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Remembering a lost Chorlton farm from over 79 years ago

March 22, 2017, 8:31 pm
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Now I am looking at two pictures of Park Brow Farm which was doing the business of growing food from before the start of the 19th century.

And what makes the two pictures all the more remarkable is that I know one of the sons of the last farmer.

He is Oliver Bailey and his family ran the farm from sometime after 1911 and before that had been on Chorlton Row from the 1760s.*

Over the years Oliver has made available a whole heap of family documents from the contract his ancestor signed with the Egerton’s back in the middle of the 18th century to receipts for night soil from the 1850s, house and farm inventories and lots more.

Added to which he was able to describe in some detail the inside of Hough End Hallbefore it was much knocked about by a succession of developers in the late 1960s.**

And his memories have also opened up the story of Park Brow Farm before it too was developed with that small group of houses to the west of the farm house and the barn conversion.

So I shall start with the farm yard and this photograph from 1938.

Oliver tells me that one of the young lads is his brother and the building behind them with the tall chimney was “used for boiling up p food bought from the UCP,” while the two elephants Mr Bailey hosted when the travelling circus arrived were watered from the wooden pump directly in front of the building.

And given that this was the farm yard, the two downstairs rooms of the building to our left were the kitchen and office, with the living room and dining room facing south onto the garden which backed on to Sandy Lane.

Now I could go on but think I will save the rest for another day, which will include more pictures of the front of the farm house, something on the certificates the farm won and a piece of garden furniture which links the farm to the old Assize Courts in town.

Those intrigued by the idea of hosting two elephants can read the story on blog which will also offer up some fine pictures of the Bailey bulls on the land where Adastral House now stands and can summon up in their imagination an image of the young Oliver driving live stock through Chorlton back to Park Brow from the railway station.

All of which just leaves me to ponder on how rural is the scene of the farm house when this picture was taken in the summer of 1940.

Location; Park Brow Farm, Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Pictures, the farm yard, 1938, m17381, and the farmhouse looking north, 1940, m17388, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

*Chorlton Row is now Beech Road

**A new book on Hough End Hall, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/A%20new%20book%20on%20Hough%20End%20Hall


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Stories of Empire, and a context for one British family

March 23, 2017, 7:00 pm
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A shipping list of the hopefuls
Sometimes you can just lose perspective when researching a family relative.

I always told myself that in telling their stories I wanted to put them into the bigger picture.

As intriguing as the life of my great uncle might be it is nothing unless you place him in the context of where he lived, when he lived and what was going on around him.

He was a British Home Child, and understandably his life and the difficulties of tracking down a man born in 1898 who spent his early years in institutions and then left for Canada in the May of 1914 can become so absorbing that you don’t see the wood for the trees.

Laura Hall

Now all of us who have researched BHC are aware of the social and economic background that led well meaning organisations and individuals to sweep up children in Britain and relocate them to Canada, Australia and the other colonies of the former British Empire.

And I guess we have all come across those back in the home country with an eye to empire. For them these children were also about putting down a population in a colony still being built, who in time with family, a farm and a flag would bind these new territories to the mother country. Barnado himself is reputedly to have talked about the children he sent as “bricks for empire.”

Of course the bigger picture helps place BHC in a context. We had been sending our criminals and unwanted children to North America, the West Indies and later Australia since the 17th century while in the 1840s the Poor Law Commissioners and local land owners connived a scheme to send the unemployed across the Atlantic.

A testimonial
So I suppose I should have not been surprised to read about the Free Passage Scheme which at the end of the First World War offered a “Free Passage Scheme for ex-servicemen, ex-servicewomen and their dependants to emigrate to the colonies and dominions of the Empire,”* and was followed by the larger, Empire Settlement Act of 1922 to emigrate large numbers of British women as domestic servants.

Now I knew vaguely about the Empire Settlement Act, but it was her article in the  BBC History Magazine “Our Excess Girls” which drew me into the story.

It has been written by Lucy Noakes  and was a curtain raiser to her book From War Service to Domestic Service: Ex-Servicewomen and the Free Passage Scheme 1919–22, OUP, 2010.

It is a fascinating story and fits well with the idea of the mother country populating the outposts of Empire.

There were she writes a “complex network of interlinked beliefs and policies concerning both the relationship between the metropole and the Empire, and the perceived necessity for social stability in Britain and in the dominions and colonies.” 

But in the case of over 4, 000 young women it was the opportunity for a new life often in domestic service.

Laura Pember, nee Hall, 1947
And like so much in history there is a direct echo with my own family.

My great aunt who had been born in the Derby Workhouse in 1902 and like my great uncle had spent her early years intuitions before being sent into service at the age of nine went across to Canada in 1925.

She was one of the beneficiaries of the many schemes for the settlement of people in Canada.

I guess she was part of the program providing transportation assistance and guaranteeing standard wages and transition support for more than 22,000 domestic workers between 1919 and 1930.

Hers is a story I have yet to tell. Great aunt Dolly had planned to stay in Canada just a short while, and took only a few clothes in a suitcase.

She had been encouraged to go by her brother who was my BHC. The plan was for her to meet him in British Columbia but she got no further than Ontario where she stayed, married and raised a large family.

Put their two life stories together and I begin to have something more than just a family history.

Add in another uncle who spent his entire working life in Africa and great uncles who plied the oceans as ships engineers and it is the start of my family and an Empire.

Pictures; Laura Pember nee Hall, and letter from C. Dould, from the collection of the Pember family, shipping records from the collection of Andrew Simpson 

*Lucy Noakes, BBC History Magazine “Our Excess Girls” March 2012

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War Baby ......... stories by Eddy Newport no 24 .... another war

March 23, 2017, 7:30 pm
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Another in the series by Eddy Newport taken from his book, History of a War Baby, Father Ted, and mother Edie.

Ted aged 23 as Corporal E Newport soon to be a sergeant
Ted’s war history has never been documented until now. All I have to go by is the stories Ted told me in his later years.

They are as true as he told them. Dad was a musician and a very useful boxer he won trophies as a bantamweight for his regiment.

Ted age 23 as Corporal E Newport, soon to be a sergeant.

WW2 was declared by the Prime Minster Neville Chamberlain in September 1939 and all the forces were mobilised.

The Territorial Army were called up and were got ready to be sent to France and Belgium with the British Expeditionary Forces to stop the Germans from doing their worst.  Ted was soon to be off to war.

One evening in a pub, The Plume of Feathers Greenwich, in front of all his army friends he got down on one knee and proposed to Edie.

Wedding day, 1939, Jim, Dad, Mum, Ginny, David
No time was wasted in fixing up the wedding at the local church, not even  time for a white dress to be made, just a service and a small reception back at Edie’s mum’s flat in Doddington Grove.

Her brother Jim gave her away and Ted’s brother David the best man.

The only photos were taken were on a box Brownie camera and of a very poor quality.

A staff car from the army was borrowed from Ted’s commanding officer to bring Edie to the church.

Probably first married photograph
This wedding was done on the cheap, Mother said in later years she would have liked to have had a proper wedding, but it was not to be. They had a little time to themselves at a seaside resort in Devon.

After that, it was back to army training preparing to go with the Expeditionary Force.

As dad was a musician and his bad eyesight had graded him as a B2 solder his rank was made up to a sergeant and he was in charge of a platoon of men responsible for setting up a field hospital away from the action.

He said his expertise was digging a very big hole in the ground and covering it up with sandbags. So armed with his rifle, shovel and packs of field dressings off he went.

But not before he had got Edie pregnant.

 © Eddy Newport 2017

Pictures; from the collection of Eddy Newport

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“willingly, smilingly and as though theirs is the privilege”* ......... stories behind the book nu 12

March 23, 2017, 7:30 pm
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An occasional series on the stories behind the new book on Manchester and the Great War.**

Now I was fully prepared and planned for a series of stories on the Red Cross during the writing of the book.

It after all along with St. John Ambulance provided the Voluntary Aid Detachments which ran the auxiliary hospitals catering for sick and wounded servicemen returning from the battle fronts.

The V.A. Detachments had been established in 1909 as part of the preparations for a major Continental war.

Here in Manchester it fell to the East Lancashire Branch of the Red Cross which along with St. John. Ambulance ran not only the auxiliary hospitals transported the sick and wounded from ambulance trains to hospitals in the City and the surrounding townships and organised “comforts.”

Early in September of 1914 the branch had described its role as “a voluntary organisation supported by public subscriptions ....... to supplement the medical services of the army and navy and to supply comforts to soldiers and sailors in addition to those provided by the authorities.”***

And pretty soon I came across the story of the Canadian V.A.D.

It didn’t strictly fit into the book but I became intrigued given that my own BHC great uncle had served with the Canadian Expeditionary Force from 1915 through to the duration.

It was established in the November of 1911 as an “organisation of Voluntary Aid in Canada.  

Committees were created in each district and they were charged with the responsibility of organising Voluntary Aid Detachments in connection with the Militia, [and] the duty of organising the V.A.Ds should be given over to the St. John Ambulance Association [with] the first being in Halifax.  

The second at Quebec, and Montreal and Ottawa quickly following.”****

Much of what I have discovered so far has come from a fascinating book written in 1917 by Miss Thekal Bowser who was a Red Cross nurse.

She was born in 1873 served in France and died aged 46 just one year after the end of the war from an illness she had contracted while at the Front.*****

There is not much on the Canadian V.A.D., in the book but it is a start and as these things work it has drawn me back in to looking at great uncle Roger’s war record.

So there you have it, no research is ever wasted and in the fullness of time he and Canadian V.A.D., will feature in a future research project.

Well we shall see.

Location; Canada

Picture; Willow Bank Red Cross Hospital, Moss Side, circa 1914 courtesy of David Harrop,


* Bowser, Thekla, The Story of the British V.A.D Work in the Great War, 1917 pages 70-71

**Manchester and the Great War, Andrew Simpson, was published in February 2017, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/A%20new%20book%20on%20Manchester%20and%20the%20Great%20War

*** The Red Cross in Lancashire, Manchester Guardian, September 12, 1914

****ibid Bowser, Thekla, page228

*****Ida Thekla Bowser, https://livesofthefirstworldwar.org/lifestory/4943202#timeline





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Home thoughts of Woolwich from Italy .......... June 1919

March 23, 2017, 8:00 pm
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This is the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele in Faenza in  Emilia-Romagna sometime in the early 20th century.

It is a picture I like and is also one that reminds me of Varese where some of our family live.

But what marks this picture out as special is that it belongs to Daniel Murphy who told me that'in 1914 my father joined the Royal Artillery, RHA/RFA as a driver. 

From that time until the end of the WW1 he sat astride a horse and pulled field guns and ammunition carriages into place on the front line both in France, where he was shot and suffered shrapnel wounds, and later in Egypt and Pakistan, where he contracted malaria . 


On his way home from Cairo in June 1919 he sent this postcard to his mother in Woolwich.

It reads - "Dearest mother, expect me home in three or four days after receiving this. 

Am on my way now. Love to all at home. Your loving son Jack." (Followed by many kisses)”'

Location; Italy










Picture; Piazza Vittorio Emanuele Faenza circa 1919, courtesy of Daniel Murphy

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Lost and forgotten streets of Salford nu 4 ............ Caxton Street

March 23, 2017, 8:00 pm
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Caxton Street is the one that runs from Chapel Street to the railway viaduct but once upon a time ran on as Union Street under the train tracks to Posey Street..


Now I say that but am well prepared to be corrected.

I should have crossed the road and followed Caxton Street up to the brick wall but I didn’t and so may have lost a clue.

Back in 1849 there were76 properties strung out along Union Street

Location, Salford

Picture; Caxton Street, 2016, from the collection of Andrew Simpson
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The old church on the green in 1933

March 23, 2017, 8:32 pm
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This is one of my favourite pictures of the old parish church.

It was taken by F. Blyth and appeared in A Short History of Chorlton-cum-Hardy written by J. D. Blyth in 1933.

Now at present I don’t know whether J.D. Blyth was the father or brother of the photographer, and both remain shadowy figures.

The text is drawn from the work of the late 19th century historian Thomas Ellwood and pretty much repeats the earlier work word by word.

Not that there is anything wrong in that.

Mr Ellwood’s work had been published as a series of newspaper articles between 1885 and 86 and while some of them reappeared in church magazines during the early 20th century I rather think that that by 1933 they were less well known.

That said it is the three photographs that draw you into the short history, and this is partly because we do not have many floating around from the 1930s.

This one of the church was taken from the south and it shows off some of the detail which is often missing from other pictures.  The side aisles were added in 1837 around the time that two Arnot stoves were installed for heating and the flue and chimney of one of them is just visible behind the spire.

The church had just another seven years of working life because it was closed in 1940 and demolished in 1949.

The grave stones remained in place until the area was landscaped in the early 1980s and many of the headstones taken away.

Picture; the parish church from the south, 1933, by F. Blyth, from A Short history of Chorlton-cum-Hardy by J.D. Blyth, 1933

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My Manchester, pictures without the words ............nu 1 St Ann’s Church, June 2014

March 23, 2017, 8:33 pm
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Yes some of the pictures have featured before but I like them.

St Ann's Church, June 2014

And yes there is a total absence of a story.

Location; Manchester

Picture; St Ann’s Church June 2014, from the collection of Andrew Simpson
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A little bit of Copenhagen on Oldham Road ........ lost Manchester pubs number 20

March 23, 2017, 8:00 pm
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I have Andy Robertson to thank for introducing me to the Copenhagen.

That said the invite was too late to allow me to get a drink in the place.

Andy sent these pictures over yesterday and afternoon with the comment that“this is 909 Oldham Road, Newton Heath. 

From what I can gather the pub closed sometime early 2000s. 

When I first came to Manchester in the early 70s I was told about the infamous Oldham Road pub crawl. 

Why they thought I might be interested I do not know! Alas I never ventured.

The Crown & Kettle still exists at number 2, but could this be the only other pub building still existing on Oldham Road all the way from town to Newton Heath.”

Now I leave the answer to that question to hang in the air but I bet Hannah will know and if she doesn’t will set the question going on her Saturdayradio programme.*

According to the excellent Manchester Pubs site, the Copenhagen may have still been open as late as 2012.**

All of which makes me wonder whether once Peter and I have finished the Chorlton Pubs book and on the back of the very successful Manchester Pubs book we should entertain the idea of the “Lost Pubs of Manchester.”

But as Eric would point out “what is the fun of a book on lost pubs?  It isn’t as if you can visit them and order up a pint of bitter with a dash of lemonade with a side glass of Creme de Menthe?"

So there you have it, and in the absence of an endorsement from Eric I shall just ask Andy to wander into Oldham and see what pubs he can find to photograph, and in the meantime he could look up Oldham Road in his 1969 durectory and tell me how many pubs there were on that long road.

Location Oldham Road

Pictures; the Copenhagen, 2017, from the collection of Andy Robertson, and in 1961, T Brooks, m36807, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council,http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

*Listen to Hannah's Bookshelf - every Saturday 2-4pm on North Manchester 106.6FM http://hannahkate.net/about/

** Pubs of Manchester, http://pubs-of-manchester.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Copenhagen%20-%20Oldham%20Road

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Clyne House in the Royal Botanical Gardens ............. another forgotten hospital from the Great War

March 24, 2017, 7:00 pm
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Patients and staff, Cyne House, 1917
Now there will be some who know of Clyne House and can instantly point to where it was, but I am not one of them.

All I had to go on was this picture postcard dated Christmas 1917 and the caption “Clyne House, Military Hospital.”

It appears in a list of wartime hospitals offering no address but somewhere along the way I picked up a reference to the Royal School for the Deaf and Dumb which had been relocated from Salford in 1825 to the Royal Botanical Gardens in Old Trafford.

The school in the Royal Botanical Gardens, 1893
The school remained on the site until 1956 and there are pictures of the building from 1900 and shortly before its demolition in 1962.*

And like many other large buildings it was offered up as a Red Cross Hospital caring for men recovering from wounds and diseases.

In time I think I will go looking for more information on the hospital but I fear it will be an uphill struggle.

Patients and staff, 1917
Despite being staffed and often funded by local contributions the historical foot print of these hospitals is all too vague.

Most were established in schools, church halls and other public buildings with quite a few converted from private residences.

Once the war was over, all the equipment was auctioned off and most of the buildings were returned to their pre war use.

All of which meant that with in a generation they were all but forgotten.

But the clues are there, sometimes in the form of a newspaper report or a letter from a grateful soldier and if you are really lucky there will be a detailed account.

The work of one Red Cross Hospital in Didsbury appeared regularly in the Manchester Guardian while another on Edge Lane in Chorlton was included in a detailed report by the Red Cross of their hospital in south Lancashire and another on Manchester Road in Chorlton was the subject of a letter to the local parish magazine.**

Patients and staff Clyne House, 1917
In time I know I will return to Clyne House and discover more.

But for now I will just finish with a special thank you to David Harrop who has a vast collection of memorabilia from both word wars.

They cover everything from letters and postcards home to medals and souvenirs, all of which bring a wonderful insight in to the lives of people caught up in these huge conflicts.

And some of them form part of a permanent exhibition at the Remembrance Lodge in Southern Cemetery.







Picture; of Clyne House, Military Hospital Xmas 1917 from the collection of David Harrop and detail of the Edge Lane Bowling and Tennis Club, from the OS map of South Lancashire, 1893, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/

*Trafford Lifetimes, http://legacy.trafford.gov.uk/content/tca/search_results.asp?fTown=3&fDecade=*&fKeyword=Clyne+House

**Red Cross Hospitals, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Red%20Cross%20Hospitals

***David Harrop,http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/David%20Harrop 

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Another story from Tony Goulding .... Brownhills Buildings and “Brownhills the Saddlers” ------ linked? You decide!

March 24, 2017, 7:00 pm
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For much of my childhood I lived on Ansdell Avenue and have vivid memories of playing in this back entry, which ran alongside Brownhills Buildings. I first became aware of “ Brownhills the Saddlers” during the 1970’s my family  having moved to Cundiff Road  and I recall purchasing asset of tungsten darts (which I still possess) from the shop around the end of that decade. 

Brownhill's Buildings, 1973
What follows is an attempt to assuage my curiosity concerning a link between these two places.
   
The history of Brownhills Buildings is already extremely well documented on this blog. For my purposes it is suffice to reiterate that they were built in the middle part of the 19th century by Chorlton-cum-Hardy’s wheelwright William Brownhill (1) and remained a feature of the Sandy Lane area until being condemned as unfit and demolished by the city council in 1972.
 
As with most such research the starting point for this enquiry was the 1881 census which shows a William Brownhill, born in 1839 in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, with a saddler’s business on Chester Road, Stretford.

Brownhill's shop, 2017
A look into earlier censuses (2) shows that this William was the son of the William Brownhill the builder of the Buildings which bear his name. Later records show that William Jnr’s  son Arnold(3) took over the business and up until at least the time of the 1954 street directory a shop was still trading under the name of “William Brownhill and Sons the Saddlers” on Chester Road (4) (5)
             

However, there is some doubt how, if at all, that business in Stretford is linked with these old premises on Barlow Moor Road, Chorlton-cum-Hardy. Directories of the 70’s and 80’s combined with a certain amount of local knowledge tell us that the proprietors of this shop from that time until it ceased trading in the middle of the first decade of the 21st century were Frederick  Allen and his wife Jean W.(née Parker).

As yet I have been unable to trace a familial connection. It is possible that the name “Brownhills the Saddlers” merely continued to be used as by that time it had become such a well established trading enterprise.  What is known: is that Arnold Brownhill married late in life, to Hilda (née Cookson) at All Saints Church, Stretford on the 28th August, 1909. Arnold and Hilda had no children and both passed away during the early 1940’s.
     
Of Arnold’s siblings only his youngest sister, Hilda appears to have a further connection to Chorlton-cum-Hardy. She married Lionel Nixon at St. Clement’s (Old Church) on the 11th October, 1906.
Lionel, the son of Samuel Edward Nixon the deceased Post Master, was residing at 18, Church (now Chequers) Road at that time. The 1911 census shows the couple running a stationer/tobacconist business together at 44, Beech Road, Chorlton-cum-Hardy.

Beech Road, 1968 from a photograph, 1947
No children are recorded but Lionel and Hilda appear to be “care givers” to Hilda’s 34 years old brother Leonard William who is described, rather unkindly, on the census as “feeble minded”. Interestingly, also, Lionel’s occupation on his wedding certificate differs from the 1911 census entry; it shows him as a “cha(i)rliner”
                    PICTURE 3

Finally this picture discovered in the Manchester Local Images Collection really “queers the pitch” as it purports to show two shops on Beech Road, Chorlton-cum-Hardy. The full caption states that this is an “oil painting taken from a 1947 photograph.”
         
After spending some time looking through census returns, street directories and rate books this picture remains a bit of an enigma. I’ve found no evidence of any “Brownhills” on Beech Road. There was however a smithy operated by the Clarke family (John and his sons Charles and Bould) from 1860 until the mid 1930’s.

The smithy was located on Beech Road adjacent the Methodist church building now functioning as a restaurant under various guises. However the date of 1947 is misleading as by that date the “smithy” was long gone , the 1939 register records that both it at no.127 and adjoining 129, Beech Road were both void properties.

© Tony Goulding, 2017

Pictures; Brownhill's Buildings, H.Milligan, 1973, 17696, and  Beech Road,  J.Montgomery Oil Painting of Beech Road, 1968 (from 1947 photograph) m80148  courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council,http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass
and Brownhill's shop, 2017 from the collection of Tony Goulding
Notes
1) William’s house and workshop were at the Barlow Moor Road end of Sandy Lane an area then known as “Lane End”
2) Especially the 1861 census which records the 22 year old William still living at “Lane End” with his father but already working as a saddler.
3) Not to be confused with his nephew and namesake Arnold the son of his brother James who had taken over his father’s wheelwright business. Young Arnold died tragically, aged just 4, after he was bitten by a rabid dog on 28th July, 1882. A report in “The Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser” dated 15th describes how the lad developed symptoms of rabies on Monday 11th and despite the ministrations of the young Doctor Arthur A. Pownall of Derwent House, High Lane he  died of Hydrophobia on Wednesday 13th September, 1882.
4) Originally at no.1154 later moved a little way to no. 1194.
5) William Jnr. was baptised in St. Clements, Chorlton-cum-Hardy on the 7thof April, 1839. He married Maria Langford in Manchester Cathedral during the September quarter of 1861.  Several of the couples children continued to be christened at St. Clement’s but, on 5th November, 1871, Arnold was baptised in St. Matthew’s Church, Stretford

See also One family trading on Beech Road from 1841, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/one-family-trading-on-beech-road-from.html

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War Baby ......... stories by Eddy Newport no 25 ....

March 24, 2017, 7:30 pm
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Another in the series by Eddy Newport taken from his book, History of a War Baby.

Edie and Ted
What was I doing when all this was going, well I getting myself ready to make an entry into a war-torn world of uncertainty and confusion? Edie was expecting her first child.

Later, Hitler’s  planes started bombing London and things became very unhealthy indeed. Ted had by now moved with his regiment to Yorkshire so the army could get ready for the expected invasion of England.

Summer 1940 turned to autumn and then winter, and by this time the bombs were dropping on London in a greater intensity.

The evacuation of children and expectant mothers was underway. Grandmother Sara and her son Jim stayed in London as he was doing important factory work for the war effort.

It was decided to send Edie to Yorkshire for her confinement and to be closer to Ted.

It was November 1940. Edie 21 years old, and on her own travelled to Doncaster, hopefully, to meet Ted who would deliver her to a house in Rossington to stay with a friend’s dad he had made since he had been posted there. Ted in the meantime was out with the army on a training excise and he ask his C.O. if he could get away to meet his wife.

Unfortunately, he could not get permission, and poor Edie just had to wait at Doncaster station for over three hours before she was picked up.  She, at last, got to her destination and Ted got a telling off from the host family for not letting them know that he was unable to pick her up, as they could have made some arrangements of their own.

Eddy aged 1
On the 15th December 1940, a London boy was born a Yorkshire lad at 60 Holmes Carr Road New Rossington in the parish of Bawtry and Tickhill. I have no memory of this place. I did go back and had a look at the house many years later.

 Rossington is a mining village and just about everybody who lived there worked at the mine. Outside the village stands a beautiful church St Michaels. There I was christened Edward James Newport. Edie had a traumatic time with me. I would not stop crying and drove everybody mad. I was told I was nearly smothered to shut me up.

Edie was in a strange house with people she did not know. She had never been away from her mum and brother in all her life before and with a new baby.

It’s no wonder she was in a stressful state. The baby was reflecting his mother stress. However the bombing subsided in London and Sara was missing her daughter and grandson and wanted them to come back to London.

Eddie at 16
It worked out fine as dad was posted to Dartford and they found a maisonette in Burnham Close Dartford and moved there.  Dad was stationed there with access to his married quarters.

 Edie and Ted made friends with a man called Sid Goff and he had a son and daughter Wally and Celia.

Celia would push me around in my pram.

Wally was 14 and lodged with Ted and Edie until he was 16 then he went into the merchant navy.

The sergeant’s mess in Dartford had many social occasions and at times, he would get on the piano and play for the evening.

One night a soldier came over and said he could play the saxophone and he sent him home on leave to get it.

Ted
Also, a drummer and trumpet player joined the embryo band.  Very soon they were booked to play at functions making music for dances. I asked dad if he was earning any money doing this he said they did it for fun; and free drinks.

Ted, as I have said before was never a reader of music and his limitations were felt by the band in reading arrangements and introducing new tunes.

Then one night after new recruits arrived. A private said to Ted could he have a go at the piano. Ted said, “If you can play it better than me you can have the job”.

It turned out that the private was a professional musician and played with a named London big band.  The relief from the rest of the other musicians must have been fantastic. From then on Ted just fronted the band singing songs announcing the dances and managing the bookings. His star performances of “Old Farther Thames” and “The Fishermen of England” were a hit.

© Eddy Newport 2017

Pictures; from the collection of Eddy Newport
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Making a new start, Canada in 1851, an introduction to a story of immigration

March 24, 2017, 7:30 pm
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James Hampson was born in 1816 and married Sarah Tildesley in December 1838 at the Parish Church of Eccles.

In 1841 he described himself as a cotton dyer and in that year was living in Pendleton.  Sometime after 1849, James, Sarah and their children left for Canada which was a popular destination for emigrants.  Now I can be fairly certain of this because their last child was born in  England in 1849 and the Canadian census of 1851 records them as there.

Thousands of people, many of them from Ireland left these shores in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  Most hoped that a new country would mean a fresh start with new opportunities and a better life.


The 1840s were a hard time for all but the rich and there were schemes to resettle working families across the Empire. This was a policy that was actively pursued by the Poor Law Commissioners with parochial aid or assistance from local landlords.   The Commissioners reported that over 2, 000 had gone to Canada in 1841 which was an increase on the year before, and that assistance was also being given to move to Australia and New Zealand.


The main sea port for their departure was Liverpool.  In the hundred years from 1830 to 1930 over nine million emigrants sailed from to the US, Canada and Australia.  I don’t think we will ever know exactly why the Hampson's left and there is no record of when they went but they were part of a steadily rising number of people which  reached a high point in 1849.

Even today the decision to emigrate cannot be an easy one to take, but a hundred and sixty years ago the cost, the problems and the very real dangers must have weighed heavily.  A ticket for just one person travelling on the cheapest passage might be three to five times James’s weekly wage, and of course there were four of them.**

Then there were the ever present threats from unscrupulous dealers, ship owners and the crew who might cheat the passengers at every turn of the journey. Lastly there was the sea passage itself, a trip of a month in a sailing ship at the mercy of an unpredictable weather on the open sea, crammed together with people some of whom were ill with disease.

So, taking that decision was as much an act of faith as it was a rational choice with a secure conclusion.
The ships might hold up wards of four hundred passengers although some like the Isaac Wright could carry 900 people. The Hampson's could expect a fairly basic diet on the journey.  Each passenger was given a weekly ration of bread, rice, tea, sugar as well as oatmeal flour, molasses and vinegar and one pound of pork.   Passengers could however supplement this with their own provisions but there was an upper limit.  There are contemporary stories of passengers being cheated of their rightful ration either because it was delivered late or just not at all.

Conditions on board were not ideal.  Packed together there was the ever present threat of disease and death.  All the passengers were by law inspected by a doctor before they embarked but this did not always prevent the outbreak of illnesses.  In one month in 1847 twelve ships making landfall at Grosse Island reported a total of 198 dead passengers out of just over 3,000.  Some ships arrived safely with no deaths others like Bark Larch from Sligo lost 108 of its 440 passengers with another 150 reported ill.  The highest death rates seemed to be ships bound from Ireland escaping the effects of the famine some years earlier.***

Location; Salford, Greater Manchester

*The Eighth Annual Report of the Poor Law Commissioners, HMSO 1842, Page 37 Google edition page 58

**In 1847 a ticket might cost between £3.10/- and £5. From a newspaper article The tide of emigration in the Illustrated London  News July 1850

***Immigrants to Canada, http://jubilation.uwaterloo.ca/~marj/genealogy/thevoyage.html 

Picture; detail of Pendleton from OS Lancashire 1841 courtesy of Digital Archives Association www.digitalarchives.co.uk/
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Lost and forgotten streets of Salford nu 5 ............ what you find on Blackfriars Road

March 24, 2017, 7:35 pm
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I am always fascinated by those narrow little passageways which hold the promise of all sorts of dark stories.

Passageway, 2016
Now this one has no name, and leads to Harding Street which today just gives access to a car park under the railway arches from Salford Approach.

So our little passageway seems hardly worth a second glance, but not so.

Go back to 1849 and it led to a closed court called Nightingale Square which in turn took you on to Harding’s Buildings which was the original Harding Street.

Here could be found 23 properties some of which were back to back and a whole warren of alleys on either side.

All were lost with the construction of the new railway viaduct and Exchange Station in 1884.

All of which just leaves me to go looking for the two buildings that stood on either side of our passage.

These were the Salford Library and Mechanic’s Institution to the left and The Royal Archer Public House to the right.

Now I am pretty sure there will be someone who can point me towards pictures of the Library and offer up rich stories of its contribution to Salford life.

In the same way I am also confident that The Royal Archer will reveal something of its past/

This I suspect will start with the names of some of the landords and if we are lucky a date for its opening.

It was there by 1849 and may well be much older than that.  In 1851 it was run by Margaret Horton and with a name we may be able to find out more.

Sadly Harding's Buildiings and Nightingale Square were not considered important enough for inclusion in the directories.

But Margaret Horton should be on the 1851 census and by following the streets from her pub it might be possible to come across both Harding's Buildings and Nightingale Square and in turn uncover the people who lived there.

We shall see.

Location; Salford

Pictures; passageway on Blackfriars Road, 2016 from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and the area in 1849, from the OS for Manchester and Salford, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

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Me, a camera and bits of the City I like ..............Nu 6 Knott Mill

March 24, 2017, 8:00 pm
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Now all these pictures have already appeared but that has never stopped me wanting to use them all over again to explore my City.


Location, Castlefield, Manchester












Picture; Knott Mill, 2003, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

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William & Julia Relph of the Rising Sun a promise fulfilled

March 24, 2017, 8:31 pm
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This is William Relph who ran the Rising Sun on the High Street from sometime in the 1880s till his death in 1909.

Now you can never be certain but it is more than likely that when a photographer turned up in the High Street in the summer of 1890 it will have been the landlord of the Rising Sun who came to the door to see what all the fuss was about.

And so this is William Relph and I have to own up to a mix of quiet satisfaction and fascination that I have tracked him down.

It was apromiseI made in earlier stories and have now completed that promise.*

He was born in Greenwich in 1847 and came from a family that ran public houses.

What marks him out as a little special is that William saw his time out in both the old Rising Sun and the new one which still stands on the High Street.

The old pub according to our historian R.R.C Gregory was about 200 years old when it was demolished and replaced by the present pub in 1904.

Nor is that the only thing that intrigues me about William.

I had almost given up hope of finding him and then as you do I came across his widow Julia who was still in charge in 1911, and it was Julia who caught my imagination.

She was born in Cadiz, Spain and of course that raises all sorts of intriguing speculation.

But before I could go off on a flight of fancy I discovered her maiden name was West and like William her father was a publican.

That said her parents were in Spain between the birth of her brother in 1852 and when she was born two years later which may explain why they are missing from the census returns for the middle decades of the 19th century.

So there is more to find out but finding William and Julia of the Rising Sun is enough for now.

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 and Chrissie Rose February 2014

*Eltham’s Rising Sun, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Eltham%27s%20Rising%20Sun
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Reflecting on Mr Amato’s Italian deli and Del’s cakes ...... changing Chorlton no 3

March 24, 2017, 8:31 pm
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Now when they come to write the history of Beech Road, and they will, there will be a debate on what caused its regeneration.

Buonissimo, 2000
In the mid 1980s many of the shops were closing and it was unclear what the future held.

Just a decade before the road had boasted everything from an iron monger’s two bakeries, three butcher’s and a couple of grocers along with Richard and Murial’s fruit and vegetables business.

And slip back another ten years and you could add a fresh fish outlet, a television shop and much more.

But the onward sweep of supermarkets put an end to these traditional shops and for a while there were than a few empty ones.

And then along came Primavera followed by the Lead Station and it was clear Beech Road might just be going in a new direction.

I don’t doubt the importance of these two establishments, but for me the tipping point might well have been the opening of the Italian deli in what had once been an off license.

Bob Amato opened it in 1993 and from the beginning Buonissimo was a success, offering a range of fresh food from pasta, to bread, to cakes and all things Italian.

No 56 Beech Road, 1985
Added to which he and his partner Del would order up stuff which were not available from Hanbury’s.

And the importance of Buonissimo was that it was bringing people onto Beech Road during the day, and from there they popped next door to Richard and Murial’s crossing the road to Joy Seal’s the Chemist and the Post Office and wandering up to Richardson’s for a pie or pasty.

Now I am fully prepared to admit that with Richardson’s, Sunflowers and the two butcher’s shops run by David and by Mr Henderson food hadn’t completely vanished from Beech Road.

Nor would I make an exaggerated claim for the role of the deli in regenerating where I live but it helped and what followed were the gift shops, and the bars.

Beech Road, 1975
There will be those who argue that the gift and bar economy has gone too far so that while it is perfectly easy to get some imitation Victorian soap there is no chance of picking up 4lbs of potatoes a bag of grapes and two melons.

On the other hand we still do have a pet shop, along with a new deli, and of course a paper shop.

Looking back Beech Road was the first, and has been followed by similar developments on Wilbraham Road and Barlow Moor Road, although we were beaten to it by Burton Road in West Didsbury which offers up that same mix of shopping experiences.

Beech Road, 2008
Bob and Delare still in the food business and continue to operate their wholesale business from a new building in St Andrew’s Square in town, and I still visit their old deli but now order a selection of tapas and white wine.

Location Beech Road

Pictures; Number 56 Beech Road, 1985, courtesy of Tom McGrath, Beech Road in 1975 from the collection of Tomy Walker, and Buonissimo two decades later and relaxing on Beech Road, 2008, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Amato Food Products, http://amatoproducts.co.uk/

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Of Naples in 1961 and Little Italy in Ancoats in 1901

March 24, 2017, 9:00 pm
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Rosa in Naples 1961
This is one of my favourite pictures of Rosa.

It was taken in Naples when she was just 21 during the summer of 1961 just after she had collected her passport.

Later that year she left Italy with Simone her husband and movedto Cambridge.*

They were two of those economic migrants much derided by some who sought a new life in a new country.

In the same way and just sixty years earlier my father’s parents crossed the border from Scotland and settled in Gateshead while just a little later my maternal grandfather  came home to Derby with his German war bride.

And it carried on.  Dad and mum finally made their way to London where I was born and over the course of twenty years moved around south east London, and just under a decade later I left for Manchester.

All of which reinforces that simple idea that people move around, make new homes in new places and along the way add to the communities they have joined.

Nor is it all one way.  My great uncle left for Canada in 1914 followed by his sister eleven years later. One of my uncles carved out a career in India and east Africa before settling down in South Africa and to close the Italian connection Rosa and Simone finally left Cambridge for Italy returning not to Naples but Varese in the north.  Only for one of their daughters to return to Cambridge, relocate to Manchester and in the fullness of time to set up home with me.

13-15 Blossom Street, 1903
All of which is an introduction to the many who found a home here in Manchester in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Ours was the shock city of the Industrial Revolution and the mills, engineering plants, chemical works and collieries drew in the rural poor from the surrounding countryside, which were added to by those fleeing the famine in Ireland and later still those escaping the persecution in eastern Europe and the grinding poverty of southern Europe.

For some this was the eventual destination while for others it was the half way stage before crossing the Atlantic.

And their presence can still be found in the synagogues and Torah School of the Jewish community of Strangeways and Redbank and in names like Little Ireland and Little Italy.

Most have had their historians who have recorded their presence, ** which is all to the good because these communities have by and large vanished.  Little Ireland which had become one of our worst slums fell victim not to the sweep of town planners but to the railway, which cut through the area.

Not for the first time did a  railway company act as a means for slum clearance.  Much the same happened to sections of Angel Meadow in the north of the city and to parts of London’s slums.

In the case of the Jewish communities of Strangways and Redbank it was that other familiar social development which saw the better off moving out along Cheetham Hill Road to leafy more pleasant places.

Jersey Street, 2011
And so finally to Little Italy in Ancoats which became home to those from Italy who were seeking a better life.

They came from the great cities of the north like Milan, Turin and Genoa from the rural hinterland as well Naples, Sorrento, and Palermo.

It was a small close knit community inhabiting the area behind Great Ancoats Street and primarily located around Jersey Street, Blossom Street, and Henry Street.


Jersey Street, 1908, with No 2 Jackson Court to the left
Now as I often maintain if someone has done the research I have no intention of stealing their thunder, so for those who want to know more about Little Italy there is not only Anthony Rea’s book Little Italy, which was first published in 1988 but his equally finesitewhere you can find a wealth of information, stories and pictures.***

Added to this there are links to a whole range of other sites which give a comprehensive picture of he life they left and the contribution they made to their adopted city.

Pictures; Rosa in Naples, 1961 from the collection of the Balzano family, 13-15 Blossom Street,  A, Bradburn, 1903, m11033, and Jersey Street, 1908 m10153, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass and Blossom Street from Great Ancoats Street with Gun Street and Henry Street beyond, 2010 from the collection of Andrew Simpson



*Messy history .......... Part One Migration, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/messy-history-part-one-migration.html


** Bill Williams, The Making of Manchester Jewry, Manchester University Press 1976, Jewish Manchester: An Illustrated History, DB Publishing, 2008, and a new book on Manchester’s Pre Black History 1750-1926, Anthony Rea, Little Italy, Neil Richardson, 1988, and of course Little Ireland in Conditions of the Working Classes in England , Friedrich Engels, 1844

***Manchester's Ancoats, Little Italy, http://www.ancoatslittleitaly.com/index.html


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In the Piazza Monte Grappa

March 24, 2017, 9:01 pm
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The Piazza Monte Grappa would not be my first choice of a place to sit and watch the world go by.

It is a rather drab place surrounded by unremarkable tall buildings and dominated by a fountain with concrete seats.

Even the bars are less than enticing.  The two of them face each other across the square but the tables are arranged under a series of arches which while they give you protection from the rain do little to give a sense of cafe life.   So on those days when the sun shines down and you want to feel it on your back you sit instead in a cavernous arch way and endure the gloom.

Occasionally there will be a concession to the sun and the tables and chairs on the eastern side will be pulled out from building but still you are in the shadow of those arches.
And so it was when we wandered through on our way to somewhere more interesting and I stopped to take a photograph.

And maybe on a bright early summer's morning with that freshness in the air, the fountain playing out, and the the huge tree to the south of the piazza it's not such a bad place.  So with this in mind perhaps I will inflict you with more from Varese.

Picture; from the collection of Andrew Simpson

**Varese, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Varese

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Leaving for Canada in 1849 .... a momentous step

March 25, 2017, 6:30 pm
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I think you would have to be really poor of imagination not to feel something at seeing the marriage certificate of an ancestor.

I am staring at the marriage certificate of James Hampson and Sarah Tildsley who were married on December 9th 1838 in the parish church of Eccles.

Now strictly speaking they are not family, but belong to my cousins in, Ontario, but Pendleton where they were both born and lived is just five miles away from Chorlton and they began their married life during the time I been writing about our own township.

And sometime just a decade after their marriage they took the momentous step and left for Canada with their five children the eldest of whom must have been no more than eleven and the youngest just about two years old.

James Hampson was born in 1816 and Sarah a year later and they reflected something of the changes that were happening to Pendleton.  Both came from families which were connected with the new Pendleton which was a place of cotton mills, dye works and coal mines.  Sarah’s father was an engineer and both James and his father were cotton dyers. By the 1840s this part of the northwest had become a centre for the manufacture of cotton.  In 1842 there were 412 cotton mills employing thousands of workers in what is now the Greater Manchester area while Manchester alone had 41 factories.

And cotton dyeing is an essential part of the cotton process.  Many of the dye works were situated along the banks of the River Irwell utilising the steady flow of water.  Before the 1850s the process still relied on natural dyes using the flowers, berries, leaves, barks and roots of plants and herbs.  As such the work would not have been as dangerous as it was to become with the introduction of chemical dyes.

But it must still have been very uncomfortable.  James would have constantly been exposed to hot and cold water and dyes which left his hands stained different colours.  He would also have worked longer hours than other cotton workers.  Long after the government had begun to regulate working hours in the cotton industry a Royal Commission in 1855 found that many bleaching, dyeing and printing workers  regularly put in fifteen or sixteen hours a day and often continued for several days and nights without stopping.

The family lived on Ashton Street within a few minute’s walk from cotton mills, a dye works and a coal mine with the newly built railway and the slightly older canal close by.

Looking out from their home the Hampson’s would have been faced with a row of one up one down back to back houses which backed on to Miners Row.  Theirs might have been a slightly bigger house but the detailed 1848 OS map shows that their nearest water pump was some distance away.

And while there are was sill dotted with plenty of open land it must have been obvious that in the next few decades all of it would be developed for more industrial and residential use.

The rural appearance of where they lived should not blind us to the fact that it must have been a hard life.
Hours were long and wages were low. Engels quotes from the Factory Inspector, Leonard Horner in October 1844

“The state of things in the matter of wages is greatly perverted in certain branches of  cotton manufacture in Lancashire; there are hundreds of young men, between twenty and thirty, employed as piecers and other wise who do not get more than eight or nine shillings a week, while children under thirteen years, working under the same roof, earn five shillings, and young girls from sixteen to twenty years, ten to 12 shillings per week” *

Wages fluctuated with the trade cycle.**  In 1833 the highest wages were paid to men between the ages of 31 to 36, with huge disparities recorded for women and children. Their wages could also be docked for minor misdemeanours ranging from lateness to leaving a window open.***

Now trying to make sense of wages one hundred and sixty-years later is always fraught with difficulty. However Engels living in 1845 was in no doubt that the above wage levels were not good.  And this had a direct impact on the standard of living.  Their food was basic and monotonous. The staples were bread, oatcakes, watery porridge, potatoes, and a little bacon. Sometimes the porridge was flavoured with onions. Porridge was also made in thick lumps so it could be eaten with the hands at work. Tripe (sheep stomach lining), slink (calf born too early), and broxy (diseased sheep) were regarded as treats by the poorest.

Many workers were still paid on a Saturday evening and by then the quality of food at the markets was poor.
“The potatoes which the workers buy are usually poor, the vegetables wilted and the cheese old and poor quality, the bacon rancid, the meat lean, tough, taken from old , often diseased cattle”****
An observation Engels followed up the report that on January 6th 1844 eleven meat sellers had been fined for selling tainted meat.   Added to this there was the adulteration of food as this report from The Liverpool Mercury shows
 '
Salt butter is moulded into the form of pounds of fresh butter, and cased over with fresh. In other instances a pound of fresh is conspicuously placed to be tasted; but that pound is not sold; and in other instances salt butter, washed is moulded and sold as fresh...pounded rice and other cheap materials are mixed in sugar, and sold at full monopoly price. A chemical substance...the refuse of the soap manufactories...is also mixed with other substances and sold as sugar...chicory is mixed in good coffee. Chicory, or some similarly cheap substance, is skilfully moulded into the form of the coffee berry, and it is mixed with the bulk very liberally...cocoa is extensively adulterated with fine brown earth, wrought up with mutton fat; so as to amalgamate with portions of the real article...the leaves of tea are mingled with sloe levies and other abominations. Used leaves are also re-dried, and re-coloured on hot copper plates, and sold as tea. Pepper is adulterated with dust from husks etc; port wine is altogether manufactured (from spirits, dyes etc.), it being notorious that more port wine is drunk in this country than is made in Portugal. Nasty things of all sorts are mixed with weed tobacco in all its manufactured forms.” *****

Hard work, long hour’s poor housing and a poor diet left its mark on the health of people.  In 1842 the average life expectancy of the working class in Manchester was just 17 years of age.  There is no reason to suppose it was any better in Salford.  Indeed infant mortality in Salford in 1850 was much higher than the national average.******

All this took its toll as this description of mill workers by a medical worker in 1833 is horrifyingly unflattering:
'...their complexion is sallow and pallid--with a peculiar flatness of feature, ...their stature low--the average height of four hundred men, measured at different times, and different places, being five feet six inches...their limbs slender, and playing badly and ungracefully...a very general bowing of the legs...great numbers of girls and women walking lamely or awkwardly, with raised chests and spinal flexures...nearly all have flat feet, accompanied with a down-tread, differing very widely from the elasticity of action in the foot and ankle, attendant upon perfect formation...hair thin and straight--many of the men having but little beard, and that in patches of a few hairs...' *******


Given all this it is easy to see why a family might choose an alternative and the 1840s were a  hard time for all but the rich and there were schemes to resettle working families across the Empire. This was a policy that was actively pursued by the Poor Law Commissioners with parochial aid or assistance from local landlords.   The Commissioners reported that over 2, 000 had gone to Canada in 1841 which was an increase on the year before, and that assistance was also being given to move to Australia and New Zealand.

Location; Salford, Greater Manchester

*Horner Leonard Factory Inspector quoted by Engels Frederick The Conditions of the Working Class in England 1845 page 170


**Frow, Edmund & Ruth, Radical Salford 1984 page 34

***Frow, page 4

****Engels page 101

*****Liverpool Mercury quoted in Engels, Friedrick page 102

******In 1850 infant mortality was 175 per thousand compared to 150 nationally

*******Gaskell P, The Manufacturing Population of England, London, 1833

Pictures; Marriage certificate from the collection of Jacquie Pember-Barnum, 1848 OS map for Lancashire and Union Street Mill,Ancoats, Austin and Gahey, 1835, m52534, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass 

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