One hundred years of one house in Chorlton part 106 ......... the year I lost Joe and Mary Ann

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.*

Joe and Mary Ann's house, 2017

It has been a surprise to find out that Joe and Mary Ann were not here in 1939 and of course begs the question of where they were.

They were the first occupants when the house was built in 1915 and were still here 58 years later, but not in 1939.

And this I know because they are missing from the 1939 Register and the house is listed as vacant.

They could of course have been on holiday, but given that they would have known that the Register had to be completed, you would have thought they would have made provision to fill it in.

The year before the Government had decided that in the event of war, a National Register would be taken that listed the personal details of every civilian in Great Britain and Northern Ireland which in turn would be used to compile identity and rationing cards.

National Registration Day was September 29th and a team of enumerators visited every household, collecting the names, addresses, and martial statuses of every civilian in the country, issuing identity cards on the spot.

An identity card, 1949, but not theirs.

But not it seems Joe and Mary Ann who are not listed anywhere on the Register.

I suppose they could have been abroad, but given the international scene in the September of 1939 that seems unlikely.

That just leaves a trawl of the directories for 1939 into the early 1940s, along with the electoral registers which will at least tell us if they were back on Beech Road in 1940.

I had hoped that the 1939 Register would have offered up more, it is after all a vital source of information for the period, especially as the 1931 census for England & Wales was totally destroyed by a fire in 1942, and the 1941 census was not taken due to the war.  Added to which the census for 1921 will not be published for another three years.

All of which means that the 1939 Register is an important source of information, but sadly not in the case of Joe and Mary Ann.

But they will turn up somewhere, of that I have every confidence.

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Picture; the house in 2017,and an identity card, 1949, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

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

Pictures from an Eltham bus ........ no.20 ....... from a car park near you

The top deck of a London bus has to be a pretty neat way of seeing the world below.

And when it is the same bus at about the same time every day then you have got yourself a project.

All you need is a camera and the patience each week to record the same spot and the rest as they say is Larissa Hamment’s “Pictures from an Eltham bus.”*

Although in this case it was the back of a car park, with Larissa explaining, "I took this snap of the back of what will be the new cinema from Sainsburys car park  this evening".

And for all those waiting to catch the first showing of Gone with the Wind" in Eltham since its premiere this has to be good news.

Pictures;  the site of the new cinema, 2018, from the collection of Larissa Hamment

*Pictures from an Eltham bus, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Pictures%20from%20an%20Eltham%20Bus

It was the Age of Steam ...... and it was the passing of steam

Now if you want an example of one of those great divides, the steam locomotive must be up there at the top of the tree.

Down in the West country and travelling to Minehead

For my generation who grew up with steam power, there is still a magic to it, undimmed by the simple observation that I last travelled on one back in the summer of 1961 on my way home from a holiday with my grandparents in Derby.

For others the love affair will have lingered longer into the 1960s, but we lived in south east London and the Southern Region of British Railways along with the Underground ran their trains on electricity.

I know my father had the same romantic attachment to steam but not so mother, and there I think comes that divide, for she had a particularly jaundiced view of the steam locomotive.

It was borne from that simple accident of living near a railway line, and watching as the mix of smoke and hot specs of cinder played havoc with the washing on the line. At best it left the sheets, shirts and underwear looking grubby before they had even dried, and at worst the cinders burnt small holes in the material.

The Steam Expo, 1980, Manchester

And so mother’s response to my lament at the passing of the Age of Steam was a brusque “good riddance”.

I, with no such considerations, mourned the passing of the lot from the great sleek and powerful express locomotives to the dirty, unwashed and business like “shunters”.

Part of that divide I suspect is also because mother’s generation took them for granted, while I was only in my early 20s when they effectively disappeared along with countless little branch lines.

All of this I was reminded on when my friend Lois posted a short account of the steam train journey on her blog.*

She began “Yesterday we had a belated Father's Day celebration and went by steam train (yes a puffing Billy) from the little town of Bishops Lydeard to the seaside town of Minehead” and went on to reflect on steam journeys with her family waxing lyrical about the sounds and smells.

Like Lois, I remember them vividly and in particular late at night the noise from the sidings close to Nana’s house. In the still of the early morning, the sound of the shunting engine working the wagons, carried across the streets with the dull clunk of carriages banging together and the occasional whistle, coupled with the unmistakable surging noise of a loco getting up steam.

Rolling out the steam, 1981, Steam Cavalcade

Today apart from the static exhibits in museums, the joy of steam has to be experienced at one of the local preservation societies, some of which sprang up even as British Railways were planning which new batch of old locos to scrap.

These societies, often at first on a wing and prayer saved our heritage and now run both nostalgic excursions but also commercial ones on branch lines that closed long ago.

But there are also those steam events, which feature not just locomotives but also host of steam powered vehicles from traction engines to merrygorounds.

I find them pure heaven but I suspect mother would not be convinced.

Location; where ever there is a steam locomotive

Pictures; the steam loco that takes you from Bishops Lydeard to the seaside town of Minehead, 2018, courtesy of Lois Elsden, and a fine steam loco from the Steam Expo, 1980, and Steam Cavalcade, 1981, Manchester, from the collection of Andrew Simpson


*An Old Sort of Journey, Lois Elsden, https://loiselden.com/2018/06/19/an-old-sort-of-journey/

Looking inside great grandma's house

The range complete with cat

If like me you were born in the first half of the last century you will remember the old cooking ranges, the small gas stoves, and those brass light switches which long ago were deemed unsafe.

They were the background to everyday life, and are now seldom seen other than in museums.

Our range disappeared from the old house in the early 1950s, the gas stove swapped for a gleaming top of the range Cannon cooker in 1962 and the old phone with its wooden base along with much more went when I was still a baby.

That said one surviving brass light switch long sense disconnected still sits at the top of our cellar stairs, and over the years we put back the old fire places, bought a cast iron bath along with  a lead lavatory cistern in its wooden box.

They replaced the plastic ones  were part of the modernisation of the house.

An open fire and a kettle

I doubt that many houses in Ashton can still boast those original features so I am indebted to my friend Ann who sent me a series of drawings she made of her home.

We think it will have been built sometime around 1890 and so what you see are some of the original fittings along with others which will date from the very early years of the 20th century.

I remember my grandmother still used her range well into the 1950s but also fell back on a small gas stove which was easier to use and far quicker.

Municipal authorities like Manchester were keen to promote cooking on gas and householders could rent or buy on credit the same model that Ann drew in the 1960s.

Telephones may seem a luxury but in some of the more well off homes they were a must, and the names of the good and worthy can be increasingly looked up in the telephone directories from as early as 1900.

It is of course easy to become sentimental about these old feature.  As warm and comforting the range might be it was run on solid fuel, which meant racking out the ashes and carrying heavy buckets of coal.

That old telephone

The gas stoves were pretty basic models and the down side of a brass light switch was that someone was made to polish it.

The phone may not  have lit up when it received a call nor would it store the number of the caller or allow them to leave a message, but it worked.

It did the business of allowing you to talk to someone not in the same house and not send a letter of a postcard.

In the same way the cooker cooked your meal with no recourse to a timer, a split oven or a  fan.

That said I like my phone which lights up in the evening and talks to me, and my fan assisted double oven makes life so much easier.

And as I often do I shall conclude with an appeal for pictures and stories of great grandma’s house.

Pictures; drawings of the inside of number 523 in 1960, courtesy of Ann Love

All that is Italian in the City .................. and much more ... June 16-29

Wednesday 20 June (6.30pm)
Divine Monsters: From Past to Present
The Portico Library, 57 Mosley Street, Manchester
Art Historian Sara Riccardi will explore the historical representation of 'bestiari', which belonged to the wider collective Medieval imagination, of which Dante and Gessner were part. Sara will also present and explore the beautiful facsimiles of some illuminated early manuscripts of the Divina Commedia on display at the Library.
Barbara Bertoni of Imago, the Italian publishers of the facsimiles, will be on hand after the talk to discuss the manuscripts with you.
Drinks and Italian snacks to follow:
£5 members of Portico and Dante
£6 non-members / £4 students and unemployed
Booking required: Library tel. 0161 2366785
events@theportico.org.uk   or  dante@newfuture.org     

20-22 June (9.30am – 4.30pm)
The Divine Comedy: Early Manuscripts
The Portico Library, 57 Mosley Street, Manchester
FREE admission
Over just three days facsimiles of six of Dante's early illuminated manuscripts will be shown at The Portico Library. You will be able to view these stunning reproductions of the “Divina Commedia” up-close and discover some of the history of these amazing books.


Thursday 21 June
To learn more about the technical details of the manuscripts, drop in to the library at 3.00pm on 21 June to talk to Elena Palladino, Rare Books and Special Collections Librarian – member of Societa’ Dante Alighieri.


Friday 29 June (1.00pm)
Cross Street Chapel, Cross Street, Manchester
Location; Manchester

Picture; courtesy of  The Dante Society 2018

The lost Eltham & Woolwich pictures ...... no.28 General Wolf looks out

Now one of the first things you learn about taking pictures is to look for the sun before you snap away.

I didn't but the effect is all I wanted.

From  the pictures I took of Eltham and Woolwich in the mid ‘70’s which sat undisturbed in our cellar.

But all good things eventually come to light.

They were colour slides which have been transferred electronically.

The quality of the original lighting and the sharpness is sometimes iffy, but they are a record of a lost Eltham and Woolwich.

Location; Greenwich

Picture; Greenwich circa 1976, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Remembering George Davison who was killed in action on this day in 1918

During the last four years there have been many ceremonies to mark the dead of the Great War.

George, Nellie & Duncan Davison, 1916

They range from the very personal family ones to the large civic and national events commemorating the anniversary of battles fought out across the world.

And beside all of these there have been the three Remembrance Sundays which take on added significance as they have fallen during the centenary of that conflict.

We were lucky, of the six immediate members of our family who marched off to war, none were killed in action although so far I have not yet come across records for the deaths of those in our family who were Italian or German.

So despite what appears to be a lucky break I will today be thinking of George Davison who was born in Harpurhey in 1886, lived briefly in Chorlton and Hulme, served in the Royal Artillery and died on the Western Front on June 17 1918.

He had enlisted in 1914 at the age of 31, was married and had a young son and spent stretches in Woolwich and Ireland before being dispatched to France in the May of 1918.

What is remarkable is that we have an almost full set of letters which he wrote to his wife Nellie during 1915, 1916, and 1918, along with a series of documents which include his birth and marriage certificates, school record, employment details as well as the letters he wrote to Nellie before they were married.

All well , 1915

George was three years older than Nellie and belonged to those “middling people.” His father was a solicitor’s clerk and George while working as a clerk attended night school studying English, Latin, French and Euclid which was hard work but as he wrote to Nellie “your future happiness as well as my own depends largely on the results of my studies during the next few years.” 

Those were successful and their marriage in 1908 was followed by the birth of their son and his enlistment.

But for now I am left with just one twist in the story.  The war letters refer to a Mr and Mrs Drinkal who lived in Eltham in south east London.  Nellie in all probability stayed with Mrs Drinkal in 1915 and her husband may also have been billeted in the same house.

Medal issued to the families of men killed in action, 1919

It formed part of an estate built during the war for the families of munitions workers employed at the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich.  I grew up in one of those houses and Mr and Mrs Drinkal lived in another just across the road.

It was Tricia Leslie who tracked down the house after I had told her of the possible connection and while it wouldn’t warrant even the smallest foot note in a history of the Great War it has significance for me.

Having  have spent three years with the George Davison collection getting to know the family, sharing their ups and downs and following them as they coped with the separation of war I never expected that we would end up living beside each other.

Of course a full half century separates their time in Eltham from mine and it would be nonsense to think the accident of being in the same place makes me any closer to them, but if you wanted a link with the past and a link especially to a couple who lived out their lives in Manchester a century ago during the Great War this is as good as it gets.

George Davison, 1886-1918

Pictures; The George Davison Collection, courtesy of David Harrop.