Gold ... copper ... cobalt ..... minerals and violence over two continents .... one to listen to

The theft of land and the treasures of the earth from indigenous peoples is not new but the BBC's The Long View with Jonathan Freedland revisited the story fastening on the Black Hills of South Dakota and the Democratic Republic of Congo during 150 years of exploitation, violence and misery. 

Opal fields, Western Australia 1984

"In 1875, the US 7th Cavalry, led by Colonel Custer announced they’d found gold in the Black Hills of South Dakota, leading to a gold rush and the outbreak of the so-called Great Sioux War. 

150 years later, today in the Democratic Republic of Congo, armed militia fight for control of gold mines, and mining for copper and cobalt leads to mass displacement of people. Jonathan Freedland investigates links between mineral extraction and armed conflict, then and now.

With, Professor Kathleen Burk, Professor Emerita of Modern and Contemporary History at University College London and Guillaume de Brier, Researcher at the International Peace Information Service in Antwerp. Reader: Jason Barnett, Producer: Luke Mulhall"*

Location; BBC Radio 4

Picture; Opal fields, Western Australia 1984, from the collection of June Pound

*Minerals and Violence, The Long View, BBC Radio 4, https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002dzfm

St Peter’s Square ……. 1962 …. compare and contrast

This was taken from the Central Ref, sometime in 1962.  

A little over 5 years later I would be looking out from the same windows, and the scene hadn’t changed much.

That can’t be said today, and the fun will be to tick off just how many differences a casual observer would notice. 

Location; Manchester

Pictures,  St Peter’s Square, Manchester, 1962 – 3664.5, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

Miss. Mary Jane Weeks ……… domestic servant and shareholder in the Chorlton-cum-Hardy Conservative Club

Now history is messy and doesn’t always conform to rigid rules of historical development.

The Conservative Club and Public Hall, 1908

And nowhere is this more the case than in the individuals who came forward to buy shares in the new Conservative Club which opened for business, in 1892.

This was after all the party of class which represented the people of plenty.

But as we all know amongst their ranks no less than their loyal voters were people drawn from all classes.

And here it is easy to be dismissive and sniffy about those who consistently voted Tory despite coming from humble beginnings.

My father was a working class Tory.  He drove coaches all his life, and yet he voted for the party which on the surface was least likely to look after him.  That said mother was Labour and she always maintained that her vote cancelled out Dad’s which was a start on the way to a Labour Government.

The political side, 1980s

Here in Chorlton throughout the late 19th century and into the first two decades of the next the Liberals and Conservatives fought it out, and at a local level this often resulted in the electorate returning candidates from both parties on alternative years  to the Town Hall.

But like elsewhere after the last world war, the Liberals were eclipsed and the Tories came out on top, dominating local elections until 1986 and continuing to return an MP until Keith Bradley’s victory in 1987.

And I have long been fascinated by what makes people from the working class vote Conservative.  There will be many explanations and the idea that they were all just class traitors is not good enough.

So that has led me to the big book of subscribers for the Chorlton-cum-Hardy Conservative Club.  The land had been handed over by the Egerton’s in 1891, and the subscription fund opened that year.

As you would expect here can be found the very wealthy, including Samuel Gratrix of West Point in Whalley Range who bought £200 worth of shares, and a collection of our farmers, merchants and businessmen.

The club up for sale, 2013

Here too was Charles Ireland who owned a string of photographic shops, as well as estate agents, civil engineers down to shop keepers and warehousemen.

Some may have been drawn by the politics, while others by the social attractions of the club

And along with all these was Miss. Mary Jane Weeks, who held shares amounting to £2.

What makes her interesting is that she was domestic servant, working for the Adams family from at least 1891 through to 1911 and possibly beyond.

She had been born in 1849, in the small market town of Hathereigh in Devon, and was working as a servant by 1871.

I would like to know more about Miss. Mary Jane, but so far there are only the census returns to go on, but something more will turn up.

 And in the same way in the fullness of time, all the subscribers will be plotted and their lives revealed.

All of which will help get a better understanding of who voted Conservative in Chorlton  in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as well as offering up an insight into Chorlton-cum-Hardy, just as the township was evolving from an agricultural community into a suburb of Manchester.

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Pictures; The Conservative Club, 1908, from the Lloyd Collection,  in 1980, from the collection of Tony Walker, and in 2013 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Register of Members Chorlton-cum-Hardy Conservative Club Limited 1892-96

St Barnabus and its journey from Woolwich

Now I have passed St Barnabus Church countless times and never knew it was originally sited in Woolwich.

It was one of those Eltham churches I have already written about but couldn’t resist doing so again when I came across this picture.

It appears in a new book on Woolwich and the history of the building is always worth repeating.

“Designed by Sir George Scott, the Naval Dockyard church was built between 1857 and 1859 in Woolwich Dockyard becoming redundant after the latter’s closure in 1869.  

In 1932-33, the distinctive red brick edifice was reconstructed in Eltham.”*

When I first posted the story it led to a flood of memories from people who remembered it on fire after it had been hit during a bombing raid in  the last war.

Picture; St Barnabus Church,1858,courtesy of Kristina Bedford

*Woolwich Through Time, Kristina Bedford, 2014, Amberley Publishing,

Urban playgrounds ……… 1962

You will have to be a certain age to remember using a demolition site as a playground.

So, while I know there are lots of building projects going on right now across the twin cities of Manchester & Salford, they do not compare with the wholesale clearances which characterized the four decades from the 1940s into the 1980s.

Some were the product of “clearing up” after Blitz, but most were the result of the drive to replace tired and “unfit housing” with new properties, some of which became inadequate soon after they were built.

It is also true that in the early 20th century the City Council undertook “slum clearance” schemes, but I wasn’t born till 1949, and so my experiences of urban playgrounds are locked into the 1950s, when “bomb sites” were fascinating places, not least because of what you might find.

On one adventure we came across a gas mask in pristine condition, and in another case hundreds of tiny film clips, which I guess were the off edits from the local ABC.

I have no idea where these two lads were in 1962 when they were photographed, but for me and many of my generation they perfectly capture how we played.

 Location; Manchester

Pictures,  Urban playgrounds, 1962, Manchester, 1962 – 3686.5, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

Calling in at the parish church on a spring day in 1851 at the start of our Eltham walk

The Old Vicarage from Well Hall Lane, 1833

Now I had planned on starting our walk up the High Street in the spring of 1851 at Sherad House which was roughly on the site now occupied by the Nat West Bank.

But that would be to ignore the church and the vicarage.

So like all best laid plans it has gone out of the window, and instead I am at the corner of Sherard Road which was where Well Hall Lane began.

All of which was a surprise to me given that I have always thought that Well Hall Road began beside the church and the old Burtons and ran north to the station.  But not so, once before the beginning of the last century it had a more devious route and before it was Well Hall Lane had been known as Woolwich Road “so called because it led to Woolwich.”*

And so standing by the beginning of what was Well Hall lane and is now Sherard Road, this is what we would have seen.  In the distance are the old church which was demolished in 1875 and the vicarage.

The Church, circa 1860s

Now the old church was not exactly the most elegant of places leading one writer to comment that it was

“A mean fabric, much patched and modernised; with scarce a trace of anything like good work, and from repeated alterations, the plan has become irregular.”**

But that belies the point that this was a working church at the heart of the community and which underwent alterations partly to reflect its growing use.

So I shall return to the description of the place
“The nave has a south aisle cased in brick, and a north chapel of stone, bearing the date 1667, with square headed, labelled windows, and a door of mixed Italian character.  

The chancel was wholly brick.  At the west end of the nave was a tower of flint, cased with brick, with large Buttresses and pointed doorway.  It was surmounted with a spire of wood, covered with lead (shingle).  

Inside the old Church

Galleries were carried all around the interior of the church, and a double one at the west end, with an organ.  The north chapel opened to the nave by three pointed arches, with octagonal pillars.”

Now at this point I have to confess that much of the story is not original research but comes from that wonderful book, The Royal Story of Eltham, by R.R.C.Gregory, which I will use again when we spend more time in and around the church its vicarage and actually begin the walk up the High Street.

Location; Eltham, Londson

*R.R.C.Gregory The Royal Story of Eltham, 1909

**Sir Stephen Glynne 1830, Churches of Kent

Pictures; from The story of Royal Eltham, R.R.C. Gregory, 1909 and published on The story of Royal Eltham, by Roy Ayers, http://www.gregory.elthamhistory.org.uk/bookpages/i001.htm,

Public Hall or Conservative Club?

The Conservative Club remains an iconic local land mark.  

Whatever you think of the politics of the place and there are many I know who refused to step into the building that has dominated the corner of Wilbraham and Manchester Roads for a century and more.

It was opened in 1892, on land granted by the Egerton estate and the building was paid for through an issue of shares.  What is interesting is that the shareholders consisted of the very wealthy  local professionals, tradesmen and farmers as well as domestic servants and warehouseman.

Which I suppose was partly a tribute to the political manoeuvrings of Disraeli with his brand of one nation politics and the astute way his government positioned itself ahead of the Liberals when it extended the franchise to sections of working men in 1867.  It may also have something to do with that old Tory paternalism which in the early decades of the 19th century saw leading Tories attacking factory conditions and the laissez faire politics of successive Whig governments.

But here I conceded I shall have to do more reading.  In the meantime I shall fall back on some research by my old friend Lawrence who has dug deep into the history of the building and points up the role of the Public Hall which was on the upstairs of the Con Club and was accessed by a separate entrance.

The “Public Hall” offered a venue for everything from amateur dramatics to political speakers and campaigns which in some cases ran contrary to the political views of the Con Club. Victor Grayson Socialist MP for Colne Valley spoke in the hall in 1908 and was heckled by members of the public, some I suspect who had made their way up from the Club below.  A number of drama groups also performed here along with a young John Thaw.*

“The architects were Darbyshire and Smith, who very well known especially for building theatres including the Palace in Manchester) and pubs like the Marble Arch on Rochdale Road.   The front entrance went into the Conservative Club and a side entrance on Manchester Road went upstairs to the Public Hall which had a stage.   

The capacity was given variously as 700 to 800. There was a separate entrance to backstage area, a caretakers building at the rear and kitchens in the basement with a lift system to bring food upstairs.

The foundation stone was laid on Saturday April 25th l 1891 by Cunliffe Brooks and Lady Brooks and there was a dinner and speeches in the Lloyds opposite.

A year later the Club was opened on Saturday April 23rd 1892 by Lord and Lady Egerton along with Lord Cross an old Tory grandee, who had been Home Secretary in the Disraeli Government.

And three years later the clock which had been paid for by  subscription was unveiled.  It  was made by William Potts & Sons of Leeds  had three faces was lit by gas.”**

It was the first public clock in Chorlton and takes us back to the fact that the building was more than just a Con Club.  For the best part of a century it had also been a public place and from this seems to have risen the confusion as to the name and purpose of the building.

Many old postcards from the early decades of the 20th century refer to the building as the Public Hall not the Conservative Club leading one local historian to wonder which it was.  I guess for many in Chorlton it depended on who you were and how you visited the place.

Now I could have featured one of the many old photographs but instead have chosen Peter’s painting of the Club shortly after it closed for the last time.  Peter as you know paints the pictures and I tell the stories so it seemed fitting that this should be the image to use, especially given that the future of the building is still in the realms of speculation.

Picture; The Conservative Club, September 2012, © Peter Topping, web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk  facebook: www.facebook.com/paitningsfrompictures

* John Thaw, 1942 –2002) was an English actor, who appeared in a range of television, stage and cinema roles, his most popular being television series such as Redcap, The Sweeney, Home to Roost, Inspector Morse and Kavanagh QC.
** read Lawrence’s blog at http://hardylane.blogspot.co.uk/