The Oldest Hatred ……..

 I have never understood antisemites.

Never understood their illogical hatred of Jewish people, never understood the lengths they will go to in creating antisemitic falsehoods or propagating them endlessly and resorting to the most hideous acts of violence.

The recent events in Gaza have fuelled that antisemitism giving these purveyors of hatred opportunities to exploit the situation, while some others drawn into the protests about the war slip easily into the same antisemitic slogans.

But equally there are many who have challenged those hate packed ideas.  

And history is full of examples where the antisemites have been rebutted, from the Battle of Cable Street in 1936 to the successful campaigns against fascist groups just after the Second World War and again in the early 1960s.

All of which makes the book, Antisemitism by John Mann an important read.  It was published in 2015 and is “a Reader on the theme of antisemitism ranging from the writings of Charlie Chaplin, Albert Einstein and Jean-Paul Sartre to George Washington, Jesse Jackson and Emile Zola …and .... is published under the auspices of the 'All-Party Parliamentary Group Against Anti-Semitism".

And is a powerful rebuttal to that "oldest hatred".

Salford ….. so good London copied the name

Yep, it’s true …… while researching directories for where I grew up in south east London I came across Salford Road.

It was there by 1914 when it consisted of 84 Edwardian town houses and since then has added a church.  

I have never been …. Its in Streatham.  To the north is Clapham Common, Battersea and the River, and that is it.

Location; a different Salford

Picture; Salford Road, 2022 courtesy of Google Maps

Manchester's first railway station ........... no.2 a history lesson

The carriage shed, 2004

Now I have always had a fascination for Castlefield and in particular the Liverpool Railway Station.

And a few days ago when Ron posted some of his pictures of the site in the early 1980's it stirred my pot.

So here are a mix of Ron's pictures and mine from almost four decades later, with a bit of a story.

Castlefield became the centre of the first railway complex in 1830.

The original site consisted of the station and warehouse, which was extended a year later to include a set of offices, passenger shed and two more warehouses.

By 1837 a second station platform had been built opposite, reflecting the growing number of passengers.

What is interesting about the buildings is the way they mirror the existing technology but also look forward to the future.

The 1830 warehouse, 1980

So the 1830 warehouse copied the canal warehouses, which were built around the Castlefield Basin but used new materials like cast iron.


Canal warehouse design had been perfected during the last half of the 18th century.

The main features of the design were a series of loading points called loop holes on each floor and access points for barges to move directly into the building.

Similar loopholes were situated on the roadside of the warehouse. This enabled goods to be moved from one side to another. One of the best of these is sited opposite Dukes 92 and has recently been renovated.

The 1830 warehouse, 2004

The original 1830 warehouse used a combination of loopholes and arches designed to allow wagons to be pushed into the building.

After the great fire in 1866, which destroyed the two newer warehouses, this practice was stopped. It is still possible to see where the lines ran into the building. Turntables existed to turn and push wagons into the warehouse.

Maps of the period show these turntables all over the site. The last one was only torn up in the late 90s.

All along the rail side it is possible to see changes that have been made to the original design.

One of the arches has been enlarged and one of the loopholes adapted. It is possible to see some of the early winding gear above one of the loopholes, and the different brickwork above other loopholes can see the evidence for where others once were.

Canal Warehouse, 2004

Likewise the station design is really just a development of stagecoach technology.

Passengers stepped up into the railway carriage, which were just stagecoaches on rails.

Like the road version, luggage and the guard sat on top of the carriage.

The carriage shed, which protected passengers, has a wooden beamed roof not unlike medieval buildings but is supported by the new technology of cast iron pillars.

Looking up to the Byrom Warehouse, 1980

If you look beyond the station to G Mex you can see the future.

In just 50 years railway stations were to be transformed into graceful arches of iron and glass, with the platforms below. Central, Piccadilly and Victoria stations are only later manifestations of Crystal Palace.

The site continued to evolve, and for a long time was a pretty drab warehouse complex and after its closure could have lingered on as a neglected spot gently decaying before falling to Derek the Developer.

1980                                                                      2004

But happily it became the home for the museum which is another story.

Location; Liverpool Road

Pictures; the site in the 1980s courtesy of Ron Stubley, and in the early 21st century from the collection of Andrew Simpson

There will always be China ................

It’s not a very original observation but it will do as an introduction to this week’s programme on Empress Dowager Cixi from Radio Four’s In Our Time.

Empress Dowager Cixi , 1905

I am a great fan of In Our Time but was less than excited by the offering on the Empress who, for almost fifty years, was the most powerful figure in the Chinese court.

But scolding myself for being too Eurocentric I listened and was rewarded by an excellent 40 minutes which challenged my very limited knowledge of this period of China’s history.

Like many I was appalled at how the Great Powers had treated China in the 19th century including our own outrageous use of the Opium Wars to further our own self-interest.

And to my shame my views were coloured by the 1963 film 55 Days at Peking in which a stellar cast of actors including David Niven, Charlton Heston and Ava Gardiner battled the Boxer Rebellion.

Of course even then I knew that the portrayal of the Chinese was pure hokum, ranging as it did from perfidious, and sinister to cruel and unthinking.

What today’s programme did was reveal the truth that the Boxer’s were part of a peasant revolt from a  devastated area of north China where there had been awful drought and poverty.

All of which was revealed by Melvyn Bragg and his guests who discussed the Empress Dowager Cixi, her early life, and her successful and not so successful decisions while framing Chinese policy.

She was born in1835 and died in 1908.

55 Days at Peking, 1963

The sleeve notes describe how she  “started out at court as one of the Emperor's many concubines, yet was the only one who gave him a son to succeed him and who also possessed great political skill and ambition. 

When their son became emperor he was still a young child and Cixi ruled first through him and then, following his death, through another child emperor. This was a time of rapid change in China, when western powers and Japan humiliated the forces of the Qing empire time after time, and Cixi had the chance to push forward the modernising reforms the country needed to thrive. 

However, when she found those reforms conflicted with her own interests or those of the Qing dynasty, she was arguably obstructive or too slow to act and she has been personally blamed for some of those many humiliations even when the fault lay elsewhere.

With Yangwen Zheng, Professor of Chinese History at the University of Manchester, Rana Mitter, The S.T. Lee Professor of US-Asia Relations at the Harvard Kennedy School and Ronald Po, Associate Professor in the Department of International History at London School of Economics and Visiting Professor at Leiden University

Producer: Simon Tillotson

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production” 

Picture; Empress Dowager Cixi, 1905, Hubert Vos  (1855–1935)  wikidata:Q845989, Harvard Art Museums   wikidata:Q3783572, Fogg Museum, Accession number, 1943.162 (Harvard Art Museums) Edit this at Wikidata, Theatrical poster for the film 55 Days at Peking 1963 reproduced from 55 Days at Peking, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/55_Days_at_Peking 

*Empress Dowager Cixi, In Our Time Radio 4, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001zdw0

So good it had to be done twice ……..

And why not?

The network may only run for 15 miles along two lines with 22 trams but then the city according to one source is “of a manageable size and much is within walking distance……[so with] public transport  available for longer distances” the tram is the thing.*

 

And with an eye to the positive the network promises “Our strength: short distances” which is nicely delivered by tramcar no. 13.

It was spotted by my travelling chum who yesterday offered up a picture of one of the modern fleet and not content with that was out before breakfast to snap its older companion.

At which point Eric custodian of all things trams will provide a detailed description of tramcar no. 13 but for now I will leave you with the revelation that “Every Saturday until the end of 2022, buses and trams in the city area of Ulm/Neu-Ulm can be used free of charge”.*

Now there will be those who spot that the offer ran out in 2 years ago and so I am wondering if the scheme has made it in 2024, or has some one not updated the promise?

I could phone the company and ask but I am the first to acknowledge that my German isn’t up to the task.

Leaving me to wonder if my travelling chum will pursue the offer and if so will he choose car 13 or 65?

The possibilities are too exciting to contemplate.

Location; Ulm

Picture; the Ulm tram, 2024

* Public Transport in Ulm/Neu-Ulm, https://gruppen.ulm.de/en/planning/travel-planning/public-transport/

The oldest building in Chorlton ..............

Well it seems there is a debate and in that outrageous way I promote myself I have joined in.

The Horse and Jockey, 1933

The usual culprits will be Barlow Hall and Hough End Hall.

Technically Barlow Hall was in Chorlton and dates back to the 16th century while Hough End Hall is regarded as Chorlton but was in Withington.

The old parish church on the green will be the oldest dating as it does from around 1512, but it was rebuilt in 1800 and demolished in 1949, leaving, the Horse and Jockey which was already into its second decade when Henry V111 walked up the aisle with Ann Boelyn.

That said it didn’t become a pub until 1793 , having been beaten to the the post by the old Bowling Green Hotel and that pub over the water.

Nor did it get its distinctive timber exterior till the early 20th century when it was occupied only part of its present footprint.

Of course I might be wrong.

We shall see.

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Picture; the Horse & Jockey in 1933, F Blyth from A Short History of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, by J.D.Blyth, 1933

Manchester's first railway station ........... no.1 waiting for something to happen

Now when Ron shared four pictures of the old railway station and warehouse on Liverpool Road, I was transported back nearly four decades.

The station and carriage shed

I visited it just after it had finally closed and British Rail had sold it to the museum.

It was hard at the time to see just how significant were these old run down buildings.

But these were the first passenger railway station and warehouse, having opened in 1830 when a group of Manchester businesses wanted a quick and cheaper way to get their manufactured goods to Liverpool.
Added to which they quickly saw the commercial advantage of using their railway trains to carry paying passengers.

So here in the pictures is the passenger buildings, beyond which is the carriage shed erected the following year.

And as with so much of the 19th century there was a strict division between those of property and wealth who travelled first class and the rest as seen in the provision of a first and second class booking hall and waiting room.

the 1830 warehouse, railway side

And it is worth remembering just how much the new railway company was at the cutting edge of technological change.  Their steam locomotives may have been the future but tickets were still handwritten and first class carriages were essentially stage coaches placed on a set of railway chassis.

In that respect they were looking back as well as forward.  And that was reflected in their choice of warehouse design, which was direct coy of the existing canal warehouses, complete with arches which allowed waggons to be taken into the building.

Inside the 1830 warehouse

But unlike canal boats which can turn effortless, the railway waggons had to be uncoupled placed on a turntable and then turned 90 degrees before being pushed into the warehouse.

Originally these turn tables were all over the site but the last which was beside the Byrom Warehouse was taken away some time in the 1990's.

And tomorrow there will be more on those early warehouses, of which there were three.

The first built in 1830 opposite the railway station and the second two built the following year which stood at right angles.

These were destroyed in a devastating fire.

The surviving buildings have done well to be still with us, although they were pretty much knocked about.

But have now become part  of the museum complex.

Location; Liverpool Road

Pictures; the railway station and first warehouse, built in 1830-31 as they were in the early 1980s from the collection of Ron Stubley