Lost and forgotten streets of Salford nu 38 Garfield Street and a post card home

Now I am having difficulty locating Garfield Street which was off Trafford Road.

I know it was there because sometime after September 26 1917 Mr and Mrs Lewis received a picture postcard from the Western Front.

It is a beautifully written message which draws attention to the Cathedral on the other side of the card “Hopes this finds you in the best of health, thanking you for the good wishes you so kindly sent in the letter.”

It was signed Jim and I rather think the surname was Elliot but so far I haven’t been able to locate either Jim or Mr and Mrs Lewis and Garfield Street.

Location; Salford


Picture; picture postcard, 1917 from the collection of David Harrop

Chorlton voted

The result of the by-election held yesterday.

Lost and forgotten streets of Salford ...... nu 44 Spaw Street

Now Spaw Street doesn’t have a lot going for it. 

Spaw Street, 2016

On the day I passed even the sun contrived to shine directly into the camera and pretty much messed up the appearance of this short street which runs from Chapel Street to Brown Cross Street.

Once there were 25 properties along its length, a mix of small houses and bigger industrial units, and added to this seven entries which led into a series of closed courts.

Adding to this maze was Wilkinson Street which joined Spaw Street and from which branched off even more entrees.

Spaw Steet, 1849

And for those with a keen interest in pubs just a few yards up Chapel Street away from Spaw Street were Albert's Vaults and The Dyers Arms.  The first of which stretched back to Wilkinson Street, and the second  backed on to a court with an entry to Wilkinson Streett

But the expansion of the railway viaduct did for Spaw Street and now a trip down from Chapel Street presents the curious traveller with a series of railway arches and nothing much else except of course for another car park

Location; Salford




Picture; Spaw Street, 2016 from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and Spaw Street in 1849 from the OS for Manchester & Salford, 1844-49 courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

The Decadent Movement …… today on the wireless

Now this is one that I will listen to later.

It comes from the In Our Time series on Radio 4 and focuses on the Decadent Movement.

And the reason why I shall listen later is that after it is broadcast, it becomes available again to listen to with a bonus ten minutes where the contributors get to add something they missed out.  Perfect

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the British phase of a movement that spread across Europe in the mid-19th and early 20th centuries. Influenced by Charles Baudelaire and by Walter Pater, these Decadents rejected the mainstream Victorian view that art needed a moral purpose, and valued instead the intense sensations art provoked, celebrating art for art’s sake. 

Oscar Wilde was at its heart, Aubrey Beardsley adorned it with his illustrations and they, with others, provoked moral panic with their supposed degeneracy. 

After burning brightly, the movement was soon lost its energy in Britain yet it has proved influential.

With Neil Sammells, Professor of English and Irish Literature and Deputy Vice Chancellor at Bath Spa University, Kate Hext, Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Exeter, and Alex Murray, Senior Lecturer in English at Queen’s University, Belfast

Producer: Simon Tillotson".

Pictures; The cover of the Yellow Book periodical 1894, from the cover of the first edition of The Yellow Book in April 1894, courtesy of the BBC, and from The Yellow Book, Aubrey Beardsley, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yellow_Book 

* The Decadent Movement, In Our Time, Radio 4, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0011lrn

One hundred years of one house in Chorlton ... part 126 .... the Italian bit ......going digital …… and travelling from the age of the wireless

 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.*

The telly, 1950s

I often wonder what Joe and Mary Ann would have made of the digital age.

 After all they were both born in the closing decades of the 19^th century and reached maturity as cinema was still in its infancy, and telephones, the wireless and cameras were yet to become household objects.

 That said by the time they had reached middle age they had a telephone, dispensed with the traditional cooking range and had joined the growing band of people watching television in their own home.

 Added to which by the 1920s, Joe was building houses with electricity which he proudly advertised across Chorlton-cum-Hardy.

 So, I think they may well have welcomed computers, smart phones, and microwaves into their home as necessary items.

Topical Italian TV, 2021

Likewise I think they would not have batted an eyelid at the arrival of Italian television in to what was their front room.

 It will have been over seventeen years ago that we went digital with a satellite dish, and now we have upgraded so that we can watch Italian TV stations which is not an affectation, but a practical necessity given that half the family is Italian.

 

If it's Sunday its Italian dancing, 2016

Of course, there is a down side, which is the nonstop cascade of entertainment shows from one provider on a Sunday, which roll on from midday into the night, and despite having different names and offering slightly different content are basically just seamless happy TV.

 All a little different from the two televisions channels of the 1950s, when programmes finished before midnight, were in black and white and on a Sunday were interrupted by a close down in the late afternoon for a few hours.

 

The choice of TV, 1964

That time is as remote and incomprehensible to any one born after 1980 as would the cinema be to someone from the Middle Ages.

 But I am confident that Joe and Mary Ann would happily sit watching past episode of their favourite soap on their mobile phone, while debating which take away to order up and finishing having booked online their coach holiday to Skegness.

 So that I think allows me to be confident that our new Italian TV shows fit well with the history of the house.

 Well …. perhaps.

 Location; Beech Road

 Picture; pictures from Italian TV and television choices in 1964 and our first television, circa mid 1950s, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

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

Lost and forgotten streets of Salford .............. nu 43 Gravel Lane the car park

Now whatever you might have thought of Gavel Lane I doubt that it deserved to become just one big car park.

But that is pretty much all it offers from the moment you reappear from under the railway viaduct and head north past King Street, Norton Street and Queen Street to Greengate.

In all I counted five big cark parks where once there were houses, shops two pubs a beer shop, a chapel and even a school.

Today, while there are some tall flats on the corner with Viaduct Street and that glass office bock that straddles Gravel Lane and Greengate the rest of the street is an open landscape which is a home for cars.

All of which presents me with a puzzle, because sometime in 1900 that veteran photographer Samuel L Coulthurst took the picture of the Jolly Carter on Gravel Lane.

Of course I cannot believe he got the pubs name wrong but according to the directories for the period from 1895 through to 1903 there is no Jolly Carter on Gravel Lane.

There is instead the British Queen on the corner of Queen Street, a beer shop at nu 63 and finally the Legs of Man at 67 Gravel Lane.

So it does seem he mistook the name, which I think was the Legs of Man which stood on the corner of  Gravel Lane and Greengate and is now under that glass office box.

Of course there will be someone who knows and I hope will come up with a solution to the problem.

As it was judging by the closed shutters and empty streets Mr Coulthurst had no one to ask.

In the meantime it just leaves me to point out that the wall to wall advertising of household products is not new and nor is the amount of litter that was strewn across the street.

And that is not all because before I made the second coffee of the morning Alan had written in with, "yes this is the Jolly Carter, it stood on the corner of Cable Street and Gravel Lane, it was used as a beer house for 60 years or so prior to its demolition in 1893 for 'Railway use.'"  

So a thank you to Alan, apologies to Mr Coulthurst and a reminder to dig deeper into the directories.

Location; Salford

Additional research Alan Jennings

Picture;  the Jolly Carter, Gravel Lane, 1900, Samuel L Coulhurst, m08787, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

Posters from the Past ........... no 16 ......... Eltham At Its Best

Now the project is simple, take an image of a building we all love and turn it into the style of poster which was popular in the middle decades of the last century.*

And today we are back in Well Hall with the Tudor Barn and the Pleasaunce, thinking about how the Woolwich Borough Council might have advertised the delights of the building and the gardens




Location;Well Hall

Painting; The Tudor Barn, © 2018 Peter Topping,  Paintings from Pictures, from a photograph by Chrissy Rose, 2014

Web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk 

*Posters from the Past, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Posters%20from%20the%20Past