“To my dear child” ……… postcards from the Great War

I am looking at a collection of picture postcards sent by George William Oldham to his son and his wife Sally.

In total there are 131 which were posted between 1916 and 1919 while Mr. Oldham served first in England and later from 1917 in France.

I know he began his military service in A Company of the 3rd East Lancashire Regiment and later transferred to the Labour Corps.

And unlike so many young men he survived the war, returned to his home town of Blackburn and died in 1978.

The collection has recently been acquired by my old friend David Harrop who wondered what I might be able to find out about George Oldham.

Sadly Mr. Oldham’s war records have been lost, but I know he was awarded the Victory Medal and the British War Medal, and that he must have enlisted or been conscripted in 1916.

In the December of that year, he was in Plymouth and by August may have been on the Western Front.  I have yet to see all the cards which should shed light on his progress from training camp to active service.

But for now, I know that the silk postcard “To my dear child” was sent at Christmas of 1916, and in the August of the following year writing to his “Dear Sally”, he reports “Arrived safely at 2’oclock.  I think we shall enjoy ourselves”.

They had married in 1915, and their family home in Nottingham Street in Blackburn is still there, although their later home on Mill Street has vanished.

Before the war George  worked for his father in the family business of J Oldham & Son Hardware Merchants and after demobilization resumed his job as a “Buyer and Manager”, and by 1939 appears to have been in charge of the firm, describing himself as “Wholesale Hardware Merchant”.

Both his sons followed him to the business. 

His eldest son George, born in 1916 described himself as a “General Hardware Sales Manager”, and his brother who was six years younger assisted in the warehouse.

In 1921 the firm employed six men who worked alongside George William and we know their names and family background so in time it should be possible to widen our knowledge of the company and the men who worked there.

It should be a fascinating study, leaving me just to reflect that George William’s eldest son was the “dear child” who received the Christmas “silk” just two months after he had been born.

Location, Mainly Blackburn but also Plymouth and France

Pictures; postcards, 196-1919, from the collection of David Harrop

What’s been hiding in the blue bag? ……….. silly stories

It appeared in the early morning and was gone by midday.

Quite a few people were curious enough to look inside, but no one took it away with them, and then it was gone.

An abandoned sports kit?  A collection of unwanted shopping?  Alas I will never know.

But the railings in front of the Rec are home to heaps of discarded things, from coats, to toys, and even on occasion an empty champagne bottle, but then this is Beech Road.

Location; Beech Road

Picture; the blue bag, …… 2022, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Irwell Tennis Club …… come out of the Chorlton shadows

I know it should be easy to locate the story of the Irwell Tennis Club, but so far it has been a tad more difficult than I thought.

1954

They have a Facebook Page which tells me that they were formed in 1911, reformed in December 1931 and are affiliated to Ellesemere Tennis.

Alas I do not think they are part of the Ellesmere Sports Club which is based in Worsley. If they had been I think my search would have been so much easier.

Added to which on closer inspection, Ellesemere Tennis may be based on the other side of the world.

At present all I know is that in 1954 the Irwell Tennis Club was on Egerton Road South, and perhaps in 1959 the land was sold to a Frank M Paterson, who may or may not have built a series of houses sometime between 1959 and 1963.

I can't find a reference to them in the Manchester Guardian but may be lucky with Manchester's Evening newspapers.

And that is it.  Someone will know of this long-lost club, may have played for them and still have memorabilia.

I suspect they will have been one of those “new” sports and social clubs which took root in south Manchester as the area was developed, and moved form open fields to rows of houses, whose inhabitants wanted to play a variety of sports as well as forming drama, debating and other “cultural” societies.

In doing so they provided a new chapter in the history of Chorlton, Whalley Range and beyond.

We shall see.

Location; Egerton Road South

Picture; extract from the 1954 street directory showing part of Egerton Road South, courtesy of Tony Petrie

Sunrise over Salford ………

So, I have yet to ask Andy what he was was doing in Worsley as the sun was waking up.

His only comment which accompanied the pictures, was “6.53 am Saturday morning waiting for the sun to come up!”

But then Andy is a keen photographer and his search for scenes of Greater Manchester takes him everywhere.

Usually he is following the story of disused buildings, which he then records as they are demolished, the land cleared, followed by the builders breaking ground and the rise of a new residential or commercial property.

He has now amounted a fine collection spanning a decade which will be invaluable for historian wanting to chart the transformation of the twin cities as well as great chunks of Greater Manchester

But not so Saturday.

On Saturday he was on the move, and thirty minutes  later “it was 7.30 and the early morning mist was still around. The Moorings pub, flanked by the Bridgewater Canal taken from a not too safe looking bridge”.

Happily, the bridge proved safe enough and later with the sun high in the sky he had moved deeper into Boothstown, but that is another story.

Leaving me just to quote my Wikipedia which tells me, "Boothstown is a suburban village in the City of Salford in Greater Manchester, England. 

Boothstown forms part of the Boothstown and Ellenbrook ward, which had a population at the 2011 Census of 9,599. 

 The village is within the boundaries of the historic county of Lancashire, west of the City of Salford, bordered to the north by the East Lancashire Road A580 and to the south by the Bridgewater Canal. 

Historically, it was a hamlet partly in Worsley township in the parish of Eccles, and partly in Tyldesley in the parish of Leigh.

Once known for its mining community, Boothstown is now a mainly residential area”.*

But then lots of people will know that.*

Location; Salford

Pictures early morning, Salford, 2022, from the collection of Andy Robertson

* Boothstown, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boothstown

When a disaster becomes a picture postcard …….

Now I remain undecided about this picture postcard which was entitled, “Attending the wounded.  Gretna Green Railway Disaster, May 22nd, 1915”.

The picture postcard, 1915

My Wikipedia tell me that “The Quintinshill rail disaster was a multi-train rail crash which occurred on 22 May 1915 outside the Quintinshill signal box near Gretna Green in Dumfriesshire, Scotland. 

It resulted in the deaths of over 200 people, and remains the worst rail disaster in British history".* 

One of the trains involved was a troop train and “only half the soldiers on the troop train survived.

Those killed were mainly Territorial soldiers from the 1/7th (Leith) Battalion, the Royal Scots heading for Gallipoli. 

The casualties and the rescuers, 1915

The precise death toll was never established with confidence as some bodies were never recovered, having been wholly consumed by the fire, and the roll list of the regiment was also destroyed in the fire. 

The official death toll was 227 (215 soldiers, nine passengers and three railway employees), but the British Army later reduced their 215 figure by one. 

Not counted in the 227 were four victims thought to be children, but whose remains were never claimed or identified. 

The soldiers were buried together in a mass grave in Edinburgh's Rosebank Cemetery, where an annual remembrance is held”.

So truly a terrible event, but there is a little bit of me that recoils from the event being recorded as a picture postcard, which was no doubt rushed our soon after the disaster and was I guess one of a series.  

That has yet to be confirmed but the idea that for months perhaps even years later the pictures of the casualties would be on display in shops, and street kiosks is all a bit macabre.

But then perhaps I am being oversensitive, after all there is much worse displayed in the media today, and before the advent of mass radio, and television the coverage of such an event would be limited to the newspapers and the fledgling cinema. 

And so, it could be argued that the use of the picture postcard allowed for the dissemination of the awful event.

The card comes from the collection of David Harrop who by sheer chance also acquired a letter from a new recruit of “A Company, 3rd Battalion Sea Forth Highlanders”.

He was writing to his brother just four days after the rail crash, and along with the gripes of a recruit was the observation on “the terrible railway smash, [which] seems such a pity after the training all those months and building up their hopes of paying the Germans back a bit”.

Setting aside the comments on the disaster there is much in the letter that would echo with anyone who has undergone military training or even endured a long spell away from home.

He writes of the embarrassment at watching other recruits receiving food parcels including cakes which they share with him, and his surprise that his compatriots don’t write home regularly.

But of course, it is the army life which absorbs him from complaining about the non-commissioned officers “talking to them like dogs” to the news that he had finally been given a rifle, “and have been doing handling of it”.

I don’t know what happened to him, but I do have his name and serial number along with his regiment and I will go looking for him.

I like the way that his brother or someone took time to repair the letter using Sellotape to strengthen the spots where the letter had been folder over.

For now I am equally interested in the company that marketed the picture postcard, who were Sandbride which one source suggests were based in Middlesborough.**

Location, Cromarty, Scotland

Pictures; that postcard, 1915 and extracts from a soldier’s letter, 1915, from the collection of David Harrop

*Quintinshill rail disaster, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quintinshill_rail_disaster

**Sanbride postcard, https://mynorthborneostamps.blogspot.com/2013/10/a-san-bride-postcard.html

Pubs I think I might have drunk in ..............

The trouble with being 72 is that lots of things I did blend into a heap of vague memories.

So, I might well have drunk in the Anson in Longsight.

Of course, being a pub the memories do have a habit of becoming even more hazy.

Not so Andy Robertson who took a wander across Longsight recently and recorded a few lost pubs, adding “this is the ex-Anson Hotel on Beresford Rd, Longsight. 

It was one of the many typical such "estate " pubs that sprang up everywhere in the thirties. 

Nearly all are closed and many demolished. 

Many have been put to other uses like the Anson which houses an Asian food outlet/wholesalers and other businesses. 

Many buildings still exist today here in Manchester, e.g., Southern Hotel in Chorlton, Yew Tree in Wythenshawe. 

Evidence of its pub existence can be seen in the Outdoor sign and Threlfalls sign, which must have been hidden for many years.”

Now if you trawl the newspaper records for the early decades of the last century, you can come across reports of the both the breweries and the City Council conduction polls of the residents to ascertain support for a proposed pub, and not unsurprising in most cases the vote went the way of Bolly Brewer.

Location; Longsight

Pictures; the Anson, 2022, from the collection of Andy Robertson, and the Anson in 1971, by B Garth,  m49180, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

A little bit of Germany ........ via Derby, Peckham, and Well Hall .............

We all have those old family objects that have been around all our lives, and have become so much of the landscape, that little thought is ever given to them.

And so, it is with this small wooden piece showing a kitchen almost complete with furniture and the promise of bits long ago lost.

I have to say I was never over fond of it, thinking at times that it was fiddly, silly, and just old fashioned.

I remember it hung in the kitchen of the old house in Peckham, moved to another room when we moved to Well Hall, and twenty-six years ago headed north when dad died.

Even then I was a tad indifferent to it, and it was stowed away in a box in the cellar.

More recently I came across it and felt its pull, which transcended Manchester, London and Derby and I suspect took me back to Germany sometime before the Great War.

It may have arrived  in the UK in the 1920s with Nana, who had married a British soldier of the army of occupation, after Germany had surrendered in 1918.

I always thought that Nana brought it with her as a reminder, but then it might equally have been brought back by dad from one of his tours of Europe, or bought by mum, from a second-hand shop on Queens Road.

But someone may recognise the style, and offer up a date and origin.

We shall see.

Either way it is a lesson in what we take for granted but suddenly realize has been part of our life carrying a story we have lost.

Location; pretty much anywhere

Picture; the family object, date unknown from the collection of Andrew Simpson