History from the kitchen shelf

Now my friend Ann grew up on Barlow Moor Road and often sends me items from when she was growing up in the 1950s.

Cups like this so often don’t survive daily use so I am glad this has and Ann says that "it is a Lancashire large cup and  probably belonged to my grandfather."

Location; Manchester




Picture; Lancashire cup , circa 1900s, from the collection of Ann Love

Lost and forgotten streets of Manchester nu 39 ............. the mystery of the moving street

Now this entrance looks as if it should go somewhere and back in 1851 it did.

What should be Back Spear Street, 2016

This is Back Spear Street which is off Spear Street.

Spear Street  is one of those streets that connects Hilton Street to Great Ancoats Street.

It is narrower than Oldham and Lever Streets which run parallel but it still offers up some interesting sights including a few of those new wall painting which are everywhere in the Northern Quarter.

And it has a mystery in that Back South Street seems to have moved.

On the 1849 and 51 maps it is directly opposite Faraday Street and contained seventeen properties along its length which ran off Spear Street and then took a right to run parallel with its name sake.

In time I will go looking for its residents, and that search might also reveal why what is now called Back Spear Street starts a little further north and still has an echo of that dog leg set up.

Back Spear Street, 2016

I must admit that at first this did confound me but Goads Fire Insurance map and the current street plan place it closer to Warwick Street than it was.

I don’t have an answer and I suspect the search might not prove doing.

So instead having featured the entrance to the old Back Spear Street and its rival I shall close with the building that stands beside our earlier one.

In 1851 this spot was listed as livery stables, from where a Mr William White ran a coach business.

Almost thirty years later it was the site of a glass manufacturer and by 1903 was specializing in the manufacture of millinery products.

The building beside the old street entrance, 2016

I can’t date our building and so it will have to be a trawl of the rate books but it does post date 1851 and having been at the mercy of the fly poster it does now have one of those Northern Quarter paintings.

And that just leaves me with the mystery because if you follow the directories over the years Back Spear Street seems to where I first found it but that conflicts with our maps.

All very strange.

Which just leaves someone to come up with the answer.

Location; Manchester

Pictures, Spear Street up and down its length, 2016 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Lost and forgotten streets of Manchester nu 38 ..... Thorniley Brow

Now this is the Wonder Inn Organic Cafe which Peter painted recently and according to its owners has much more to offer the area in the years to come.

The Wonder Inn, 2016

I hope so because this side of Shudehill has been a bit neglected and unless you were after books or office equipment it was just somewhere to hurry past on the way down to the Printworks or Exchange Square.

I remember the building as “A and A Clothing Ltd,” and “Chianstore clothing.com.”

That said there will be no one today who will know it as Whitaker Wholesale Stationers who operated from the site in 1911 and certainly no one who bought bread and cakes from the place when it was run by Mr Joel Brooks back in 1851.*

What brought Mr Brooks and his family from Stalybridge is lost in time, but they had only made the move the year before.

And along with wondering what made them move here there is also that other tanatalizing question of what they thought of Manchester and in particular the warren of little side streets around them.

Of these I remain fascinated by Thorniley Brow which is the one directly beside number 29.

It is a narrow street and once ran off to a dead end, but on the way gave access to Wild’s Court, Well Street and Back Garden Lane both of which connected with Garden Lane.

Today it is just a very narrow cut through but back in 1851 there were ten properties running its length which were home to sixty people.  They were the usual mix of unskilled and semi skilled workers, who might well, have been a little in awe of Mr Kennedy who was “pipe maker” and “employed three men.”*

He must have been doing quite well because he was one of only three people to get listed in the directory as living the street.  The other two were John Worrall at the Nelson Tavern and the shop keeper Patrick Lyngham.

Thorniley Brow

As for the rest including the families who lived in the cellars of two of the properties they never made it in to Mr Slater’s street Directory.

But all sixty were recorded in the census return from which I also know that along the street three houses were uninhabitated in the spring of 1851.

In time I might wander back down Thorniley Brow from number 29 Shudehill armed with a map from 1849 and the census details of those sixty people and try to match each family with a location.

By 1911 the domestic properties had all gone replaced by a series of businesses making musical, instruments jewellery and fancy paper objects and a series of merchants.
All of which would have meant that Mr Brook's cakes, and bread laves would have had fewer customers

All of which just leaves me to ponder on how the map makers missed the spelling mistake of our street.

But that is for another time.

*Enu 1o 46, Market Street, Manchester, 1851
**Enu 1o 10-16, Market Street, Manchester, 1851

Pictures; detail of the area in 1894 from the OS map of South Lancashire, 1894, courtesy of Digital Archives Association,  http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

Painting; the Wonder Inn, Salford © 20116 Peter Topping

Web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk

Salford's past in pictures ..... the exhibition by Phil Portus today

Now when you spend your time writing about the past and in particular the lives of people it is always exciting to come across a project that celebrates the way we lived.

And that is exactly what we have got with "Salford 1977 - 2016" at St Clements Church, Ordsall, Salford.
It arose out of an urban photography project by Phil Portus in the 1970s.*

Phil writes, that "as part of the Heritage Weekend  I'm giving a talk today, Saturday at 2pm. about photographing changes on Ordsall and Langworthy and tracing people I photographed nearly 40 years ago and re photographing them. 

It's been really good talking to people about their memories. 

I have also found out some more names of people I photographed on the 70's and will try to trace them."

So there you have it, Salford 1977-2016 at St Clements', Ordsall, M5 3LQ, as part of the Heritage Weekend.

Location; St Clements Church, Ordsall, Salford.

Pictures; courtesy of Phil Portus, 1977-2016

*Salford Project, http://www.philportus.co.uk/salford-project/

Out in the Northern Quarter with an artist

I like the idea of a painting of a painting.

We were out in the Northern Quarter researching the new Manchester Pub book and stopped to marvel at the sheer size of the image on the gable end.

And as you do we swapped stories of other such “street paintings” with two chaps working for Vodafone.

They had just come across a new one round the corner and off Peter went to look.

Now as everyone knows he is the artist and so I was not surprised when yesterday he sent over his painting of two of those paintings.

All four of us pondered on who was responsible for the originals and who had commissioned them, and the effort which had gone into heir production.

At which point I am very confident that someone will know and quick as a flash will come up with the name, the art funded project and a list of all the others across the Northern Quarter.

We shall see.

Location; Northern Quarter

Painting; montage, of the paintings at the back of Tib Street, near Brightwell walk © 2016 Peter Topping

Web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk

WW1 CENTENARY REMEMBERING THE MCT EMPLOYEES ........... by Martin Logan

As the war progressed a decision was taken that the bodies of those soldiers who died would not be repatriated to the UK. 

They would be buried were they fell and eventually cemeteries would spring up all over the Western Front to hold the many thousands who fell.

However in my research into the employees of Manchester Corporation Tramways (MCT) who fell in the Great War I came across at least 12 who are either buried or remembered at cemeteries in the Greater Manchester Area.

One of the MCT employees on the Memorial Plaque is a Rothwell W.
My research took me to Weaste Cemetery which is located behind Media City in Salford.

I eventually came across the grave of the Rothwell family. Sgt William Edward Rothwell is the MCT employee who joined the tramways in 1913 and fought with the 6th Battalion Manchester Regiment.

He was the father of 8 children, one whom was also called William and who also died in the Great War.

They are both remembered on the family gravestone.

The inscription reads as follows
           
              IN
LOVING MEMORY
            OF
Sgt W.E Rothwell Man Regt
  The beloved husband of
       Elizabeth Rothwell
Drowned on duty Nov 17th 1915
               Aged 48 years

           Also their dear son

Le/cpl W.E. Rothwell 8th K.L.R.
      Killed in action in France
  Sept 11th 1918 aged 19 years
Now and forever soldiers of Christ

   Also JAMES their beloved son
          Who died April 5th 1921
                In his 21st year
                    At rest

If you can provide any information on the Rothwell family please contact me at martin.logan@btinternet.com / 07985490124

Martin Logan © September 2016

Location Manchester & Salford

Picture; the Rothwell family, 2016 from the collection of Martin Logan

Finding history in the most obscure places ...... tomorrow in Southern Cemetery

Now I grew up with J Alfred Dixon.

His postcards were pretty much the ones you saw in newsagents, and on railway station kiosks and more than likely were the ones that dropped through the letterbox with news of a holiday somewhere in Britain.

The images were always bright, cheerful and could be anything from a holiday camp, to a sea going steamer.

Looking at some of them today they appear slightly washed out but that might be down to over exposure in the bright sunlight on a shop counter on the south coast.

But it might equally just be to do with what Mr Dixon proudly boasted was “natural colour.”

And that brings me to this little bit of history, which for many of us will be so familiar that it doesn’t even warrant a second glance or for that matter count as history.

After all there will be some of these postcard stands still knocking around in the back of the store rooms of those older chemists, stationers and sweet shops up and down the High Street.

But that does not detract from that simple observation that these are a bit of our heritage.  Not I grant you as grand as an inscribed gold plate marking a battle or a dusty document but history they are.

So following a bit of a conversation with its owner, David Harrop they will be sitting beside some of his other items in the Remembrance Lodge at Southern Cemetery this week.

David has a magnificent collection of memorabilia from both world wars including medals, letters and postcards along with souvenirs made especially during the Great War.

Some belong to men and women who are buried or commemorated in Southern Cemetery so it is fitting that they should be there on display.

Nor is that all because during the course of the week across the country places of historic interest will be open for free for people to “drop in” and experience the past.

And no where are you more likely to experience the past than Southern Cemetery, so why not come down on Thursday when David will be on hand to explain the history of the items in his collection.

After a bit of thought he has decided to bring the Dixon stand down and fill it with old postcards.

One of these will be a J Arthur Dixon postcard of Manchester Cathedral and regimental chapel of the Manchester Regiment.

And that I think is equally fitting.

Location; Southern Cemetery

Pictures; from the collection of David Harrop