Adventures with a book ……….. 86 Palatine Road

Now, I doubt when Peter set off to deliver a copy of our book to an address on Palatine Road he was quite prepared for what he discovered.

The book is our Manchester - city centre pubs book, containing the history of 78 iconic city centre public houses, divided in to fifteen walks it tells the stories of each of the 78, with descriptions of where they are situated, along with some fine photographs and original paintings by Peter.*

So, armed with the book, and the address, he arrived at the property and immediately clocked the blue plaque, which records that it was here that Factory Records was founded in 1978.

And that for many of us, is in itself a discovery.  

Factory Records was the Manchester-based independent record label established by Tony Wilson and Alan Erasmus, and featured several important acts, including Joy Division, New Order, A Certain Ratio, the Durutti Column, Happy Mondays, Northside, and (briefly) Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark and James. 

Factory also ran The Haçienda nightclub, in partnership with New Order.

And its offices were at 86 Palatine Road, in Erasmus' home on the first floor.

All of which is easy to research, and so having talked to Peter who was inspired “to do”, one of his paintings of the house as well as the plaque, I went looking for its history.

This too was an easy enough task, involving tracking back through a series of historical records, staring with looking for the name of a resident.

This turned out to be a Thomas A Collier who was living there in 1911 with his wife Isabel and two servants.  The Collier's  had been married for 31 years, had two children and had moved into the house in 1893.

With a name it was possible to search the Rate Books and discover that the Collier’s had bought the house from a William A. Arnold, who in turn had purchased it from Mr. John Daniel Robinson.

The earliest entry in the Rate Books was 1885, which pretty much gives us the date it was built.

In time I will go back and see what I can find about Mr. Arnold and Mr. Robinson, but for now I shall close with Mr. and Mrs. Collier who provided the key to the research.

In 1911 he described himself as a clerk in a drapery warehouse and was the only one of his immediate neighbours who was in paid employment.  The others listed themselves as employers.

He and Isabel were from Whitby, his children had left home, and the two of them rattled around in the 12 roomed property, looked after by Susan Davies who was the cook and Lilly Talbot the housemaid.

So that is it, other than to offer up an outrageous advert and announce you  can order the book, along with our Chorlton and Didsbury pub books,  at www.pubbooks.co.uk or the old fashioned way on 07521 557888 or from Chorlton Bookshop

Location; Withington

Pictures; 86 Palatine Road and the blue plaque, 2020, © Peter Topping, 

Web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk

Facebook: Paintings from Pictures https://www.facebook.com/paintingsfrompictures

*Manchester Pubs The Stories Behind the Doors City Centre,Peter Topping & Andrew Simpson, 2016

The Palatine Picture House and Cafe

Now the Palatine Picture House was one of our local cinemas and I knew nothing about it.

It opened in 1920 and was near the bus terminus at West Didsbury  just before Palatine Road crosses Lapwing Lane.

It was not the most attractive building and had nothing of the charm or elegance of other cinemas which were built at the same time.

To be honest it was a brick slab adorned at either side by a stone faced entrance.

That said it could seat 1,034 people and had a cafe which was important enough to be included in the name of the cinema.

And apart from the Scala was all there was unless you headed into Chorlton or Didsbury.

Now I did struggle at first to locate it because there was no address on any of the pictures I came across, and even Derek Southall in his book on Manchester’s cinemas omitted to say exactly where it was on Palatine Road.*

But ever resourceful I came across a reference to it in a book on the Bee Gees who performed there before the film on Saturday matinees.**

Not only did I discover it was somewhere they played regularly but also that it was near the West Didsbury Bus terminus.

Of course it has long gone and the clue to its departure comes in the picture which is dated 1960 and has that sign announcing “CLOSED THIS CINEMA HAS BEEN SOLD.”

So I never knew the place, never bought a ticket to sit in the dark or munched my way through one of its sandwiches.

But I bet there will be someone who does.  And so in that time honoured catch phrase, “watch this spot.”


Picture; The Palatine Picture House and Cafe, 1960, J F Harris, mo9250, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

*The Golden Years of Manchester Picture Houses, Derek Southall, http://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/index.php/the-golden-years-of-manchesters-picture-houses.html

**The Bee Gees, Tales of the Brothers Gibb, Melinda Bileyeu, Hector Cook & Andrew Mon Hughes, 2013

A new tram service for Chorlton, ........... at the railway station in the summer of 1913 but sadly not so

Now below is a story I wrote last year and reposted today.

At the time I was very happy with the research but sometimes you can get it very wrong so as a corrective here is the original with a link to the correction which points out with the help of John and Lesley that what I say here was Wilbraham Road was in fact Manchester Road.

We are approaching Chorlton along Wilbraham Road with the station just over the bridge on our right.



I can’t be exactly sure of the date but it will be sometime in the summer of 1913.

Now I can be fairly confident of that because during the early part of 1913 the tram had come to Whalley Range.

The Alexander Road service was extended to Wilbraham Road on February 19th 1913 and then to Egerton Road on May 9th of the same year.  This was the terminus for the next five months until the railway bridge had been strengthened and the track laid to join the Barlow Moor Road line.

This last part of the network from Whalley Range into Chorlton was opened on October 13th.*

And for those of a tram disposition, this pretty much completed the tram routes to Chorlton from Manchester, leaving only the building of the tram terminus on Barlow Moor Road in 1915, and the Seymour Grove line in 1921.

And even before that date it had been possible to catch the Belle Vue service, which ran via Brooks Bar along Upper Chorlton Road to Lane End and onto Southern Cemetery.  This was extended to West Didsbury in the June of 1913 and from then on there was a circular route from town thorough Chorlton to Didsbury and back into the city.

These were the 45 and 46 services, and long after the trams had gone it was still possible to catch a bus doing the same journey.

All of which was fine as long as you knew your bus numbers.

Get the wrong one and instead of the short ride from Princess Street to Chorlton you got the long scenic route down Oxford Road through Fallowfield, Withington and west Didsbury, which was fine enough if you wanted to relive your student days with glimpses of the University, the Toast rack and the White Lion but tedious given that the 47 did it quicker.

But I have wandered off the point and so back to the picture.

Judging by the progress along the line I guess we must be in the summer of 1913.

The track has been laid and only the last stretch on the west side heading towards us from Barlow Moor Road needs to be filled in with a road surface.

It’s the detail I especially like which takes us back to a time now well gone.  The upturned hand cart which you see so often in pictures of the period and the night watchman’s hut and brazier is a reminder that until quite recently someone had the job of sitting through the night in front of the red hot coals minding the site.

And then there are the adverts which cover the approach to the bridge and the bridge itself.

They are an untidy collection of posters advertising everything from Seymour Mead’s butter, to Oxo and variety acts.

My own favourite is the one for Comet Ale and stout.

This was brewed by Walker & Homfrays Ltd, at Woodside Brewery in Salford who also controlled the Manchester Brewery Company and along with many public houses in Manchester and Salford.  Walker & Homfrays went on to take control of the Stockport based Daniel Clifton & Company and in 1920 founded the Moss Side Brewery Company and the Palatine Bottling Company.

And round about the time that the tram track was being completed the Horse & Jockey on the green was selling Comet ales and stouts advertising them on the wall of the outhouse. Nor is this all, for the chairman of Walker & Homfrays was John Henry Davies who in 1902 took over Newton Heath which was a struggling football team with debts of £2, 670.  Under his control the team changed its name to Manchester United and in 1910 moved to a new ground at Old Trafford.

But that as I so often say is another story and I suspect for someone else to tell.

Picture; from the Lloyd collection


*Lloyd, John, The Township of Chorlton cum Hardy, 1972

**On Manchester Road in 1911 ........... when I thought I was on Wilbraham Road ..... getting it wrong and owning up, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/on-manchester-road-when-tram-came-but.html

The remarkable Miss Olga Hertz and her work for the children of Manchester

I doubt I would ever have come across Miss Olga Hertz, had it not been for a report she wrote in 1909 which surfaced recently.

The report, 1909

What makes the report and Miss Hertz particularly interesting for me, is that she was one of the elected Guardians on the Chorlton Union which was the Poor Law authority covering my bit of Manchester and she lived almost all her adult life just round the corner.

Now I say I wouldn’t, but as the plan has always been to research this Poor Law Union, I suppose I would in time have met up with her.

The Chorlton Union covered most of south Manchester with its first work house in Hulme and its later one in Withington.  This second workhouse built in the 1850s, saw the Union out and developed into Withington Hospital only closing in 2002.

Like other Poor Law authority’s, Chorlton migrated some of their young people to Canada, and at the beginning of the century the three socialist Guardians argued against the policy, raising concerns about the degree of monitoring of children were highly critical of an economic and social system which accepted poverty and inequality as natural.

And that brings us back to Miss Hertz who in the June of 1909 sailed from Liverpool to Montreal and then across Ontario, visiting the Marchmont Home and by degree the farms and homes where Chorlton children had been placed from both Marchmont and Belleville.

It paints a positive picture of those who had been sent over, raising some concerns about the monitoring of some children given the large distances.

There will be those who wonder whether it was “too positive”, but Miss Hertz was very dedicated to the welfare of the young people in the charge of the Union and maintained close contacts with many of them long after they had grown up, even referring to them as “Miss Hertz’s grandchildren".

The offices of the Chorlton Union, 2009

So like so much to do with British Home Children there will have to be much more research, matching the assertions of the socialist Guardians with the quality and quantity of the reports sent back.

For now it is Miss Hertz who interests me.  She was born in Scotland in 1851 and moved to Manchester in 1871, settling on Palatine Road in Withington sometime after 1881 and where she died in 1946.

Her adult life was predicated on public service, and she was involved with administration of nursing in the city as well as her work with young people.

She was first elected as a Guardian to the Chorlton Union in 1892 and served until 1930, during which time she did five years as chair of the committee responsible for the Styal Cottage Homes for young people run by the Chorlton Union.

She remained a champion of such provision, arguing such small homes were preferable to the older and larger “barrack” institutions or the practice of boarding children out.

And she campaigned for feminist issues, opposing the practice of one hospital for refusing to employ women doctors, argued that at least one of the Union’s three doctors should be a woman and consistently pushed for the establishment of maternity centres across Manchester and in 1914 had been a delegate at  the Fifth International Council of Women held in Rome.

The entrance to the offices of the Chorlton Union' 2009

There is much more to find out about this remarkable women but I will close with her work for "the Girls’ Lodging House which existed to meet the needs of young homeless, inexperienced domestic workers during their off duty time and during periods of unemployment, girls brought up in the Poor Law homes having first claim”.**

It had been set up in the 19th century and while it closed in 1937, Miss Hertz had remarked that "she considers that there are still young workers to whom such a place would be a boon".

Leaving me just to reflect that while her house has gone, replaced by a car park for Christies' Hospital, there are the offices of the old Chorlton Poor Law Union and by an odd quirk some of the Canadian soldiers from the Great War were treated in the Unions' hospital in Withington Workhouse, and some who died are buried Southern Cemetery which is close by.

And if all that is a coincidence some of those Canadians were British Home Children.

Location; Manchester & Canada

Pictures; cover of Report to the Chorlton Board of Guardians, the offices of the Chorlton Union, 2009, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Research, the Manchester Guardian, 1894-1946, selected census records and street directories

*Copy of the Report to the Chorlton Board of Guardians on a Visit to Emigrated Children in Canada, by Miss O Hertz, Chairman of the Cottage Homes Committee

**Miss Olga Hertz Her 90th Birthday, Manchester Guardian November 19 1941

Solving the mystery of the lost Didsbury school ...... and its war memorial

Yesterday I was on Burton Road with a series of pictures taken by Barbarella of the former church and its war memorial.*

The war memorial, 2017

Over the years I have written about both.**

But until yesterday I always assumed that the memorial had been erected by the church, but according to one source, it had been relocated from St Mary’s to what was St Luke’s Mission Hall”.***

Now I quite naturally concluded that St Mary’s was another church, but a search of the directories drew a blank.

So while there were a few churches of that name none were listed in the Directory for Didsbury, and given that most of the young men came from our township, it threw up a mystery.

But mystery’s are to be solved, and St Mary’s turned out to be a school on what was once Chapel Street, and is now Whitechapel Street, behind Barlow Moor Road and Wilmslow Road, with its church on Queens Road.

The former Church Northern Grove, 2020

The school appears on the 1893 OS map and in 1911 it was listed as “261 mixed and infants; average attendance 122, Charles Ayres, master”.

And that rather at present seems to be that.

There is no reference to the school in the records kept by the Archive and Local History Library and so far I have turned up just the one image of the former school taken in 1973, by which time it had been converted into industrial use.

Sadly the building has now gone,  replaced by a set of apartments.

The former school, Whitechapel Street, 1973

I shall go on looking for its story, but for now I will close with Charles Cyril Futvoye of Clyde Road, who is on the memorial and will have gone to the school.

He enlisted in 1916 aged 22, giving his occupation as “Motor salesmen” and he was assigned to the Army Service Corps.

His bother George had also enlisted just two years earlier and was one of the Manchester Pals, belonging to the 20th City Battalion of the Manchester’s.

Both had been to University and had served in the Officer’s Training Corps.

George survived the war, but Charles did not.

And I wonder if George was present when the memorial was moved from St Mary's to St Luke's.

Which is a way of saying I got the connection with the school wrong, and for that I have to thank Maureen Stephenson who responded to the original story with, "The following information is from Pam Siddon's booklet West Didsbury - A Walk on the West Side. Hopefully, it will solve the St. Mary's mystery. 

Queen's Court, site of St Mary's Church, 1956

On the opposite side of the St. Aidan;s United Reform Church, on Palatine Road was a St. Mary's Church, St. Mary's was demolished in 1929.

St. Mary's had been built in when the parishioners of St Luke's on Burton Road became very resentful at having to attend services there. The road was badly lit, the pavements dirty and hardly anyone lived nearby. 

In 1888 they held a meeting and agreed to build a temporary church on Palatine Road. 

St. Mary's was a wooden structure of pitched pine with a corrugated iron roof which was always known as 'The Iron Church'. The organist and choirmaster, Samuel Lamford, was the music critic of 'The Manchester Guardian'. (Andrew, the church may have been on the site of the present day Queens Court flats?)"

I can't explain its but it appears on the 1893 OS map and  is still there on the 1933 OS, but has gone by 1956, when the present flats are recorded on the site.

All of which just leaves me to thank Maureen and appeal for pictures of the church

20th Platoon of E Company, 20th City Battalion of the Manchester's 1916

Pictures; the war memorial Burton Road, 2017, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, , Burton Road, 2020, from the collection of Barbarella Bonvento, the former St Mary’s school, 1973, J F Hughes, m21570, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass 
 and the 20th Platoon of E company, 20th City Battalion of the Manchester Regiment, Manchester City Battalions Book of Honour, 1916

*Feeding centres, a war memorial and the British Mountaineering Council ….. doing the essential walk and making it historic .... no. 11, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2020/05/feeding-centres-war-memorial-and.html


**Stories from a Didsbury war monument, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2019/03/stories-from-didsbury-war-monument.html

***War Memorials, https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/warmemorials/st-mary-s-church-school-t5140.html

Reuniting a war memorial with its church in West Didsbury ........ the picture of St Mary's

Now, ever since I discovered that the war memorial in the grounds of what was St Luke’s on Burton Road had come from another church which closed in 1929 I had been looking for a picture of that lost church.

St Maru's, date unknown

It was called St Mary’s and was located on Queens Court Road on the corner with Palatine Road. 

There was no reference to it in the Directories, although there was a school bearing the same name behind Barlow Moor Road.

Then as so often happens, someone came forward and offered up the answer, which in this case was Maureen Stephenson who responded to the original story with, "The following information is from Pam Siddon's booklet West Didsbury - A Walk on the West Side. Hopefully, it will solve the St. Mary's mystery. 

On the opposite side of the St. Aidan’s United Reform Church, on Palatine Road was  St. Mary's Church, which was demolished in 1929.

St Mary's on Queens Court Road

St. Mary's had been built in when the parishioners of St Luke's on Burton Road became very resentful at having to attend services there. 

The road was badly lit, the pavements dirty and hardly anyone lived nearby. 

In 1888 they held a meeting and agreed to build a temporary church on Palatine Road. 

St. Mary's was a wooden structure of pitched pine with a corrugated iron roof which was always known as 'The Iron Church'. 

The organist and choirmaster, Samuel Lamford, was the music critic of 'The Manchester Guardian'. (Andrew, the church may have been on the site of the present day Queens Court flats?)"

Queens Court

And having finally got its location I found it on the 1893 OS map for South Lancashire, and again on the 1933 OS, after which it was demolished and the complex of flats known as Queens Court was built.

But until now I lacked a picture, but that too has now been sorted, because a few days ago John Waterton posted a picture postcard of the church  from the Wrench series and gave me permission to reuse it.

I don’t have a date, and although there is a serial number on the card, I have yet to locate a Wrench catalogue which would provide that date.

The War Memoriral, Northern Grove, 2017

Still, for now it is enough that I can place the memorial beside its original church.

Location; Didsbury






Pictures; St Mary’s from a Wrench picture postcard courtesy of John Waterton, the war memorial 2017 from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and Queens Court, 2020 from the collection of Barbarella Bonvento

A breath of the 1930s on Palatine Road ……………doing the essential walk and making it historic .... no. 17

Now I have always been intrigued by Queens Court, on Palatine Road, which looks out of place amongst the grand old Victorian and Edwardian houses, and the more modern blocks of flats, which stretch down from Lapwing Lane and on towards Wilmlsow Road.

They have a stylish presence, with their arched exterior staircases which marks them off as different and very bold when they were built sometime in the 1930s.

I say 1930s, because I have always thought they reflected that period.

And now I know that they were at least there by 1939, and possibly earlier.

They are on the site of St Mary’s Church which ran along Queens Court Road and Palatine Road.

The church closed in 1929, and I suspect sometime in the next decade our flats went up.

The search for a date for the flats was one of those little detective exercises which involved trawling past copies of the Manchester Guardian looking for any reference to the buildings.*

In 1945 in the local magistrates courts a resident of one of the flats who was described as a married woman in an “extremely good financial position” was cleared of an accusation of theft, while in 1940, an “Aircraft Examiner” was “Charged under two charges of the Official Secrets Act [in a case] heard in camera”.  

“He was also charged with aiding and abetting a German Refugee from Nazi oppression to commit an offence under the Aliens Order.”

And a year earlier the newspaper carried an advert "Queens’ Court, Palatine Road, West Didsbury 2 only Entirely Self Contained   4 roomed Maisonettes”

Now I have Barbarella to thank for the pictures, because she tailored her essential walk of the day to include Queens Court following a request by me.

Location; Didsbury

Pictures; Walking Palatine Road, 2020, from the collection of Barbarella Bonvento

*Manchester Guardian, July 15th 1939, Jul 6th 1940, March 28, 1945

On Manchester Road in 1911 ........... when I thought I was on Wilbraham Road ..... getting it wrong and owning up

Now earlier today I posted a story of the year the tram came down Wilbraham Road to Chorlton.

At the time I was quite pleased with the story, so pleased I reposted it today.*

And it turns out I was wrong for rather than being Wilbraham Road we are in fact on Manchester Road.

It was John Holden who questioned the location which in turn led to one of those historical debates with further contributions from Lesley Smith, and the more I looked at the picture the more it was obvious I was wrong.

Now never being one to stamp my feet and go off on one the best thing to do was revisit the story.

The tram net work was extended from West Point along Manchester Road and up to Southern Cemetery in 1911 so that is when we were on the bridge over the railway wondering where the workmen were.

And with that sorted I shall just add a bit from the earlier story

It’s the detail I especially like which takes us back to a time now well gone.  The upturned hand cart which you see so often in pictures of the period and the night watchman’s hut and brazier is a reminder that until quite recently someone had the job of sitting through the night in front of the red hot coals minding the site.

And then there are the adverts which cover the approach to the bridge and the bridge itself.

They are an untidy collection of posters advertising everything from Seymour Mead’s butter, to Oxo and variety acts.

My own favourite is the one for Comet Ale and stout.

This was brewed by Walker & Homfrays Ltd, at Woodside Brewery in Salford who also controlled the Manchester Brewery Company and along with many public houses in Manchester and Salford.  Walker & Homfrays went on to take control of the Stockport based Daniel Clifton & Company and in 1920 founded the Moss Side Brewery Company and the Palatine Bottling Company.

And round about the time that the tram track was being completed the Horse & Jockey on the green was selling Comet ales and stouts advertising them on the wall of the outhouse.

Nor is this all, for the chairman of Walker & Homfrays was John Henry Davies who in 1902 took over Newton Heath which was a struggling football team with debts of £2, 670.  Under his control the team changed its name to Manchester United and in 1910 moved to a new ground at Old Trafford.

But that as I so often say is another story and I suspect for someone else to tell.

Meanwhile a thank you to Lesley and John and especially to John who was off to test his theory by standing on the bridge at Manchester Road.  Now that's dedication.

And I have to report that John checked it and reported "walk taken! Well it's absolutely not facing away from Chorlton. 

The landscape, or should I say tree scape is so totally changed that that the view just doesn't exist any more. 

The only clue left is the building on the right which approximately does match. I would have to say knowing the source of the photo that this is 99% certainly the correct location."

Picture; Manchester Road circa 1911, from the Lloyd collection

*A new tram service for Chorlton, ........... at the railway station in the summer of 1913 but sadly not so, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/a-new-tram-service-for-chorlton-at.html

Thomas Mellodew, and an Oldham cotton business part two

The Mellodews were textile magnates who ran a successful business from mills in Moorside near Oldham for more than a century.

And I don’t suppose I would ever have heard of them if I hadn’t been asked to write a review of the book about them.*

This is a new venture for me and one that I am still getting to grips with.  First there is the task of reading it, and then the more difficult exercise of writing about it in the space of just 300 words.

Now the received knowledge is that you read it all the way through first and then start writing the comments, in just the same way that I was told in making notes from a book, you read it all, form an overall judgement and then make the notes, which usually means you write less because you have a sense of what is coming.

But this is the blog and part two of Thomas Mellodew, an Oldham cotton business which I first posted on March 21st.**

And the task I set myself is to write a series of regular updates on writing a review and in the process share a little of what the book is about, but dear reader not enough to be a substitute for parting with £14 and reading the story yourself.

Moorside in 1853

Thomas Mellodew set up his 30 looms on Sholver Moorside above Oldham in 1850 specialising in cotton velvet and prospered.

In time as the two maps show the business grew from just the one mill to two large cotton factories with interests in collieries, a brick works three pubs, workers cottages, and farmland.

The first half of the book is a fascinating insight into how a family from humble beginnings made good and along the way offers a good description of how cotton was worked.

And for me what marks the book out as different is that it is a departure from the story of those who worked the looms and fed the boilers to those who managed the capital and did the deals.  So there is little about factory conditions, or the quality of the life of the men, women and children who laboured in the mills.

Moorside in 1894

But then this is an account “primarily about a cotton firm and its owning family” and that does make it an area I know little about.

So here are descriptions of how a textile business got started, the means by which it was financed and the way the owners developed the enterprise and planned for the future.

So it’s strength is that we are dealing not in generalities but of one firm in an identifiable part of Lancashire.

This breaks new ground for me and does a little to redress my usual bottom up approach to history.

What is more I have now reached the point in the book dealing with the 20th century which is when textile manufacture seems to be running all downhill.

The optimism and sheer dynamism of the early firm has slowed down and faces the new competition from the USA and Japan and the slow demise of the whole industry to the point in the 1980s when the company put the two mills up for sale, and had to  withdraw them because they failed to get a buyer.

But that is for part three.

Pictures, front cover of An Oldham Velvet Dynasty, and Moorside from the OS map of Lancashire, 1841-53, and the oS for South Lancashire, 188-1893, courtesy of Digital Archives, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/

*An Oldham Velvet Dynasty, The Mellowodews of Moorside, by William M. Hartley, Palatine Books, 2009, £14

**http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/thomas-mellodew-oldham-cotton-business.html

Passing the Palatine .............. cinemas and trams I wish I had known

Now, look closely and the edge of the old Palatine cinema is just visible behind the tram.

There is no date on the picture, but we can narrow it to a date after 1920 when the picture house opened, and the late 1940s when the Corporation did away with our trams.

And for those inetrested in the cinema I have already written about it.*

Location; West Didsbury

Picture; Palatine Road from the collection of Allan Brown, date unknown

*The Palatine Picture House and Cafe, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search?q=The+Palatine

Blackfriars Street and the story behind the Palatine Photographic Company and a young woman

Now it was Mark Twain who said "never let the truth stand in the way of a good story, unless you can't think of anything better" and I have to admit I was tempted.

Sometime in the early 20th century this young women wandered into the studios of the Palatine Photographic Company and had her picture taken.

I don’t know who she was, exactly when she posed for the picture or if this was a special occasion.

The photograph was one of a large number of images that Ron Stubley passed over to me recently.

They consist of picture postcards, birthday cards and a group of family photos.

And it is these family pictures which have come to interest me.

There are no names or addresses and only a few have a date but they are local because some carry the name of photographers who were active across the twin cities.

Most are old fashioned portraits and are of single individuals, but one has a young soldier in uniform and his wife and looks to be from the Great War.

Another is of a teenager and carries the caption “Passed away Feb 4 1918,” which may be a reference to the great flu epidemic but could so easily be any one of a number of illnesses.

All of which just leaves those phot0pgrapher, some of whom were big national or regional companies and others who operated from just one studio.

And this is where the Palatine Photographic Company seemed to offer a clue.  Their address was 50 Blackfriars Street and for a brief few minutes I wandered up and down Blackfriars Street looking for them, for that would at least suggest that she came from Salford.

But, and it is a big but Blackfriars stretches from Chapel Street over the bridge to terminate at Deansgate in Manchester, and yes, 50 Blackfriars Street was in that block which inhabited the corner with Deansgate.

The company post date 1895 and were still in business at their Manchester address in 1911 and that is it.

 They do appear on a database but it seems to be the only record of their existence.

So we are left with little that can identify our young woman who may be from Salford but in the interests of disowning Mark Twain I have to say I don't know.

Location; somewhere in Manchester or Salford

Picture; unknown young women, date unknown from the collection of Ron Stubley

The Holly Hotel on Palatine Road ........... once a family home and now just a big space waiting for Dennis the developer

Here is a building I always passed by without a second glance.

The Peace Inn, 2014

It is the Peace Hotel, which was the Holly Hotel and before that just Holly House and it is on Palatine Road.

I say is because Andy Robertson’s picture was taken in March 2014 and when he recently drove past it had gone and prompting him to wonder “I’m sure there used to be a hotel here.”

Now as these pictures show there is just a huge gaping space with just that sign as a forlorn reminder of what once was here.

Holly House, 1974

And that led Andy to begin to dig deep into the history of the building.

There is a listing for it as Holly House in 1969 and “during the seventies it seems to have been run by the council to house homeless families.”

He has also uncovered some very unflattering reviews of the place when it was a hotel some of which I have to say are very amusing, but are perhaps now left in the shadows.

Its history before 1969 is as yet a closed book but I know that in 1911 it was the home of Mrs Albertina Christinia who was a widow, had been born in Denmark in 1837 and shared the 10 roomed house with her sister, two children, a “lady companion” and the cook.

A sign but no hotel, 2016

I will in time go back and visit the lady companion who was a Mrs Fanny Luis from Manchester who was also a widow and aged 45.

But for now I am more interested in the two children who were Susanna Maria aged 35 and George Peter who was 41.  Both had been born in Manchester Miss Raundrup in West Didsbury and Mr Raundrup in Withington.

He gave his occupation as an iron merchant and in 1911 he was listed in Salter’s Directory as Raundrup & Co, merchants and shippers with offices at 41 Grosvenor chambers 16 Deansgate.

And for those with a really nerdy interest Mr Raundrup conducted his business from the fourth floor of Grosvenor chambers which is on that stretch of Deansgate currently occupied by Harvey Nichols.

I have no idea how he made his way from home to work and back.

It may have been by tram or perhaps by train from the railway station on Lapwing Lane which would have taken him into Central Station.

This was the family business which may have been established by his father who was already living in Albert Park in Withington by 1870.

That big space, 2016

And that is about it.

I know that Mrs Albertina Christinia Raundrup died in 1920 and her son George Peter in 1945.

A search of the directories in Central Ref should reveal who owned or lived in Holly House in the years after 1911 which will I bet offer up more stories and these will sit beside the memories of the place as a hotel.

And once the memories come flooding in I will go and look up the future of that space at the Corporation’s online Planning site.

Location; Palatine Road.

Pictures, Holly House at various times in its history, 2014-2016 from the collection of Andy Robertson, and in 1974, m43454, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

Thomas Mellodew, an Oldham cotton business and a first for the blog

Now today I am going to be a little self indulgent, and copy one of those features of some blogs which post progress reports.

In my case it’s a review of a book which is a first for me and I hope an insight into the discipline of writing about someone else’s work and I hope in the process revealing something about the subject matter.

Of course I am bound to say that I am limited to what I can say after all it is one thing to review the book another to tell its story.

And I know there will be those who mutter how difficult is it to do a review?  After all, it is just a matter of reading it and then writing 300 words on what it was like and what you thought of it.

The book in question is An Oldham Velvet Dynasty, by William M. Hartley.* the publishers say that "the history of Thomas Mellodew and Company Ltd is a part of the history of Oldham. 

For over 100 years, the family owned firm was an important local business and employer, spinning cotton and producing high quality velvet – a material much sought after in Victorian England.”

It began in the 1830s and lasted till 1956 so nicely fits into one of the periods I often write about.
Our township was still very much a rural community when Thomas Mellodew set up his 30 looms on a “windswept Moorside above Oldham, employing 260 hands.”  And the growing success of his company was at a time when Manchester was at the centre of those new textile and commercial enterprises.

And the demise of the firm and the demolition of its mills were mirrored by the loss of the Bradford colliery and closure of the countless engineering and foundry works in the east of the city and beyond which are topics I regularly return to.

So, this is day one of the project.  I have successfully negotiated the introduction which gives an account of cotton spinning and weaving and in particular employment practices and moved on to chapter one describing Mellodew’s early life set against the backdrop of the first three decades of the 19th century.

There is much I have learned but remain intrigued by that phrase “260 hands.”  It is a term which neatly places the human workforce in the industrial process.  Here are not workers, with families, interests, and stories to tell but mere adjuncts to the textile machines.  They are no more worthy of a second glance than the oil can and the spinning machines which also help turn the raw material into the finished cotton velvet.

Such was the outlook of so many of those 19th century employers, but I do have to be careful for already my own prejudice towards them and the system they were developing has cast a shadow on what I think of Mr Mellodew.

Now this may be unfair given “his attention to the welfare of his workforce” so we shall see.

In the meantime I am on to chapter two in 1851 on Shover Moorside which according to the biographer was an inhospitable spot, three miles from Oldham where  the comminity were largely “engaged in cotton spinning and weaving, coal mining and agriculture”  and eagerly anticipating why  "just eight years after the Plug-drawing Riots of 1842 [he] was forced ....... to take his 30 looms to windswept Moorside."

But that will as they say be for part two.

Picture; front cover of An Oldham Velvet Dynasty

*An Oldham Velvet Dynasty, The Mellowodews of Moorside, by William M. Hartley, Palatine Books, 2009, £14

Woodlawn in Didsbury in the summer of 1914 and again in the winter of 1950

Woodlawn was one of those very big houses that Didsbury used to excel at.

It stood on what was Fielden Park and is now Mersey Road which runs from Palatine Road up to Barlow Moor Road.

It had fifteen rooms, was set in extensive grounds which ran down towards the Mersey and was flanked by the even more impressive houses of Brockhurst to the north and Mersey Bank to the south, both of which commanded even bigger gardens and both of which had their own fountains.

Now I can’t be sure exactly when it was built but it was there by 1891 when it was the home of James and Rosamund Halliday.

He was an accountant and partner in a number of firms including Deloitte and Halliday with offices at Queen Elms on High Street and on Oxford Street and later described himself as a banker.

Born in Scotland he was here in Manchester by 1861.  We can track him from Chorlton on Medlock to Broome House in Didsbury where the family were living in 1881.  And like so many of the other residents of Broome House they went on to bigger and better homes which in the case of the Halliday’s was Woodlawn.

There is no doubting that this was an impressive property.

You reached it by a tree lined drive with paths off across the gardens down towards the river and past a series of large greenhouses.

The house was built on a raised bank which meant the entrance up to the front door was by way of a set of stone steps.

Looking at the pictures of the place you have to admit that it was a solid and magnificent place which befitted a banker.

He died in 1913 and this will have been when Mrs Laura Churchill bought the property and a year later offered it to the Red Cross as a hospital at the start of the Great War.

But that is a story for another time.*

The house was demolished I think in the 1990s and may have been a convent school which pretty much means there is more to find out about the place and that also will be for later.

And soon after I posted the story Marion added a postscript which took the story of the building forward into the middle decades of the last century.

"Woodlawn was part of the new Hollies convent and school when they moved from Oak Drive in Fallowfield. I was there from 1949 to 1958, my sister and daughter followed. 

I loved every moment, the buildings fed my love of grand houses even though they took a bit of a battering from us girls. 

Wonderful memories include the maid from Oak house hotel bringing a tray with drinks and biscuits across at playtime for the owners daughter to enjoy at the prep school gate. Have a look at the book Against the Odds where there are some pictures of Woodlawn. A vanished world.

All of which opens a whole new area of research, not to mention stories pictures and memories.

Wood Lawn features in our book on the history of Didsbury, Didsbury Through Time

Pictures; of Woodlawn courtesy of Rob Mellor, and detail of Wood Lawn and gardens from the OS map of South Lancashire, 1888-94 courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/

*With the Red Cross hospital in 1914 at Wood Lawn in Didsbury posted on the blog on October 11th

A water trough and three lost houses on Wilmslow Road in the summer of 1914

I think I remember the water trough just where Wilmslow Road joins Wellington Road in Withington.

I spent two years on and off just behind it during the early 70’s, and visited most of the shops along this stretch of the main road including the Victoria Hotel.

And because I was a student I did go into the Library on the corner facing the water trough, although I do have to confess perhaps not as often as I should have done.

Not that I would have been able to have gone there when this photograph was taken which I reckon to have been sometime just before the Great War because back then this site belonged to three rather impressive properties, which stood in a fair bit of land and whose gardens stretched back on to Wellington Road. The larger of the two had 11 and 13 rooms while the smallest just 8.

The walls and railings of the properties along with a large tree dominate the bottom right of our picture.

Now I rather fancy there will be a story to tell about what happened to the three houses, because in 1927 they have been demolished to be replaced by Withington Library.  This was the third and last of the three to built when Chorlton, Withington, Didsbury and Burnage voted to join the city in 1904.

It’s a story I have already told, so for the meantime I will stay with our picture of Withington on summers day. Judging by the sunlight and the school girls it must ne early morning.  The shops are open, the children are on their way to school but otherwise not much stirs.

Only the two work men with the usual handcart appear to be in gainful employment, although I suppose that is a bit unfair on the tram driver and conductor.

So that pretty much is it except for that water trough which sadly it would appear I don’t remember. Well not at the corner of Wilmslow Road and Wellington Road.  It had been here from 1876 to 1927  but as the Withington Civic Society records “was moved to the junction of Palatine Road and Wilmslow Road, opposite the White Lion. [and] was then moved to the Cotton Lane/Wilmslow Road corner. 

The trough then disappeared without trace for many years. It was eventually discovered, quite neglected, in a field at Chamber Hall Farm, Heald Green, and returned to Withington in 1985, thanks to the efforts and funding of Withington Civic Society. The inscription on the water trough
‘... that ye may drink, both ye and your cattle and your beasts’ [2 Kings, 3:17]
is appropriately chosen - the trough provided water for people (a drinking fountain), for horses and, at the side, for dogs.”*

Picture; Wilmslow Road circa 1914, courtesy of Mark Fynn http://www.markfynn.com/manchester-postcards.htm

*Withington Civic Society, https://sites.google.com/site/withingtoncivicsociety/

Remembering the Scala, and the White Lion in Withington in 1960

We are in Withington in 1960 and for anyone who knows this bit of south Manchester the scene is familiar enough.

I remember it well because it was around here that I had my first bed sit and from 1969-73 it was where I called home.

A place which pretty much was bounded by the library to the north and the White Lion to the south.

The stretch inbetween had the usual mix of shops, a launderette the Co-op and the Albert.

But as ever what seems familiar at first glance is a world away from the scene today.

The White Lion just outside the shot on the left is now a supermarket, the Scala Cinema has gone and Handforth Ltd is now an opticians.

Likewise on the other side the traditional shop on the corner is now a restaraunt.

But I suspect there will be many who remember this corner and will be able to talk about the pints they have drunk in the huge old pub along with the films they saw at the picture house.

All of which I did along with buying milk from the vending machine by the Scala after the pub closed.*

For this was a time before the late night shopper when you could be fairly certain that by ten past eleven on any night of the week not much stirred on the corner of Palatine and Burton Road.

*Who laments the passing of the old milk machine? http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/who-laments-passing-of-old-milk-machine.html

Picture; Shopping Centre from the set Withington Lillywhite, Tuck & Sons, courtesy of TuckDB http://tuckdb.org/history

Miss Sarah Ann Walker of Crescent Road, Chorlton-cum-Hardy ....... and a trail of mysteries

I don’t have a picture of Sarah Ann Walker, and I doubt I will ever come across one.

Stanley Grove, 1972

She was born in 1872, worked as a domestic servant and briefly ran the grocery shop at 1 Crossland Road, in Chorlton-cum-Hardy and was buried in Southern Cemetery in 1958, where she rests with her parents

In between she had lived and worked in Didsbury and Southport and very possibly other parts of the north.

Hers is an interesting story because it matches the lives and experiences of countless others who history has forgotten.  I say forgotten but the reality is it never took much notice.

Until yesterday I was blissfully unaware of her existence, but I came across her because of the shop which a few years later her mother was running.

And that drew me in.  Miss Walker’s father was a labourer and her mother a laundress and sometime in the early 1880s the family exchanged their home in Bengeworth in Worcestershire for Chorlton.

1 Crossland Road and Stanley Grove, 1972

I can’t be exactly sure, but in 1881 they were in a small cottage in Bengeworth and three years later in Stanley Grove in Chorlton and from there they moved around.

In 1885/6 they were on Beech Road, Clarence Road and finally after another short stay on Stanley they settled into Whitelow Road.

And it is there in 1891 that we pick up the family on a census record.

By then Sarah Ann was living and working on Palatine Road as a housemaid, along with a cook and waitress in the home of an “East Indian and General Merchant”.

The Vine Inn, 2015

A decade later she had progressed to a finer house in Southport and had risen to be the cook in a household with three other servants and in 1904 she was in the shop on Crossland Road.

After which the trail becomes a bit messier.

There is a listing for a Miss Sarah Ann as a cook at 133 Washway Road, in Sale and references to a Mrs Sarah Ann Walker in Stanley Grove in 1903 that is also described a cook, as well as a listing at the shop in 1909.

Finally there is a record in the 1939 Register to a Miss Sarah Ann Cook who was living at 13 Royal Avenue.
She is described as an invalid and the householder, and lived with her sister Florence and a lodger.

It is quite possible that she might have decided to adopt a marital status and then revert and the link to the occupation as a cook is consistent which takes us back to 133 Washway Road which today is the Vine Inn, prompting me to go looking to see if the street numbers  are still the same.

All of which is a tad confusing, and made more so when you look at the burial plot in Southern Cemetery.

The Vine Inn 2015

Sarah Ann is there with her mother who was buried in 1931, her father in 1924, her sister in 1913 and possibly her sister’s daughter who was interred later in 1913.

It looks pretty straight forward but for her father, who all the earlier evidence suggests died between 1900 and 1901.

So we return to the observation that Miss Sarah has presented us with a trail of mysteries, but along the way reveals something about who was living in Chorlton in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, where they came from and the work they did.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; Stanley Grove, 1972, A Dawson m18210 & 1972 H Milligan m18208, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass and the Vine Inn, 2015, from the collection of Andy Robertson