What was lost is found …………. the buried object from Withington Workhouse

A little bit of Withington Workhouse came my way recently.

It is a round metal disk, measuring just over 2 cm, and bears the name Chorlton Union Workhouse on one side and has a small ring fastener on the back.

It was found by Frances Farrow on her allotment just off Nell Lane and was about 80 centimetres below the surface.*

There is no date on the disc, but it will date from between 1837, when the Chorlton Union was established, and 1930, when the workhouses were abolished.

And I think we can narrow that timeline, because from 1837 the Union’s workhouse was situated in Hulme, until it was replaced by the new one on Nell Lane in 1855.

Of course it might have originated in Hulme, and was dropped on the site of the future allotment, or might even have found its way there in a consignment of night soil, but given that the new Workhouse was very close to where it was found I rather think we have a window of time from 1855 onwards.

I thought that at first it might be a token, which could be redeemed for poor relief.

Such tokens were widely in use in the early years of the 19th when there was a shortage of currency, but had become illegal after 1814.

It might just have been customized with the ring on the back so that it could be worn on a bracelet or necklace, but I doubt anyone would want to be reminded of the Workhouse.

All of which just leaves me to think it might have belonged to an inmate or an official out on business. And it might be a button given its size from a workhouse uniform.

Those with a gruesome turn of mind will immediately point out that the burial ground of the old workhouse was close to where the disc was found …… but not close enough.

That burial ground was situated on the north eastern side of Nell Lane at the junction of what was Princess Parkway, and part of it was taken over when the road was widened, while the allotments are further north along Nell Lane.

So, it is a bit of a mystery, but one that someone will have an answer too.

I contacted Mr. Peter Higginbotham, who is one of the leading authorities on the Poor Law and Workhouses, and I can confirm that it is a button which he replied "do turn up sometimes".  So mystery solved and I can now just fall back on the disc itself and ponder what secrets it might hold.**

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; the Workhouse disc, 2020, found by Frances  Farrow, and the old burial ground, 1950, from the OS map of Manchester & Salford, 1956

*Plot  40A, Southern Allotments, Nell Lane, Frances Farrow and Akram Dadafarid

**The Workhouse; http://www.workhouses.org.uk/

A little bit about Samuel L Coulthurst and those amazing pictures of Manchester street life

Rochdale Road and Swan Street 1900

This is another of those images of Manchester street life by Samuel Lawrence Coulthurst.

It was taken in 1900 at the corner of Rochdale Road and Swan Street.

Now at this point I would normally go off and look for a story behind the image but today I am more
interested in Mr Coulthurst.

There are 171 of his photographs in the digital collection of Manchester Libraries, covering everything from those street scenes to buildings and portraits and taken between 1890 and 1920.*

There is also a book of his pictures which sadly is out of print. **

For a long time Mr Coulthurst was just a name I saw in the credit to the photograph I was studying but as more of his images turned up I became interested in him.

He was born in Blackley, described himself variously as a “book buyer” and “stationary buyer" and lived in various parts of Manchester and Salford.   He married Annie Higson in June 1900 and he died in Helsby in 1939.

Samuel Lawrence Coulthurst, 1890

And despite a series of wonderful photographs of the twin cities, I have only been able to turn up a poor quality photograph of the man himself.

But I have high hopes that something better will turn up.

After all he appears to have been well known during the late 19th century, exhibiting at the Royal Photographic Society in 1897 and was a member of the Manchester Amateur Photographic Society which under took the first photographic survey of Manchester and Salford between 1892-1901.

In 1901 232 platinotype prints were handed to the Manchester and Salford Reference Libraries.

A third copy was retained by the Society but over the years a number have gone missing. The photographs are mounted on sheets of card, either singly or groups of 2 or 4 photographs per sheet. Manuscript details are written in ink beneath each image giving a brief description, a number and the photographer’s name. ***

Now there is a lot more I want to know about Mr Coulthurst and I have contacted both Manchester Amateur Photographic Society and the Friends of Salford Museum’s Association.

In the meantime I will leave you with this small piece of his personal life.

In the March of 1922 Samuel and Annie took a cruise to Lisbon, Madeira and the Canary Islands.  I would just love to see any photographs of that trip, but I fear they have been lost forever, which brings me back to those of the digital archive which I will be going back to over the next few months.

Pictures; Rochdale Road and Swan Street, Samuel L Coulthurst, 1900, m41073 and Samuel L Coulthurst, 1890,  m72750, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

*Manchester Local Image Collection, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php

**The Samuel L Coulthurst Photographs: Victorian Salford and Manchester, 1995, Friends of Salford Museum’s Association

***National Archives, http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/A2A/records.aspx?cat=124-2373&cid=0#0

Helen Entwistle’s Photograph … another story from Tony Goulding

 This intriguing image of London Road station approach created by Helen Entwistle in November 1895 has already featured on this blog in a story by Andrew Simpson. 

 London Road Approach 

However, it is such a startling picture that I felt it was well worth another visit.

Two parts of the photograph caught my eye and led to some investigation and in one instance an unhistorical conjecture.

This advert for Pears Soap would have been one of thousands of this and similar signs around the country.  A. F Pears and Co. were one of the first to realize the value of mass advertising. 

Wikipedia states that this was the brainchild of Thomas James Barrat, the company’s chairman; later dubbed “the father of modern advertising”. 

The most celebrated campaign made use of “Bubbles” the painting by John Everett Millais. It now hangs in The Lady Lever Gallery in Port Sunlight following its purchase by the Pears Company in August 1890. 

Port Sunlight is the base of Unilever who now manufacture the soap continuing the brands 218-year history. 

Not all the campaigns would be seen acceptable today, in fact several were overtly racist in nature (documented on Wikipedia).

“Bubbles” by John Everett Millais

The other part of the photograph which piqued my interest was the curious individual on the corner. I began considering who he might be and where he had appeared from. 

My first thought was pure conjecture – that he was a railway man and had just visited the railway staff club whose entrance was on Store Street.

 After, some research I concluded that this was unlikely. The British Railways Staff Association was only established by the British Railways Board in 1952 although it is possible the club under Piccadilly / London Road already existed prior to that. 

The club no longer exists being a victim of the privatization of the railways in the early 1990s and the consequent withdrawal of funding; though it was still open at the end of the previous decade when I visited as a member on one of my trips home from London. The decline in the number of rail workers may have also impacted on its viability. 

It is more likely that he was a worker (railway or other) who had possibly just descended the steps which gave access to the station from store street which I vaguely recall using myself on occasion.

 

Store Street  entrance

Finaly as a tribute to Helen Entwistle whose work this is and is one of over 360 in the Local Image Collection of Manchester Archives, (1) here is what I could find of her story. 

It’s not totally definitive but I believe she was the Helen Entwistle recorded in the 1901 census as an “Art student (painting)” born in  Levenshulme in 1872, a visitor of an oil importer and refiner Walter Taylor and his wife Sarah, at 3, Daisy Bank Road, Victoria Park, Manchester. Helen was actually born in Levenshulme during the September quarter of 1869 to Samuel Entwistle and his wife Hannah (née Jackson). 

The family was solidly middle class; Samuel was a cashier for a stockbroker while her younger brother, William Herbert was a bank clerk. (2) Helen became a schoolteacher as recorded in the census of 1891.

Together with her photography Helen later became a noted miniature portrait artist and is mentioned in the Manchester Courier of 18th September 1906 for an “excellent miniature contribution” to the annual autumn exhibition of local artists at the Manchester Art Gallery. More recently in March / April 2024 one of her miniatures was a lot in an auction in Sale. It was of the renowned Scottish-born Baptist minister who was for 45 years the Pastor of The Union Chapel on Oxford Road, Manchester. 

 Helen married Miles Blundell, a baker of Southport, Lancashire in St. Peter’s, the Parish Church of Fairfield, Derbyshire. The couple most likely met while Helen was visiting again Walter and Sarah Taylor who had moved to the town where they owned a wholesale stationery business.  The 1911 census return confirms her visiting the Taylor’s revealingly it also records Helen’s occupation as none.

Helen died during the June quarter of 1917 in the Abercromby district of Liverpool.

Leo Grindon

Pictures: - London Road Approach and entrance including details (m 63006 and m 63012) plus Leo Grindon (m73273) by Helen Entwistle courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information, and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass, “Bubbles” by John Everett Millais http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Bubblesmillais.jpg (uploaded by Paul Barlow), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5139

Notes: -

1) One of Helen’s early photographs was this study of Leo Grindon, the celebrated Manchester educator and botanist who incidentally has also featured in a recent story on this blog. A precursor of her later prowess as a portrait artist.

 2) William Herbert became a bank manager with The Lancashire and Yorkshire Bank in Hyde, Cheshire (at 38, Market Street). His probate record states that he died on 17th February 1947 while residing in Hinton House, Christchurch, Hampshire leaving an estate valued at £30,707 - 7s – 7d. (= £1,040,842 today)

Letters from the Western Front

Mr and Mrs Davison and their son, date unknown

I am rereading the letters of George Davison.*

It has been a moving experience and one that has taken me from his first letters and postcards to his death on the Western Front just five months before the end of that war.

And taken me to Woolwich, Ireland and finally France.

But the collection is bigger than even this because it starts with his school records, includes the letters he sent to his future wife and finishes with the terse official correspondence from the War Office and along with all these is a series of further documents taking us into the 1950s.

They cover his enlistment in Manchester, his time in Woolwich and Ireland before his arrival in France and also reveal the changing addresses of his family.

I have yet to read them in detail but as I move to scan the last letters of May and early June I know that I will soon record his last letter because he was killed on June 17 1918.

And nothing quite prepares you for the knowledge that soon there will be no more letters from George and that the link with his wife of seven years will be severed.

His final letters talk of the irritations of moving around the Front including the loss of personal equipment and the varying quality of the accommodation and on June 15 wrote

The last letter from George to his wife, June 15, 1918

“You would be surprised to see some of our living places – at present we have an excellent dug out about 20 feet below the surface. 

It has however two drawbacks – poor ventilation and only artificial (candle) light.  

Compared to some it is a Palace.”

And this was where he died on June 17 when the dugout received a direct.  All three men in the dug out were “killed instantly” and according to the Royal Engineers who inspected the position “it was not considered safe to recover the bodies.

The dug out was then filled in and is marked as the resting place of your brother in law and his comrade. ”**

Now I have read and reread those last few letters and they still have the power to move me.

I was prepared for the fact that he was killed but you can never quite shake off either the manner of the death or that the description in the letter of July 6.

And that I think is all that needs to be said.

Picture; of George and Nellie Davison and additional material courtesy of David Harrop

*George Davison, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/George%20Davison

*extract of the letter sent to Bdn W.F.Evans, R.A.F, July 6 1918

Mr. Renshaw, the buried bowl and tales of classroom cruelty ………

I am back on the trail of James Renshaw, who was a Chorlton schoolteacher and not someone who would easily survive in the profession today.

But back in the early 19th century things were a tad different.

He remains a shadowy figure and apart from appearing in the census returns for 1841 and 51, along with references in the trade directories, all we know about him comes from anecdotal comments recorded by our local historian in 1885, a full half century after he died.

From these we can gather Mr. Renshaw was not to be trifled with in the classroom, because his discipline ran from “strict to severity, especially with scholars not in his favour” * 

They remembered how he who would strike the boys on the head with his cane and then apply cobwebs to stop the bleeding, and in the case of William Rhodes nearly cut off one of the lad’s fingers.  This had been done with an open pen knife which he threw at the young Rhodes who had put his hand on the desk while standing during a lesson.  

Despite this, Renshaw was much respected amongst the villagers and was known simply as ‘The Village Schoolmaster’ being consulted on many subjects ranging from the law and medicine to science.  

The school master held an interesting position in the rural hierarchy in that he would be respected for his learning which set him apart from most in the village but was less grand than the vicar or curate and certainly more accessible than those who styled themselves ‘gentry’.

Not that Renshaw by all accounts could always play the dignified pillar of village society.   

Despite his formidable personality which was much helped by his only having one leg he could still be bested by his students.  In a story still told thirty or so years after his death James Renshaw was the butt of more than one schoolboy prank.  

There was the story of the lost porridge bowl or I suppose more accurately the tale that started as a conspiracy and ended in a student revolt.  Each morning one of the schoolboys had the task of collecting Renshaw’s breakfast from his home and bringing it to the school.  

His home was a little further up the Row and on this morning the conspirators had elected Charles Brundrett to bury the spoon and throw the bowl into the pond opposite the school.  This stretch of water was known as Blomley’s Fish Pond and extended along the opposite side of the Row up to Sutton’s Cottages and across the centre of this water was a bridge leading into the fields.  **  

While young Charles Brundrett was engaged on this enterprise, one of the class ‘split’ to Renshaw who rushed out to prevent the deed happening.  Not only did he fail but on returning was refused admittance without the promise of a holiday, a tactic repeated by the boys on other occasions and supplemented by hiding his pipe and tobacco.  

Charles Brundrett suffered no long term effects from his prank and grew up to run Oak Farm.  Not that anything as dramatic might have occurred in that other private school run by Mary Taylor at Clough Farm at Martledge.  ***

James Renshaw was a Methodist, and is attributed to being the first in the village **** and so his school attracting children from Methodist backgrounds continued after the establishment of the first National or Church school on the green.  

In 1834 he was listed in a local directory as running a school in Chorlton and in 1841described himself as school master. But by 1851 aged 79 he had retired and by 1852 was buried in the grounds of the Wesleyan chapel.  *****  

Sadly no records of the school fees of Renshaw’s establishment have survived, but over in Stretford in the early decades of the 19th century, Mr Johnson charged “3d to 8d per week with 1d [ 1½p to 3p and ½p] extra for fire money in the winter.   

The scholars were allowed one quill a week and had to pay ½d each for any more.” ****** Johnson like our own Renshaw was “a perfect Squeers, inventing all kinds of queer punishments, and in one case made a lad eat a bad exercise he had written.”*******   Given the harshness of the times many parents may not have deemed such behaviour as excessive especially if the means delivered an educated child.  And Johnson’s fees were not cheap.  They were beyond the means of farm labourers and the services provided by James Renshaw and Mr Johnson was limited to the children of farmers and tradesmen.

There was also the Sunday school.  The first was set up by the Methodists in the August of 1805 and was held in the chapel later it moved to a building across the road which had been built from subscriptions raised by the Methodists.  When this building was lost the Sunday school returned to the chapel.********

Alas no pictures of the man have come down to us, and there is little more, other than that he was born in Chorlton-cum Hardy, never married, and was a member of the Renshaw family who had farmed in the township since the 1760s.

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy, 

Pictures; Sutton’s Cottage circa 1892, photograph from the Wesleyan Souvenir Handbook of 1895, and Pigot's Directory Lancashire  1828-29, Stretford Chorlton Page 282, Chorlton Row now Beech Road in 1845

* Ellwood, Thomas, A History of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Chapter 24, Shops, schools, April 24th 1886, South Manchester Gazette

** The water ran from where Acres Road joins Beech Road up to just before Wilton Road.  Ellwood Chapter 24. Elizabeth Blomley, gentlewoman was living in Chorlton in the mid to late 1820s

*** Pigot’s Directory Page 68, Historicacl Directories Page

*****  Pigott 1834 Page 68 Historical Directories Page 337, 8141 census, Enu 8 Page 5, 1851 census Enu 1 Page 11

***** Ellwood Chapter 18, March 6 1886.  He died on June 22 1852 and was buried in the Wesleyan chapel on the Row.Owen MSS Vol 42, Edge Geoffrey a claim Ellwood also made for James Baguley

****** Leech, Sir Bosdin, Old Stretford, 1910, Manchester City News Co Ltd Manchester page 38

******* Ibid Leech, page 38

******** The loss of the building is unclear.  The Methodist historian Ellwood writing in 1886 wrote that the Wesleyans had failed to convey it to trustees and that the building was sold to Thomas Taylor who charged them rent until 1827, when they were given notice to leave and the building converted into cottages.  The land was retained by the Lloyd estate 

The film ….. a train journey ….. and a birthday ... or ….. Spartacus … London Bridge and being 10

Spartacus remains a film I return to if only for that scene at the end where a dozen or so men stand up and proclaim, “I am Spartacus”.

Roman soldier, circa 1975

It is one of those bits which has become much parodied over the years but always takes me back to the film.

In my case the first time will have been 1960 at the Metropole Cinema on Victoria Street which was followed by a journey in the cab of a train from London Bridge home to Peckham.

And it is one of those things that I have no memory of the film, the cinema or even the journey up to town.

The premiere had been on December 7th and regular showings followed which means it was less a birthday present and more a treat after the event as I was 10 in the October.

I don’t think mum told me what was happening and even now I can’t be sure it was London Bridge Railway Station.  Waterloo would have been closer but we may have got the Underground or perhaps even the bus.

But what has stayed with me was the trip home.

Mother with that impetuous side to her character, asked the train driver if I could sit in the cab for the trip back to Queens Road Railway Station.

It must have broken every rule in the book, and I can’t even be sure she stayed with me, which today would be unheard of.

Lightening the dark, 1981

Now the journey from London Bridge to Queens Road is a short one … just about eight minutes with one intervening stop. All of which is a blur other than the speed, the lights and the oncoming trains.

A full 66 years later that is what I remember about the evening.

The baker Terentius Neo with his wife circa 79 AD

I was quite oblivious to the fact that the story behind the film was equally as challenging as the subject matter of a slave army taking on the Roman Republic.

Kirk Douglas who played Spartacus and produced the film hired Dalton Trumbo, who had been blacklisted as one of the "Hollywood 10".  And because of his non status, Mr. Trumbo was paid using his pseudonym "Sam Jackson". 

Douglas insisted that Trumbo be given screen credit for his work, which helped to break the blacklist.Trumbo had been jailed for contempt of Congress in 1950, after which he had survived by writing screenplays under assumed names. Douglas publicly announced that Trumbo was the screenwriter of Spartacus.[25] Further, President John F. Kennedy publicly ignored a demonstration organized by the American Legion and went to see the film.*

As for the Metropole Cinema on Victoria Street, my cinema TREASURES tells me “The Metropole Kinema was the first large cinema in the Victoria district of central London and opened on 27th December 1929 with Stanley Holloway in 'The Co-Optimists' and Jameson Thomas in 'Hate Ship', plus Jack Hylton’s band on stage”.**

Romans against Spartacus, 1975

And like many of our picture houses its ending was slow but inevitable. It became a “Laser Theatre” in 1977, and then a concert hall before finishing as a restaurant, having undergone the indignity of losing its auditorium to the demolishers and finally being knocked down in 2013.

So best that most of those memories are lost and instead I can be happy with that short train journey through the night on a birthday treat.

Leaving me just to reflect that like so many recollections the images that instantly spring to mind can not be reproduced.  

Stuff from Spartacus remains copyright, and there is no time to ask cinema TREASURES for permission to use their picture of the Metropole.

Added to which one agent is advertising Spartacis posters at a cool £200 a piece which prompt that thought .... what price my nostagia? To which there is the cost of that journey, which in 1960 would have cost one shilling, or 5p and now would set me back £4.68.

Best stay with the memory.

Location; London 1960

Pictures; Airfix models of a Roman solddier, circa 1975,the baker Terentius Neo with his wife. Italian National Archaeological Museum of Naples (cat. no. 9058 ) and Lightening the dark, 1981

*Spartacus (film), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spartacus_(film)

** Metropole Cinema, 160 Victoria Street, London, SW1E 5LB, cinema TREASURES https://cinematreasures.org/theaters/3770

When Stretford removed Chorlton’s tram track ...... municipal manoeuvrings and other tales

Now it seems bizarre that one local authority in dispute with another should take the drastic step of digging up a line of newly laid tram track, but it happened.  

Upper Chorlton Road, 1907, before the extension and the Stretford quarrel

In the winter of 1909 Manchester was in the process of extending a tramway from Brooks Bar to West Point along Upper Chorlton Road, part of which went through Stretford.

This stretch ran for just ten yards but because the Stretford Council had not been asked first, it fired off a flurry of blustering letters threatening to remove the track if Manchester continued.

And when the City laid the offending ten yards of rail, Stretford retaliated, informing Manchester “that a physical disconnection has been made” adding that, “the removed rails were placed behind the seat on the footpath leading to Chorlton-cum-Hardy beyond the [Stretford] district, convenient for reinstatement”.

The underlying reason had more to do with Stretford attempting to get a better deal for electricity it supplied to Manchester to on match days after United had relocated to Old Trafford.

The Bridge at Manchester Road, 1907

Nor was this the only obstacle the city encountered in extending Corporation trams to Chorlton.

Work on the line at Manchester Road was halted after the railway company objected  that the bridge over the railway line was too weak for tramway traffic.

The dispute was finally settled with Manchester paying nine-tenths of the cost of strengthening the bridge.

Such were the problems faced by the Corporation honouring its promise to the rate payers of Chorlton who voted in 1904 to join the city and thought they were getting a tram service.

These are those tiny little stories which don’t count for much in the great sweep of history, but are fascinating none the less.

Car 901 at the tram terminus, date unknown

As is the little known fact that from 1923 until the outbreak of the Second World War there was a facility for late night posting of letters on 14 Manchester and 7 Salford tram routes.

According to A.H. Kirby,  “A posting box was carried on the rear platform of trams timed to reach the City at about 9.30 p.pm; from mid December 1923, these cars were indicated by POST CAR in place of the route number. 

The Chorlton services selected were on route 13, departing from Chorlton due at Albert Square at 9.29 and on route 22 departing Chorlton and arriving Piccadilly at 9.30”, with more being added over the years.*

Car 277 on Barlow Moor Road with the cinema behind, date unknown

Now I thought I knew my Chorlton tram history but Mr Kirby has offered me a fascinating and detailed glimpse into how the trams came to Chorlton and their impact over the 39 years they rattled their way in and out of the township.

And I am indebted to Trevor James who having acquired the two editions of Tramway Review with Mr Kirby’s articles, and thinking of me, scanned and sent them down from Scotland.

I also have to thank Stenlake Publishing who bought The Oakwood Press which published The Tramways of Chorlton-cum-Hardy and gave me permission to reproduce four of the images from the publication.

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy







Pictures; trams of Chorlton from The Tramways of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, courtesy of Stenlake Publishing

*The Tramways of Chorlton-cum-Hardy – 2, A.H. Kirby, Tramway Review, Vol 18, Autumn 1989, No. 139, The Oakwood Press. Page 80

** Stenlake Publishing, http://stenlake.co.uk/?page_id=442