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Beech Road in the summer of 1932
We are on Beech Road in the summer of 1932. Judging by the shadows and the activity it must be sometime in the morning. The manager of John Williams and Sons looks on as his assistant sweeps the...
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Megalosaurus … the dinosaur with a story … today on the wireless
Who doesn’t like dinosaurs?Or perhaps less like and more fascinated.All of which is a lead into this week’s In Our Time on BBC Radio 4 which is all about Megalosaurus which the accompanying notes to...
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Travels with a box of toffees to the Tower of London and beyond
The quality of the images is a bit iffy, but they perfectly recreate the London I knew when I was growing up.London Bridge , 1956 They come from the book, London by Cyril Bunt which was published in...
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Stories of demolition part 1 ……. Manchester 1971
Sometimes you come across a picture which is not just a record of an event, but offers up so much more.So here we are with an unnamed building somewhere in the heart of the city going through the last...
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Searching the picture ….. London Road 1895
This is a photograph of London Road where it joins Store Street and we are in 1895.London Road, 1895There is nothing very remarkable about the picture and might well be described as eight people, two...
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Mrs Crump of Chorlton-cum-Hardy and a piece of broadcasting history
Now this is another of those stories which has much more to offer. Back on January 1 1947 Mrs Elsie May Crump appeared on Woman’s Hour which had first aired three months earlier in October 1946....
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Outside Beech Road Police Station ........ revealing a little of the life of...
This is Police Constable Frederick George Ross standing with his colleagues outside the police station on Beech Road. Now I can’t be exactly sure when the picture was taken but one source has suggested...
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Two for the price of one original photograph ......... St Margaret’s Church,...
Now this may seem rather indulgent to offer up two identical pictures of the same spot but of course there is a tad difference and that comes from the success of the artist in colouring the original...
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When the historic picture postcards …. turn out to be street grids
Once along time ago you could follow a friend’s holiday adventures by the picture postcards they sent back.Salamanca Firefighters, 2026Later still the postcards became multiple photographs via a...
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Down on Maple Avenue with more rare pictures
This is another of those wonderful images from Ray Jones whose family owned one of the houses on Maple Avenue for over a century, spanning the old Queen’s Jubilee, two world wars, and much else. It was...
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Sweet Thames Flow Softly*
The Thames Flows Down is another of those wonderful children's books written in the 1950s. It was the companion to A Valley Grows Up by Edward Osmond.* The Thames Flows Down was written by Laurie...
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The drab street ......the museum ...... and ....... the mural
There are some parts of the city that even a bright sunlit day in the middle of a perfect summer will always be drab and uninviting.And so it is with Grosvenor Street which cuts its way across Upper...
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Hardy Farm ..... on the edge of the Township
This is Hardy Farm at the end of Hardy Lane, and you will have to be of an age to remember it.Hardy Farm, 1965It has gone now, but it appears on Yate’s map of Lancashire for 1786 and may date back...
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Just how exotic could Manchester be? ………. memories of 1971
Now you have to be of a certain age to remember the Ceylon Tea Centre, or its equally enticing rival the Danish Food Centre.An exotic market place, 1957 Back in the early 1970s they were a revelation...
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Of bandstands, demolished churches and a closed pub, Plumstead Common in 1915
Now every good park should have a bandstand. They were after all the centre of many parks in the late 19th and early 20th centuries which reflected both civic pride and that long history of listening...
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When nostalgia is nothing more complicated than a sausage sandwich …….....
Now, we all have our own cherished memories which seem with the passage of time to encapsulate a chunk of our growing up.Whitworth Street, 1969 For me it is nothing more complicated than a sausage...
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What we did in October when we were still a farming community
Cows on the meadows, 2003An occasional series reflecting on what we did in the township when we were still a small rural community. Now if I had been farming here in the 1850s I might well have turned...
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Beresford Square circa 1900
Beresford Square is one of those places I remember with fondness. And it is a place I keep coming back to, so here is another of the place, in its heyday sometime at the beginning of the 20th century....
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Gilgamesh .... Enkidu ... a story over 4,700 years old .... on the wireless...
The Epic of Gilgamesh caught my imagination decades ago but I was too lazy to read the story for myself, and instead just relied on what I was told.Hero mastering a lion. 713–706 BCE And what a story...
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Hay making in Chorlton ............ or almost
Now here is an image which could have been so easily taken in Chorlton.Hay Making in Furness Vale, date unknown The picture is labelled on the reverse "Haymaking, Furness Vale" but the date and...
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