Out of Tredegar ...... Aneurin Bevan, 70 years of the NHS and the Welsh health service which preceded it

June 28, 2018, 6:30 pm

≫ Next: A little bit of gentle fun at the seaside in the 1930s ........ no 3 the nice boy

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

Now, listening today, to Out of Tredegar with Martin Sheen on the wireless reaffirmed my admiration for Radio 4.*

Aneurin Bevan, 1954

It was a wonderful piece of radio, telling the story of the Tredegar health service which pretty much was the model for the National Health Service, and focused on Aneurin Bevan, the Labour politician who was responsible for its creation.

Aneurin Bevan was born in the town and much of the programme was given over to stories about him, and the impact of a health service, free at the point of delivery on the lives of millions of people, many of whom before 1948 “couldn’t afford to be ill”.

So that is all I am going to say, other than there is 29 days left to listen to it.

Producer: Martin Williams, BBC Wales.

Picture; Aneurin Bevan and his wife Jenny Lee in Corwen, 1952, Geoff Charles, made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication

*Out of Tredegar , https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b7hl3d

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A little bit of gentle fun at the seaside in the 1930s ........ no 3 the nice boy

June 29, 2018, 6:30 pm

≫ Next: The lost Eltham & Woolwich pictures ...... no.21 the passing river trade

≪ Previous: Out of Tredegar ...... Aneurin Bevan, 70 years of the NHS and the Welsh health service which preceded it

A short series reflecting on a bit of gentle fun from the seaside.

That said each of the four has something to say about the period in which they were sent.

But I will leave you to draw conclusions.

Location; at the seaside in Wales

Picture; courtesy of Ron Stubley

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The lost Eltham & Woolwich pictures ...... no.21 the passing river trade

June 29, 2018, 7:00 pm

≫ Next: Lost and forgotten streets of Salford ........... nu 23 Chapel Street at the Old Ship

≪ Previous: A little bit of gentle fun at the seaside in the 1930s ........ no 3 the nice boy

A short series on the pictures of Eltham and Woolwich in 1976.

For four decades the pictures I took of Eltham and Woolwich in the mid ‘70’s sat undisturbed in our cellar.

But all good things eventually come to light.

They were colour slides which have been transferred electronically.

The quality of the original lighting and the sharpness is sometimes iffy, but they are a record of a lost Eltham and Woolwich.

Location; Woolwich

Picture; Woolwich circa 1976, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

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Lost and forgotten streets of Salford ........... nu 23 Chapel Street at the Old Ship

June 29, 2018, 7:00 pm

≫ Next: Looking for the lost ...... one street over time in Ancoats ..... no 3 Homer Street when the developer came knocking

≪ Previous: The lost Eltham & Woolwich pictures ...... no.21 the passing river trade

Now I can’t yet be sure of the date but I do know exactly where we are on Chapel Street and the clue is the Old Ship Inn at number 17 Chapel Street.

And that places us on the stretch of road running up to Victoria Bridge.

The Old Ship is there by 1849 and was still there in 1911 and with a bit of digging I should be able to discover when it was swept away.

For those unfamiliar with the new Salford, the pub stands roughly on the site of the Premier Inn and what is now the entrance to the car park will have once been Hatton’s Court a long thin alley which led down to a tannery past a row of houses some of which were back to backs.

I am hoping that there will be people who remember the Old Ship or have access to books which offer up something of its history.

In the mean time there is that name James to the right of the pub, and armed with that it should be possible to trawl the directories and locate the business and find a date.

There maybe even be a clue in those newspapers.

And as ever my friend Alan came up with the following, the picture dates from 1870, and "the Old Ship was the tall building in the first picture and licensees can be traced back to the 1760's.

The Hatton family kept the ship for about 30 years from 1807 and they gave their name to the court at the side of the pub.

It was rebuilt in 1900, destroyed during the Christmas Blitz of 1940 and a new pub was built on the site in the mid 1950'at the end of 1999 it was demolished.

In the book Salford Pubs, there is this : "Across Hattons court from the Old Ship, there was a very old, timber framed building with lath and plaster walls, it was divided into five shops and these had a variety of tenants during the 19th century, in the 1840's the shop next to Hattons Court was occupied by a butcher and by 1850 it was a beerhouse called the Fishermens Hut.

The first recorded licensees were Mary and then Elizabeth Copley, who was there until about 1863. A horse dealer called Thomas Wood took over a few years later and he was still there in the 1880's.

The last licensee was Thomas Baxter and the Fishermens Hut along with the adjoining shops was pulled down in 1894...'"

Which pretty much nails the story! .

Location; Salford

Additional research; Alan Jennings

Picture; Chapel Street, date unknown, A Brother, M77249, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

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Looking for the lost ...... one street over time in Ancoats ..... no 3 Homer Street when the developer came knocking

June 29, 2018, 7:00 pm

≫ Next: All that’s fit to print ....... reading Chorlton’s news over the last 150 years

≪ Previous: Lost and forgotten streets of Salford ........... nu 23 Chapel Street at the Old Ship

The story of one streetin Ancoats, and the people who lived and worked there.

North of the river, 1819

Homer Street was located just south of St Andrew’s Church and was bordered by the canal to the north, the river to the south and London Road Railway Station to the east.

A short walk in pretty much any direction would offer a mix of cotton mills, dye works and timber yards all of which provided work for the residents of our street.

I can’t be exactly sure when it was built, but St Andrews which is just one street away was opened in 1831 and by 1837 the properties show up in the rate books owned by a Mr Price.

And just eighteen years earlier on Johnson’s map of 1819 the area up from the river to the canal was still open land although already it was edged with buildings.

The area, 1966

Homer Street seems a cut above some of the others.

The houses consisted of four rooms and they commanded a rent of 1 shilling and 9d a week.

This was at a time when the best wages paid in the cotton factories in 1833, for a man in his 30s might earn 22 shillings and 8d.

Sometime between 1934 and 1988 the properties were demolished and the site is given over to a sheet metal works which continued to occupy the site until the 1960s when for a while the land was vacant.

During the 1970s and until quite recently the area was a bus depot which ceased operating at the beginning of this century.

It is now a food warehouse owned by Amato Food Products.*

It would be intriguing to know if anything the Homer Street properties still exist just below the surface.

Not that I would ask Mr Amato to dig a hole in his warehouse floor.

Location; Ancoats

Pictures; a section of Ancoats whre Homer Street was to be built in 18i6, from the Johnson’s map of Manchester, 1819 courtesy of Digital Archives Association,http://digitalarchives.co.uk/and St Andrew’s Square from St Andrews Street, facing west, 1966, T Brooks, m10604, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

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All that’s fit to print ....... reading Chorlton’s news over the last 150 years

June 29, 2018, 7:30 pm

≫ Next: The fires above Stalybridge ........ June 29 2018

≪ Previous: Looking for the lost ...... one street over time in Ancoats ..... no 3 Homer Street when the developer came knocking

Now when you have lived in Chorlton for over 40 years you get to have read a lot of local and almost local newspapers.

Open Up, 2018

They came in all sorts of shapes and sizes, have varied in content and purpose and now courtesy of Open Up, have an on line version.

And here I must admit to a personal interest because I have been writing for Open Up for six years, starting when it went under the name of Community Index, and appearing in first its Chorlton edition, and then its Didsbury version. Since then it has expanded, changed its name and along with its home edition has expanded the second magazine to cover south Manchester.

Before that we tended to be included in the City wide papers** along with those that added us as a passing thought which included the Journal stable of papers, and The Reporter series and the Chorlton and Wilbraham News.***

Of all of these my favourite is the South Manchester Gazette, which only lasted three years but had the foresight to commission our own Thomas Elwood to write the story of Chorlton-cum-Hardy.

The South Manchester Gazette, 1885

There were 26 articles which appeared during the winter of 1885 and into the spring of the following year and along with Reverend Booker’s A History of the Ancient Chapels of Didsbury and Chorlton, published thirty years earlier, remain the starting point for reading about the Township’s past.

And while Mr Elwood drew on the book by the Reverend Booker, he also recorded the memories of local residents who could talk about the Chorlton of their youth and by extension call up conversations and memories from their parents and grandparents, taking us back to the time when King Georg 111 lost us the American colonies.

Chorlton Green, 1984

But no review can miss out the short lived Chorlton Green which was an alternative community newspaper.

It ran from January 1984 to sometime in May 1986 and the first editorial set the style, “Let 1984 come alive with Chorlton Green....Chorlton Green is a community newspaper, and offers Chorlton the voice it’s never had before – in personal opinion, in creative work and as an information exchange”.

Chorlton Peace Festival, 1984

And over the next two years the paper covered a lot of what went on in Chorlton and never shied away from controversial stories but could also ponder on the return of the tram and a time in the future when we might become“South Manchester’s Bohemian Heartland” including an “artist’s quarter” with a “glossy sheen of alternative bookstores, exotic antique shops, delicatessens and specialists in ....countercultural accessories”.

They didn’t see the explosion on the bar culture but I rather think got the rest about right.

We got our copy from Bryan the Book who sold it from his bookshop and it may even have been on sale at the newsagents on Barlow Moor Road, opposite Hanbury’s.

The Almanack, 1910

All of which leaves just me including the front page of The Chorlton-cum-Hardy District Almanack and Handbook For 1910.

It was published in that year by Harry Kemp who was one of our first councillors elected to Manchester City Council in 1904 and who had two chemist shops one of which gave the corner of Barlow Moor Road and Wilbraham Road the its popular title of Kemp’s Corner, which lasted as a name well into the 1960s’ predating the official designation of Chorlton Cross and the now frequently used Four Banks.

It is not a newspaper but has a wealth of local information, about what we were like, and in its way is part of all that was fit to print about Chorlton.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; cover of Chorlton Up July-August, 2018, courtesy of Open Up Magazines, http://openupmagazines.co.uk/ front page of South Manchester Gazette, 1885, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass, front page of Chorlton Green, 1984 courtesy of Bernard Leach, the Chorlton Peace Festival, 1984, from the collection of Tony Walker, front page of The Chorlton-cum-Hardy District Almanack and Handbook For 1910, Harry Kemp, 1910 and Barlow Moor Road, 1980, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Open Up, http://openupmagazines.co.uk/

Barlow Moor Road, 1980

**The list is quite long and includes the Manchester Chronicle [1897-1963], The Manchester City News, [1864-1958], The Manchester Courier, [1825-1916], The Manchester Evening News, [1868-2018], The Manchester Guardian, [1821-1959], The Manchester Metro News,[1991-2],

*** Chorlton Journal [?], Chorlton and Wilbraham News, [?]Stretford * Urmston Journal, [?, ]South Manchester Chronicle, [1889-1897], South Manchester Express/Advertiser, [1992-2000], South Manchester Gazette [1885-1888], South Manchester Reporter [1993-2011]

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The fires above Stalybridge ........ June 29 2018

June 29, 2018, 7:30 pm

≫ Next: The story of a British Home Child ...... born in London, enlisted in the C.E.F., and died in Manchester in 1918

≪ Previous: All that’s fit to print ....... reading Chorlton’s news over the last 150 years

We woke to the distinctive smell of smoke this morning as we have done every day since Monday.

Most days it is just a hint but on the first day it was very noticeable, and there was just a slight haziness, like looking out through a dirty window.

Of course our slight discomfort is nothing compared with what those on the east of the city and particularly in Stalybridge at the foot of the fires must be experiencing.

We are a full 16 miles away while Stalybridge is right beside it.

I have resisted writing about the fires, because there is that sense that to do so is an intrusion on the misery of others but last night Peter posted a picture from Spinneyfields, high above the city streets of the hills and the fires to the east.*

There have been many other powerful images of those fires but this one a full 10 miles away tells the story.

Leaving me just to reflect on the dedication of the firefighters, now joined by the army and on the generosity of the general public who have donated to the comforts of all those struggling to contain the fires

Location; Spinneyfields, Manchester

Picture; looking across to the fires on Saddleworth Moor, from the collection of Peter Armistead

*20 Stories, 1 Hardman Street, Manchester, https://20stories.co.uk/

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The story of a British Home Child ...... born in London, enlisted in the C.E.F., and died in Manchester in 1918

June 29, 2018, 6:59 pm

≫ Next: A little bit of gentle fun at the seaside in the 1930s ........ no 4 central heating

≪ Previous: The fires above Stalybridge ........ June 29 2018

There is a story yet to be told about the twenty-six men of the Canadian Expeditionary Force who are buried here in Southern Cemetery.

Grave of Thomas John Loveland, 1918, Southern Cemetery

They will all have been patients in the nearby military hospital which until the Great War began had been the hospital for the local Workhouse.

And each will have died while recovering from their wounds or illnesses.

In time I want to follow up each of their lives in as much detail as I can.

For now I know that this is the grave of Thomas John Loveland of the Canadian Machine Gun Corps who died on November 6 1918, just days before the Armistice and end of the war.

He was just 21 years old and had been born here in the United Kingdom in London and he may even have been a British Home Child because his Attestation papers show his trade as a farmer and his next of kin as Eliza who was still living in the UK.

Cover of Canada in Khaki, 1917

Eliza was his sister who was just six years older than Thomas.

Their father who had been a gas labourer had died in 1903 at the age of 35 leaving his wife Eleanor to bring up five children on her own.

The eldest who was Eleanor was eleven years old and the youngest was just two.

By 1911 they were living in a four roomed house at number 4 George Street at Walsoken in Cambridgeshire.

But only Eliza and her mother are in the property which they share with a William Fearis and his daughter who was 18 months old.

Both Mr Fearis and Mrs Loveland give their status as widowed and she describes herself as “Domestic housekeeper.”

In time I am minded to explore the story of Mr Fearis but for now I am content just to record that on the night of census Mrs Loveland’s youngest son was visiting.

He was eleven years old, is described as a “scholar” and this offers up the possibility that he too was in care. I doubt that he could have been living with either of his elder siblings because they were only sixteen and fourteen.

A page from Canadian Khaki

So I think we can be confident that on the death of Edward Loveland in 1903 all the children bar Eliza went into care.

In 1915 Eliza is still at the address when Thomas enlists in Canada.

And there the trial pretty much comes to an end. I don’t yet know when their mother died or what happened to Eliza although her elder brother was killed on the Western Front in 1917.

All of which sort of brings the strands together. Our own British Home Child like Thomas enlisted in the August of 1915 but he survived, we live just minutes way from Southern Cemetery where Private Loveland lies.

In little over three weeks there will be a special ceremony in Southern Cemetery to mark not just the centenary of the Battle of the Somme but also for Canada Day.

And the picture of all twenty-six graves of the men of the CEF were taken by David Harrop who has commemorated the centenary of the Somme with a special exhibition in the Remembrance Lodge at Southern and which will feature memorabilia connected to the Canadian Expeditionary Force, including the book Canada in Khaki.

And just as I posted the story Liz who is the archivist of the Together Trust suggested that "he was a Barnardo’s boy by the looks of it."*

Southern Cemetery

The Together Trust was the old Manchester and Salford Boys'and Girls' Refuges and from 1870 were active in offering care to disadvantaged young people in the twin cities of Manchester and Salford.

Their archive is a wonderful collection of material covering the work carried out by the charity.

And as Canada awoke and got into its stride Catherine West kindly did the research and confirms that
Thomas was a Barnardo's Home Child. He is listed on the Library and Archives Canada site at either www.bac-lac.gc.ca or www.collectionscanada.gc.ca

Once there go to online research and search the British Home Child database."

So a pretty good result all round and another bit of international research.

The story of Manchester's involvement in the Great War is featured in the new book Manchester Remembering 1914-18, published today by the History Press.

Location; Southern Cemetery

Pictures; from the collection of David Harrop and of Southern Cemetery from Andrew Simpson

*Getting down and dusty/

**Manchester Remembering1914-18 by Andrew Simpson

Order now from theHistory Press,

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A little bit of gentle fun at the seaside in the 1930s ........ no 4 central heating

June 30, 2018, 6:30 pm

≫ Next: Historians of Chorlton ............. Nora Templar

≪ Previous: The story of a British Home Child ...... born in London, enlisted in the C.E.F., and died in Manchester in 1918

A short series reflecting on a bit of gentle fun from the seaside.

↧

Historians of Chorlton ............. Nora Templar

June 30, 2018, 7:00 pm

≫ Next: On Eltham High Street in the summer of 1977

≪ Previous: A little bit of gentle fun at the seaside in the 1930s ........ no 4 central heating

Nora Templar was a well known historian.

She wrote a series of articles about the township which were published in the St Clements parish magazine during the 1960s.

She had been born in 1910 and spent most of her life at Dog House Farm in what is now Whalley Range. Dog House was over 300 years old when Nora moved there in 1910 and was only demolished in 1960. Her father Herbert was a talented artist and some of his paintings are in the City’s collection.

It was from Dog House that Mary Moore set out in 1838 to sell farm produce at the Manchester markets only to be murdered on her way home. Nora remembered the “large barn and coach house which was sheltered from the north and east winds” and the “cobbled yard, pump and trough close to the kitchen and the well” all of which would have been familiar to Mary Moore.

As well as writing about the history of the township she witnessed some of the key events during the 20th century, including the Royal Agricultural Show held at Hough End fields in 1916, the Royal Lancashire Shows of 1924 and 1937, and the first aircraft to land at Hough End.

Pictures; Harvest Festival October 1981, Nora Templar from the Lloyd collection and an extract from Chorlton-cum-Hardy At Work and Play, St Clements Parish Magazine, November 1961

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On Eltham High Street in the summer of 1977

June 30, 2018, 7:00 pm

≫ Next: Lost and forgotten streets of Salford ........... nu 25 a busy day on Chapel Street

≪ Previous: Historians of Chorlton ............. Nora Templar

Now there is a very obvious appeal about old photographs of Eltham.

Eltham High Street in 1977

The people stare back at you and it is easy to wonder about their lives, their hopes and of course what happened to them.

In the same way we are drawn to the buildings, comparing their appearance then with now or pondering on how the planners could have allowed such a magnificent house to be demolished to make way for an ugly block of flats or an equally drab parade of modern shops.

And the irony is that those 1950s/70s new build rarely have lasted the course.

The grey concrete has stained, the wood panelling has begun to rot as have the window frames and the modern signage is totally out of character.

So it is more pleasant to retreat into the images of a century ago. All of which is fine but often ignores the more recent photographs, from say the 1970s or 1980s. These can be just as revealing about how things have changed, with that added bonus that they show an Eltham which is almost as it is now but not quite.

In that sense they seem even more dated. The fashions look outlandish and the cars comical. But for the historian these images are just as important.

So in 1977 on this stretch of the High Street the King’s Arms was still serving pints, Warrens and the Golden Orient Tandoori Restaurant were yet to give way to Pat’s Textiles and Spice Island, and the Grove Market was a busy and vibrant place.

So and not for the last time I shall fall back on that old Monty Python quote,"no one expects the Spanish Inquistion" and make an appeal for more of those pictures from the recent past.

Picture; courtesy of Jean Gammons

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Lost and forgotten streets of Salford ........... nu 25 a busy day on Chapel Street

June 30, 2018, 7:00 pm

≫ Next: Looking for the lost ...... one street over time in Ancoats ..... no 4 the school by Homer Street

≪ Previous: On Eltham High Street in the summer of 1977

I suppose it is pretty much the case that Chapel Street has always been a busy spot.

I don’t have a date but there maybe a clue in the Union flag fluttering from the building and the crowds which seem to suggest that something has either happened or about to.

Location; Salford

Picture; Chapel Street, date unknown, m77251, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council,http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

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Looking for the lost ...... one street over time in Ancoats ..... no 4 the school by Homer Street

June 30, 2018, 7:30 pm

≫ Next: Of such things are adventures made of ..........The Goldsmith Collection ...... no. 3

≪ Previous: Lost and forgotten streets of Salford ........... nu 25 a busy day on Chapel Street

The story of one street in Ancoats, and the people who lived and worked there.*

Homer Street was located just south of St Andrew’s Church and was bordered by the canal to the north, the river to the south and London Road Railway Station to the east.

The houses date from 1837 and just six years after the church was built.

Back in 1831 St Andrew's Church was in “the midst of fields [when] the waters of the River Medlock which are close by ran pure and sweet and were the home of beautiful trout.” **

At the time“the congregation of St Andrew’s was in its early years a fairly comfortable middle-class body, [with] most of the pews in the church being privately rented by people of substance. But by the middle of the century it was surrounded by rising Lancashire industry and black slums filled the parish.***

Five years later the church opened a Sunday school on the corner of Homer Street and Arundel Street which in 1846 became a day school.

The school records show that teaching there was to use that modern description“challenging.”

In 1850 there was an average attendance at the day school of about 200 and four of five hundred boys and girls attended irregularly at the Sunday school.

And in 1866 the authorities went looking for forty boys who were absent one morning concluding that “the parents are sadly to blame for keeping their children at home” and on another occasion observed that “130 present at a time and the teacher ill, make it rather hard work to keep things straight.”

Given all of that I can sympathise with the comment made in 1864 that the school master was “glad that the week has closed so that one might have a little rest.”

But even by the 1860s the population of St Andrew’s parish was in decline and in 1891 the school reported that "the number of children on the books was gradually diminishing owing to properties being condemned as uninhabitable", although the final clearances only got underway in the late 1930s.

So that by 1936 the population had fallen from 16,000 a century earlier about to 3,000 with many families having been moved out to Gorton and Clayton.

That said the school still had about 230 students on roll and their attendance was very good winning them the Entwistle Memorial Shield for the best school attendance in the city’s elementary schools which seems a nice positive point to close on.

The site is now part of the warehouse of Amato Food Products.****

Location; Ancoats

Pictures; St Andrew’s School, Homer Street, 1920, m48646, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

*Homer Street

**Commemorative Booklet, St Andrews Church Ancoats, 1831-1931

***A Centenary in Ancoats, St Andrew’s School, Manchester Guardian, June 13 1936

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Of such things are adventures made of ..........The Goldsmith Collection ...... no. 3

July 1, 2018, 7:00 pm

≫ Next: Lost and forgotten streets of Salford ...... nu 28 Gore Street

≪ Previous: Looking for the lost ...... one street over time in Ancoats ..... no 4 the school by Homer Street

Now if you are nine, Greenwich Park is not a bad place to have an adventure.

For a start it is big and it’s full of trees and I am convinced once had deer, although I am prepared to be put right about the animals.

The adventure started long before the park and began with the walk up from Lausanne Road in Peckham, on to New Cross, Deptford and Blackheath and then through those big gates and that very straight road lined with trees.

If you walked it to the end there was the statute of Wolf and the Observatory and the panoramic view to the river and beyond.

But long before that we would have been seduced by a set of trees off to the right which allowed you to slip into the world of Robin Hood or some dark European forest filled with all manner of strange creatures.

And when that game was exhausted there was always the very silly one of rolling down from Wolf’s statute to the flat bit of the park.

We always seemed to do this just after the grass had been cut and ended up with bits of grass, and twigs which stuck to your clothes and stayed with you all day, which was not good for trying to get into the Maritime Museum, past the rigorous gaze of the attendants.

These guardians of our naval history tended to judge us as street urchins, up to no good, who were unable to appreciate the treasures which filled the galleries.

That said we were only turned away once and were left to wander the place at will, and back then we usually had the place to ourselves.

Not so that busy part of the Greenwich and the Cutty Sake. In the mid 1950s it cost I think 6d to get in but more often than not we saved the money for sweets and instead just looked down at those concrete steps of the Cutty Sark’s dry dock.

Today the ship is surrounded by a wrap around visitor’s centre which makes sense but takes a bit of the magic away.

That said trying to look at it through the eyes of a nine year old I might just have imagined it to be a space ship, such are adventures.

Location; Greenwich

Pictures; Greenwich Park, 2017 from the collection of Jillian Goldsmith

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Lost and forgotten streets of Salford ...... nu 28 Gore Street

July 1, 2018, 7:00 pm

≫ Next: Lost on the streets of my city

≪ Previous: Of such things are adventures made of ..........The Goldsmith Collection ...... no. 3

It isn’t so much that Gore Street has been lost or even forgotten it is just that it has become another giant Salford car park.

And what were once Morris, Beck, Ridings and Bolton Streets have suffered the biggest indignity of now being relegated to car park entrances with only one still being marked with its name on the street map.

Also gone are Walker’s Place, Temple Place, Short Street, and Back Saxon Street along with three pubs and the Albert Bridge Brewery.

To be fair I have no idea of the state of the housing off Gore Street but I suspect they were not good.

Likewise at least one of the pubs had vanished by the 1890s leaving only the Griffin and the Red Lion on Chapel Street and the Egerton Arms Hotel on Gore Street.

And now only the Egerton is still serving pints.

As for the brewery, according to one source the brewery which stood in the shadow of the New Bailey Prison, was founded sometime before 1788,

“Accounts from the Ring O'Bells, Didsbury, show that the pub served Joule's beer in 1791 when two barrels of strong beer cost three pounds and sixteen shillings. The brewery document reproduced on the following page carries the warning ‘Barrels to be returned when empty being never sold’. By the 1840s the brewery on New Bailey Street had about 13,000 barrels in use.”

The Joule family who had owned it from the beginning put it up for auction in 1855 and although it was then owned by various brewers by 1868 the site was used for storage and was later redeveloped.

There is more but that would stray into a new series ............ the lost and forgotten breweries of Salford and that is for another day.

Location; Salford

Picture; Gore Street, 2016 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*James Joule – Brewer and Man of Science, Brewery History,
http://www.breweryhistory.com/journal/archive/115/bh-115-002.htm

↧

Lost on the streets of my city

July 1, 2018, 7:00 pm

≫ Next: A little bit of gentle fun at the seaside in the 1930s ........ no 5 "so shall we peep"

≪ Previous: Lost and forgotten streets of Salford ...... nu 28 Gore Street

Now one of the advantages of a misspent youth is that I am fairly familiar with the streets of Manchester.

From 1969 for three years as a student at the College of Knowledge on Aytoun Street I wandered the city between lectures.

Back then the library was for the studious and so after Mr Wilson’s lecture on contemporary Soviet Government and before Mr Ripley on the Chartists or Trevor Thomas on Andrew Marvel I was off exploring my adopted home.

It took me to the Art Gallery and the Ref along with the Town Hall, the warren of streets that is now the Northern Quarter and down to the very unfashionable Castlefeld.

That said the knowledge is a bit frozen in time and I didn’t really get back to looking for the historic the interesting and the bizarre until the start of the last decade.

But despite that knowledge, the maps, and the street directories this image has defeated me.

The picture come to light through a new project which Neil Simpson tells me is“the Town Hall Photographer's Collection Digitisation Project, which currently is Volunteer led and Volunteer staffed is in the process of taking the 200,000 negatives in the collection dating from 1956 to 2007 and digitising them.

The plan is to gradually make the scanned images available online - initially on the Manchester Local Images Collection Website".*

I think we are on West Mosley Street which was sandwiched between Cooper Street and Mosley Street and vanished sometime before now.

I am fairly confident that there will be lots of theories and if we are lucky the answer.

In the meantime I will ask my friend Andy to look up his 1969 street directory and try to identify the firm on the board above that white building.

We shall see.

Location Manchester

Picture; of Manchester, 1968, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

*Neil Simpson, Manchester Local Images Collection Website, https://www.flickr.com/photos/manchesterarchiveplus/sets/7215766350511542

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A little bit of gentle fun at the seaside in the 1930s ........ no 5 "so shall we peep"

July 1, 2018, 7:01 pm

≫ Next: Faces from a demonstration ...... no. 1 ....... at the window

≪ Previous: Lost on the streets of my city

A short series reflecting on a bit of gentle fun from the seaside.

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Faces from a demonstration ...... no. 1 ....... at the window

July 1, 2018, 7:29 pm

≫ Next: Historians of Chorlton ............ Thomas Ellwood

≪ Previous: A little bit of gentle fun at the seaside in the 1930s ........ no 5 "so shall we peep"

From a distance of nearly 4 decades I have no idea where in Birmingham this was, other than that the demonstration seemed to meander through bits of the city which seemed well off the beaten track.

The year was 1983 and this was one of the large demonstrations organized by the Labour Party to call for action to reverse the growing levels of unemployment which on that Saturday stood at three million.

Location; Birmingham

Picture; Faces from a demonstration, 1983, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

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Historians of Chorlton ............ Thomas Ellwood

July 1, 2018, 7:30 pm

≫ Next: Lost and forgotten streets of Salford ....... nu 29 on a wet Blackfriars Street

≪ Previous: Faces from a demonstration ...... no. 1 ....... at the window

There have been many who have written about the history of Chorlton.

Almost all of them draw on twenty-five articles written in the winter and spring of 1885-86 by Thomas Ellwood.

These were published in weekly instalments in the South Manchester Gazette and reappear as articles in the Wesleyan and Parish magazines throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Ellwood in turn drew on an earlier work on the histories of the churches and chapels of south and east Manchester written thirty years earlier as well as contemporary documents.

But the real strength of his account is that much of it is based on the oral testimonies of some of the oldest inhabitants of the township, people who had had been born at the very beginning of Ellwood’s century and who confidently recorded the customs and people of an even earlier time.

Picture; from The Manchester City News, Saturday March 4th 1922

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Lost and forgotten streets of Salford ....... nu 29 on a wet Blackfriars Street

July 2, 2018, 6:30 pm

≫ Next: Always look up ........ no. 20 .... from the Goldsmith Collection

≪ Previous: Historians of Chorlton ............ Thomas Ellwood

Now I am indebted to John Casey for sharing some of his wonderful photographs of Salford and Manchester.

They were taken in the early 1980s and are a powerful reminder of just how much the area has changed in a matter of a few decades.

This one of Blackfriars Street on a wet day some thirty years ago is a favourite of mine and pretty much needs no further comment.

Location; Salford

Picture; Blackfriars Street, circa 1980, from the collection of John Casey

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