me it marks one of the more positive as well as personal aspects of British Home Studies which often quite rightly dwells on the hardships, abuse and unhappiness experienced by those who were sent out.

Like so many others exploring the life of our BHC it has not always been easy and their remain many opaque bits but it is pretty neat to have rediscovered the family we never knew.




Pictures; from Saul’s visit to Ontario and our cousins, 2015, courtesy of Andrea Pember, http://www.pemberphotography.ca/

One hundred years of one house in Chorlton part 61 ............ replacing the old and tired

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.*

Old leaky and tired

I hope Joe and Mary Ann would approve of the project to replace our old and tired set of windows which after a century are showing their age.

Some are better than others and a bit like those generations of aristocratic families we are embarked on a programme of renewal which could stretch into the future.

Ironically the window that prompted the project was relatively new having been installed just over 40 years ago.

It was built by John who in his zeal to stamp a modern feel on the house had ripped out a heap of period features including fireplaces and picture rails.

Now in the case of the window I suspect 40 years was pretty much all we could hope for.  He wasn’t a carpenter or a builder and as far as I know it was his first attempt.

Looking more than their 42 years

If I am being generous the window faces south and takes the full force of the bad weather and in fact lasted longer than its companion on the ground floor level which clocked just 31 years.

That said the remainder of the originals will have to go in the fullness of time, but given that we are dealing with two more bay windows, three smaller windows and three doors it is a rolling programme.

So far the work moves at a pace and the chaps from the company have been all that we could ask for and the windows are looking good.**

Of course a century has made a big difference to the design of what we are getting so while the frames are wood they are double glazed and are more secure so that as the wind swept in from the south the difference between the old leaky ones and our new fit for purpose ones was apparent.

Not that this is an advert for double glazing more a reflection on how all things have a time limit and more especially how we go about that renewal.

Like so many other home improvers I have made a botch of some things and while I did try to put back what had been ripped out I didn’t always source the exact period which means we now have a cast iron Victorian bath, an Edwardian lavatory cistern and two fireplaces which while they look the part will be much older than 1915 when the house was built.

I doubt that some of the “improvements” will detract from the overall appearance although I have to say putting in the picture rails upside down was a monumental blunder.

Just in on what was a cold wet evening

As for the bigger things we didn’t knock through and that has proved to have been to the good.

When the lads and their partners all moved back for a while we still had the discreet living areas offering that flexibility for everyone to go off and spend a bit of time away doing different things.

And now that they have gone again we settle in just the one room heating that to perfection and allowing the rest of the house to tick over on a very moderate level of warmth.

Which of course is how Joe and Mary Anne would have lived a century ago.

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

**Reddish Joinery, http://www.reddish-joinery.co.uk/