Andrew Simpson

It will be something well over half a century since I last walked down Kender Street and even now it’s the smell of cocoa which is the first thing that comes to mind.

Kender Street, 1872

We lived at number 14 for about a year and a bit back in 1950 into ‘51 and for most of that decade and into the next we regularly went back to visit one of mum’s friends.

And Kender Street was also one of those alternate routes from Lausanne Road up to the public library on New Cross Road, the wool shop and mum’s other favourite haunt the private lending library.

Now I went looking for all those places recently and of course the passage of fifty five years has not been kind to my child hood memories. The cocoa works along with number 14 and a big chunk of the street have gone as have the library, the wool shop and much else.

And so comprehensive has the change been that I did begin to question just how much I remembered.

Undaunted I turned to a set of historical maps running from 1872 till 1954.

Most are online courtesy of Southwark Council* and they offer a pretty neat picture of the area over 80 or so years.

Now I couldn’t confirm the cocoa plant but I was struck by the number of industrial units ranging from a print works, and iron works to a cooperage and engineering plant. Most were developed in the years after 1872 and plenty of them were still there around Kender Street and Pomeroy Street in the early 1950s.

Of course having spent years living in east Manchester which retained its heavy industry until the 1980s and only saw the colliery close in 1968 I shouldn’t have been surprised.

What I did find fascinating was the lost cinema on Queens Roadwhich I only discovered from one of those old maps.**

This was the Ideal Cinema House which stood between Kender Street and Pomeroy Street.

It had opened in 1914 as the Queens’ Cinema House, changed its name a year later to the Queens’s Road Cinema and in 1916 was renamed again the Ideal Kinema and when it was bought by Naborhood Theatres Ltd around 1935 becoming the Narborhood Cinema.

And there in its 790 seat theatre audiences could have thrilled to Tom Mix, Charlie Chaplin and enthralled at the first talkies.

Alas it’s time as the Narborhood were numbered. It was destroyed by German bombs in 1940 and the remains demolished the following year which I suspect was why I knew nothing of its existence.

All of which just points to that simple observation that if you want to revisit your childhood, best do it with some maps, and the odd history book.

Of course there may be someone who has a picture of the old cinema and even of the cocoa plant, and may be even the Eno’s Fruit Salt Works on Pomeroy Street whose wall also backed on to the gaden of nu 14 Kender Street.

Now that would be something.

Picture; Kender Street !872, from the OS for London 1872, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/

* Southwark Historical mapping
http://maps.southwark.gov.uk/connect/southwark.jsp?mapcfg=Historical_Selection&search=26%20LAUSANNE%20ROAD%20SE15%202HU

**Naborhood Cinema, 277-281 Queen's Road, Cinema Treasures, http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/31141

I doubt that many of us could identify the road at first glance.

It is 1929, and the houses have been up for about forty years and are still in that first relatively new phase before the roof and brick work need serious attention and before these family homes were divided up and given over to multi-occupancy.

Of course because it is 1929 there is not a car insight and on this sunny morning little seems to be stirring, all of which is a little deceptive as we are directly opposite the railway line with frequent trains into Central Station and the heart of the city.

And also along this opposite side were the goods yards where many of our coal merchants had their businesses.

All of which means it might not have been so quiet, but on this sunny morning it is hard to see what might disturb the peace and equally hard to see how today Albany Road could be left to a small boy a passerby and a woman on her knees cleaning the stone by the front gate.

Picture; from the Lloyd collection

William Brefoot, date unknown

Now I have to confess that for me William Barefoot was just a name on a plaque in the Pleasaunce, and if pushed I could also point to William Barefoot Drive and a small park in Plumstead.

All of which is particularly embarrassing given that we were both members of the Woolwich Labour Party and Mr Barefoot had along connection to Eltham as a councillor and to the history of Woolwich.

And it was while I was in the archives of the Peoples’ History Museum that I decided to take a break from researching the Great War and instead begin to learn more about this remarkable man.*

I knew that he had been born in 1872 that his father was a sadler and that the family had lived on Frances Street not far from the Dockyard and I vaguely also knew that he had been a councillor for Eltham for 33 years and was the Mayor of Woolwich not once but three times, all of which is an impressive record of municipal service.

But there was much more.

A Hall, Will Crooks 7 W Barefoot, 1910

“Will Barefoot fought West Woolwich several times without success, but it was as Agent for the Borough Party that he lived and died.

From the days of his apprenticeship in the Royal Arsenal he was identified with the Trade Union, Socialist, Co-operative and Municipal life of the Borough.

Woolwich Labour Representation Committee was one of the first to enlist ‘individual members’ and made national history in 1902 when Will Crooks was first returned to Westminster.

Success followed in every direction and came primarily as a result of Will Barefoot‘s genius for organization.
He was supported in all efforts by his wife and it was a poignant circumstance that Mrs Barefoot died within a few weeks of her husband’s passing.”**

He worked alongside Will Crooks the first Labour MP for Woolwich and would have been an active participant in many of the great events of the early 20th century from the election of Mr Crooks to the General Strike of 1926.

And during the Great War he was active on the London Food Vigilance Committee.

Food Vigilance Committees had sprung up across the country as a means of drawing attention to the sharp rise in the cost of living and set forth a clear set of policies, demanding greater control by both the Government and local authorities of food and fuel along with the participation of the Labour movement.

Inside the archives,

So for me Mr Barefoot has come out of the shadows, and I rather think I will be spending more time in the Archives & Study Centre calling up material on his life and contribution.

“The Labour History Archive & Study Centre (LHASC) is the main specialist repository for research into the political wing of the labour movement.

It holds the archives of working class organisations from the Chartists to New Labour, including the Labour Party and the Communist Party of Great Britain.

From Salford, 2013

The collections provide an insight into the social, political and economic life of the last two centuries.

As well as the archives of political parties and leftwing pressure groups, LHASC collects the personal papers of radical politicians, writers and activists.

The archives complement the objects, photographs and banners found in the museum collections and researchers may well find material of interest in both.*

William Barefoot Memorial, 2013

All of which may seem a long way from Woolwich, but I think not.

Sitting there yesterday reading the same material he would have handled I was reminded that we shared quite a lot.

Pictures; photographs of William Barefoot, Will Crooks and A Hall along with the interior of the study centre and view of the Museum from Salford, courtesy of Archives & Study Centre, at the People’s History Museum, Manchester, http://www.phm.org.uk/and William Barefoot Memorial in Well Hall Pleasunce, from the collection of Chrisse Rose, 2013

* Archives & Study Centre, at the People’s History Museum, Manchester, http://www.phm.org.uk/

** Report of the Annual Conference held the Central Hall Westminster May 25 to 28th, 1942

“If you go down to the woods today, You're sure of a big surprise” .......... which of course is just as it should be, but in the case of Andy Robertson it was Burnage Lane, and less a bunch of Teddy Bears and more a house waiting a future.

At present I don’t know what the future will be and have yet to go digging into its past.

Until recently it was called Santaidd Manor and Andy seems to think it was once called Shawbrook.

In 1911 it was occupied by the Cohen family. Mr Max Edward Cohen had been born in Germany and described himself as a shipping merchant.

And Shawrook was a 16 roomed mansion as befitted a wealthy merchant.

Equally impressive was Burnage House which during the first decade of the 20th century was home to Mr William Charlton who was certainly wealthy enough to live a very comfortable life and on his death in 1918 left£10,464 and according to one researcher had been a JP, Free Mason, Church Warden and a member of the British Numismatic Society who by 1911 aged 73 described himself as of “private means.”

Now there will be someone out there who knows the story of Santaidd Manor and may well save me looking back through the rate books to establish when it was built and what happened to it.

By 2003 it was an “Education centre for overseas students,” was still occupied in September 2012 but was closed and empty by the August of last year.

All of which leaves me to say watch this space because I have every confidence more of its story will emerge along with a series of pictures from Andy chronicling the progress of the site.

And yes sometime today I will go looking on the Council's online planning application site for news of its future.

Pictures; Santaidd Manor, 2015 from the Burnage collection courtesy of Andy Robertson

Forget the sound of Christmas cards falling on the mat, the smell of warmed mince pies and the battle with choosing the right tree; I know it has all begun when the Eagle Times arrives.

For those of a certain age the Eagle and its companion comics, Girl, Swift and Robin were an essential part of growing up in the 1950s.

And if like me you have never lost the fascination for characters from their pages and still enjoy looking at cut away pictures of aeroplanes, steam locomotive and a London Routemaster then the Eagle Times is special.

It comes out quarterly, has been going for 28 years and is a celebration of that much loved comic.

But it is more than just a nostalgic recreation of a lost childhood which would be fun but with limited appeal.

Instead Eagle tTmes wanders across the 1950s with a mix of articles exploring the artists and writers who contributed to the Eagle and the bigger cultural themes of the decade.

Nor does it stop at 1959 but slips effortlessly forward and backward picking up on the story of the film industry, popular music, and much more.

So less a fanzine and more an insight intothe culture of the time when Dan Dare space hero of the Eagle along with Luck of the Legion and Harris Tweed sorted out the bad guys with stiff upper lip and a concern for decent behaviour.

That said I remain a sucker for the seasonal articles which this edition include ‘Christmas Annuals of the 1960’s’ and the connection between Dan Dare’s rocket ship and Meccano, but all of which begins with the cover adorned with holly, and a shed load of snow.

So there you have it, more than a little bit of Christmas past.

Pictures; cover of Eagle Times, vol 28 no 4 Autumn 2015 and centre page from Christmas Annuals of the 1960’s, Jon Johnson

* Eagle Times, Annual subscription UK £27, overseas £38, and as a start you can visit the site at http://eagle-times.blogspot.co.uk/

Enoch Royle the coal man circa 1930

There is something very reassuring about hearing the fire and the kitchen range being racked out in the morning.

More so if you are seven and it is one of those cold early December mornings.

Usually in our house dad did this around six just after he had got up and just before he made his breakfast.

It was the announcement that a new day had started and in its way was far better than any alarm clock because it was part of the routine of the house.

It was also combined with that knowledge that it was still early and you could drift back to sleep all warm despite the ice that had formed in the night on the inside of the windows.

Now it is a memory which I suspect will not be shared by many who were born after the 1950s.

The gas fire, 1938

Cleaning out and setting a new fire and maintaining the range were tiring, dirty and time consuming chores added to which bringing up a bucket of coal from the cellar was heavy work and so many opted for gas and electric fires and later still central heating all of which offered easy instant heat at the touch of a button.

That said of course many mining communities continued to rely on the delivery of coal from the NCB and even now once you leave the city and drive into the country there is still that distinctive smell of coal being burned and that lazy pall of smoke lifting from chimney tops.

At which point I must declare that this is no rosy nostalgic reflection on past times, but more a comment on what has been lost in just a few decades.

Along with that fire has gone the coal man and that distinctive sound of the coal thundering down the coal hole into the cellar.

It started with a loud rumble and finished with that after noise as the coal slid and settled, followed by the all pervading smell of the stuff which worked its way up despite both cellar doors being firmly closed.

Well Hall Road, 2014

All of which was something my mother could do without.

She was the first to demand gas fires throughout the house in Peckham and again when we moved to Well Hall.

Not for her the romance of coal and steam.

She would often remark on the end of the steam locomotive as progress pointing out that while they might have thrilled school boys of all ages they played havoc with your clean washing.

And in turn many of us will remember buildings darkened by decades of grime and soot and coming home covered in the stuff after a day climbing trees in the local park.

But each generation has a habit of reinventing the past and so for the thirty years we have returned to open fires.

True often they were just an addition to the central heating and might be regarded as cosmetic, but now that most of the children have grown up and moved out there is less need to keep the whole house heated, and so we have retreated to the one room in the evening with a blazing fire and just a hint of the central heating across the rest.

Coalfires on a December evening

The days of teenagers spread out on the three levels of the house all doing something different and doing it away from us have gone.

For many this will still be the fallout from modern living but not here.

From the six o’clock news till the weather forecast four and half hours later we will pretty much be in the one room, stocking that fire, and mildly disputing whose turn it is to venture into the coolness of the kitchen.

And today with the fire cleaned out and set I just await the arrival of the coal man who comes once a week with two bags of mixed smokeless fuel and bags of kindling.

So somethings have just about come full circle.

Pictures; Enoch Royle and his father on Albany Road, circa 1930s from the Lloyd Collection, advert for gas fires, 1938, from from Your City, Manchester Municipal Officers’ Guild, 1938, a December open fire fire, 2011, Well Hall Road, 2014, Chrisse Rose

I missed the music halls by just a few decades.

They were a mix of popular songs, comedy, and speciality acts and lasted from the 1850s till I guess the 1960s, although I am sure in some small towns and sea side resorts the shows lingered on for a little while longer.

And continued also on the club circuit in the North so while the Hulme Hippodrome might have closed there was still the Princess Club in Chorlton, the Golden Garter in Wythenshawe and Sharston Labour Club to name but three.

But even these were not haunts of mine. But for my father and grandparents they were regular places to go on a Saturday night.

I still treasure the smile on Nana’s face as she recounted seeing Max Millar sometime in the 1950s at the Derby Hippodrome and quietly confiding that “he was so dirty.”

But the Derby Hip’ closed in 1959 having reopened as a variety theatre after the last war. Before that it had fallen like so many into a cinema conversion as did the Woolwich Hippodrome which dominated Wellington Street between 1900 and 1923.

It was an impressive brick building dressed in stone and ran to three stories. An iron canopy bearing the name of the theatre covered the steps leading up to the central entrance.

Another canopy continued along the sidewall with a sign across its face reading TWICE NIGHTLY AT 6.40 & 9.10. More signage appeared above the canopy reading WMF GRANT & CO. TWICE NIGHTLY also appears at the top of the side wall.

And in our picture the signs advertise Will Evans who according to some was one of our finest comedians and Pantomime stars and was the author of many sketches and songs.

Sadly there is little on him and nothing about his appearance at the Woolwich Hippodrome.

And as for the Woolwich Hippodrome, its life as a variety hall was just 23 years but as a cinema it fared even worse, closing in 1939 when it was demolished to make way for a new cinema which with the outbreak of war was not built until 1955.

Picture; the Woolwich Hippodrome, date unknown

Skating on the meadows in 1914
Now the skating story on the meadows just won’t go away.

I was once rather dismissive of the popularly held belief that during the winter parts of the meadow were opened up as places for people to skate.

According to Henry Stephens who wrote a popular manual on farming in the 1840s a good farmer never let his water meadows freeze over as this could damage the young grass that was grown on these flooded fields.*

So the skill was to flood, drain and flood again at regular intervals always ensuring that you were not caught out by a fall in the temperature.

Now I was prepared to accept that occasionally a farmer might be caught out but going with Mr Stephens I doubted that this was something of a general rule.

The one picture I had I put down to bad timing followed by an opportunistic moment.

Where you could skate in the January of 1909

But no, by the turn of the last century it was a common thing for these fields to be turned over to skating.

Sally has turned up a series of newspaper clippings including pictures and reports that all show that our farmers were taking advantage of their frozen water logged fields and I am sure was quick to charge.

So along with farmer Higginbotham whose family had farmed by the green since the 1840s there were Mr Wood and Cookson who “had been associated for years in the joint enterprise of flooding the Chorlton meadows.”*

Back out on the icy meadows, January 1909

And according the Manchester Courier in the January of 1909, “among the places where skating was permitted yesterday and where of course providing the frost holds out there will be skating today at Bailey’s Meadows Chorlton, Chorlton Meadows, Broughton Park and Lindow Common Wilmslow.

The ice on Trafford Park lake was not regarded as sufficiently thick to permit of skating yesterday, but provided the present weather conditions continue there should be some today. At Bell Vue also it may be possible to skate today.”***

So there you have it skating the natural way was going on across the city and especially here in Chorlton, and makes you wonder why they ever bothered to open that skating Ring on Oswald Road.

But that is for later in the month.

*The Book of Farming, Henry Stephens, 1844

**The Herald, April 1902

***Manchester Courier, January 1909

Picture; Skating on Chorlton Meadows from the Manchester Courier, 1914 and newspaper material, courtesy of Sally Dervan

Now the series has been running for a few weeks and I am pleased at the response which has offered up red kiosks from around the country with at least two sent back from America and more than a few intriguing tales of escapades inside the boxes.

But of course the GPO K kiosk was not the only telephone box on our streets and so to celebrate the humble blue police box here is a fine example from Whitby.

I had in my ignorance assumed that there was just one basic style which had a lot to do with me growing up in London and watching Dr Who but not so.

There were a fair few which sets the challenge of “Bring me a picture of that red telephone box from my youth” off on a new course and opens up fresh photographs and stories.

Not that I shall explore the history of the police box or the beginnings of their demise in the late 1960s all of which is well documented instead it will just be those blue ones.

Except to say the first date from the 1870 in the USA and our first was in Glasgow in 1891 and was painted red.

Picture; Police Box, Whitby, 2014 from the collection of David Harrop

***Telephone Kiosks, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Telephone%20Kiosks

I never tire of reading children’s history books.

Apart from the fact that most are beautifully illustrated and have a simple crisp text they are clues to how the study of history has changed. Victorian and Edwardian books tend to emphasis the growth of the British empire and well into the 1930’s much of the story is told bottom down through Kings and Queens and the brave, rich and great.

But by the 1950s the depiction of our “island story” has changed and much more emphasis is placed on social history.

Historians like R. J. Unstead produced books with fine illustrations which describe the lives of everyone from the nobility to peasant.

And I suppose my favourite of this new wave of books was A Valley Grows Up by Edward Osmond.*

It was published by the O.U.P and sold for 12s 6d. The magic of the book is that it told the story of an imaginary valley from 5000 BC to 1900.

The Valley around 5,000 BC

This it did through ten colour plates plenty of fine line drawings and a clear simple text. Here was the development of the valley’s landscape from prehistoric to Victorian taking in changes from an uninhabited forest through to tree clearing and early settlements.

All are here, from the Celts and Romans through to the Saxons, Normans and beyond.

His wife Laurie Osmond, produced a companion book, The Thames Flows Down, O.U.P., 1957.

The Valley in 1900

Like A Valley Grows Up, it gives that wonderful sense of historical sequence but carefully does not fall into the trap of describing change which is always progressive, always for the best and which seeks to show how the past is just a prelude to the achievements of today.

All the more a pity because it has long gone out of print.

I did however get a lovelly letter from Laurie Osmond who I had written to in the 1980s.

She thanked me for writing was pleased I still enjoyed both books and and kindly gave me permission to use the colour plates in a slide presentation I did for students which took the magic to a new generation.

I must confess to owning two copies of the Valley and one of the Thames.

Picture; cover of A Valley Grows Up

* A Valley Grows Up http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/A%20Valley%20Grows%20Up

Now I am back with the street furniture of my youth but for once it is something that hasn’t vanished and I am pretty much sure still does the business it was made to do.

So long after the water troughs have gone and the old red telephone kiosk has become a rarity outside the tourist haunts you can still find those tall ventilation shafts.

They were for venting the sewers of the more obnoxious and even dangerous gasses which could accumulate down below.

I have written about them in the past and have been drawn back with memories of the one on the corner of Lausanne Road.*

Of course back when I was growing up there I took it for granted, after all I passed it every day on my way to Edmund Waller and then Samuel Pepys and like pillar boxes and telephone kiosks it was so much part of the scenery as not to even warrant a second look.

But now I wonder if they have a future. It may be that they remain indispensible but given modern technology their days may be over and they linger on until someone decides they are surplus to requirements.

That would be a shame because the one on the corner with Belfort still evokes memories of hot summer days when the tar at the side of the road had gone soft enough to play with and for what seemed an eternity we would draw it out using discarded lolly sticks.

Back then there was little to distract this street pastime for few cars passed along Lausanne Road and after the milkman had been there was only the weekly bin lorry and occasional rag and bone man to interrupt us.

All a little different from this picture of Gatling Road in Plumstead packed full of cars which will have to stand it for Lausanne Road.

I chose it because it too has a ventilation shaft and also because I have never got round to taking a picture of that bit of Lausanne Road.

But maybe some has and I would welcome a picture of that piece of Street furniture I played beside.

Pictures; Gatling Road, Plumstead, 2012 from the collection of Elizabeth and Colin Fitzpatrick

*When a smelly sewer was just one too many, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Plumstead

I am still looking for a photograph of Mrs Sykes of the Diggle Hotel, if only to identify a young man from a picture postcard dating to 1910.

The Diggle Hotel, 2015

But what started as astory about that picture postcard, has by degree turned into a quest to uncover the life of Lauretta Lilla Sykes, and in the process plunged me deep into the history of Diggle in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and by extension drawn me back the Diggle Hotel.*

And as they say this is one of those stories which will run and run.

Away from Diggle with the 6th Manchester's, 1910

The postcard is unique in that it shows a group of Volunteers from the 6th Manchester’s at a training camp in the spring of 1910 and amongst them is Gordon Radcliffe Sykes aged 21, son of Mrs Sykes and the nephew of Frederick Radcliffe.

And because it was addressed to Mrs Sykes at the Diggle Hotel that seemed a good place to start.

Mr and Mrs Sykes were there running the pub from 1891 and I rather think from a little before that.

They had been married in the November of 1887 and may have there well into the middle of the last century.

James Sykes died in 1939 and Lauretta in 1951 and with a bit more digging it should be possible to find out when they gave up running the pub.

The Diggle Hotel, date unknown

What I do know now is that her connection with the Hotel goes back to 1861 when aged just 9 months she was living there with her mother who was the sister of Frederick Radcliffe who the licensee.

And it becomes even more complicated because a decade later Lauretta was living with her parents close by in the home of James Broadbent whose sisters were working in the Hotel in 1861 and in 1881 she is listed as a householder sharing her home with her servant Amy Sykes aged 62.

With Janmes and Lauretta in 1900

At which point I shall pause and ponder on the connections between the Radcliffe, Platt, Broadbent and Sykes’ families and just how much each of these families are embedded in the story of Diggle.

But that is for another time and while I am still no nearer knowing what Mrs Sykes looked like I am a bit closer to the business they ran because there on the walls of the pub are some posters from the 1900s.

They were sent to me by Lynn Shaw who along with her husband and family have been running the Diggle Hotelsince September.**

Picture: the Diggle Hotel, 2014 and poster advertising the place in 1900 courtesy of Lynn Shaw and detail from the picture postcard, the 6th Manchester's 1910 at West South Downs Camp, from the collection of David Harrop

* Mrs Sykes, her son in the 6th Manchester's and the Diggle Hotel ....... part 1 a picture postcard,http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/mrs-sykes-of-diggle-her-son-in-6th.html

**The Diggle Hotel, Station Houses, Diggle, Oldham, Lancashire OL3 5JZ, 01457 872741
Local family takes over historic Saddleworth pub thanks to funding from RBS, Aimee Howarth, Saddleworth Independent, HTTP://SADDIND.CO.UK/LOCAL-FAMILY-TAKES-OVER-HISTORIC-SADDLEWORTH-PUB-THANKS-TO-FUNDING-FROM-RBS/

I went looking the other day for Earlswood Street.

It is off Trafalgar Road and it is somewhere I haven’t been for over forty years.

Back in the late 1960s I worked there in a camping shop and later travelled past it on the way down to the Tunnel.

But this time I was more interested in Earlswood Street because it was here that Buddy Watkins lived or at least used as an address on his business cards.

He was “Buddy Watkins, Rythmn Pianist” and leader of the Buddy Watkins Boys which performed at dance competitions and concerts.

Now I never knew of him or his band but they bounced into my life while I was reading Woolwich Through Time by Kristina Bedford.

And like you do I am off on a search for what I can find out about Mr Watkins. In the meantime I have his businesss card and a picture and that is a start.

The house is still there, although sadly many of the places he performed at will have vanished.

I guess that Mr Watkins is the chap standing by the piano but that is about it.

But there will be some stories here, and just perhaps people who knew him, saw the band and may even have performed with the Buddy Watkins Boys.

They did after all support those who were brave enough to "Dance, Sing, Act, or Croon" in the amateur
talent contest at Woolwich Town Hall.

All of which is a reminder that our present obsession with discovering would be hopeful stars is not new.

Ms Bedford will be at Woolwich Librarytoday from 1 pm to talk about the book, and the pictures and stories she has collected about Woolwich during the last century and a bit.

Pictures; courtesy of Ms Bedford

* Woolwich Through Time is at Woolwich, Kristina Bedford, 2014

I remain fascinated by the way that a place you have known and taken for granted changes and almost overnight you forget just how it had been.

For me this corner of Wilbraham and Manchester Roads was M.E.Coupe the furnishers, in the same way that Quamby’s was the toy shop and H. Burt’s was the shop you went to for a pair of braces or cuff links.

For an older generation I suppose there was Stevenson’s the hair dresser whose family firm had operated from the same shop opposite the Post Office since the early years of the last century, and continued in business into the early 1980s or Joy Seal’s the Chemist on Beech Road.

And it is this which makes Tom McGrath’s photographs of Chorlton so interesting. They are of the near past, and so things look almost as they do today but just not quite the same. I look at his series taken in 1985 and again in 2012 and it’s a bit like watching the Sweeney. Everything is just that little old fashioned.

So there is the furniture shop, and for those in the know Coupe’s also had a lock up on Beech Road which had once been the old Methodist Chapel. It was a nice traditional place and I wish I has used it more often.

The pictures also hint at that huge transformation in the retailing fortunes of Chorlton. From furniture shop to restaurant, it is a development which is mirrored across the township. Not that this is a rant against the change, just an observation in how things have gone and a timely appeal for any one with similar pictures to share them with us all.

So I would love to see pictures of that bit of Manchester Road which is now the car park and the precinct just after it was opened.

Pictures; from the collection of Tom McGrath

The continuing story of the house Joe and Mary Ann Scott lived in for over 50 years and the families that have lived here since.*

Now I have no idea how Joe and Mary Ann celebrated Christmas.

My memories stretch back to 1976 when I lived here with Lois, Mike and John.

Back then we celebrated it on the Saturday before because they went home for the day.

A little later after we moved back and the boys were born the event took a different shape as it always does when there are children in the house.

But in all that time one of the traditions which marked the event was the arrival of the Christmas tree which had to be big and has always been bought from Tony Adams in the precinct.*

For over thirty years we have wandered down there with a selection of the children agonized over which to buy and always come away happy.

More recently I have left the choice to Tony and his staff who have always managed to select a better one than I ever did.

And then for reasons now lost in time we began buying a second one which was smaller than the first and sits in the dining room while the big tree takes over the front room.

I fully accept that this is an extravagance but it is part of the tradition of the house and like all traditions is one that we continue but also one which we add to and adapt.

So every year there is a new decoration which sits beside the older ones along with those which were made by the children when they were young.

Now Christmas trees don’t come cheap but Tony has always done us a good deal and now he has become as much a part of event as his trees or the cards which are displayed on green ribbon hanging down from the picture rail in the hall.

Not that this is a blatant bit of advertising.

It is more a reflection on Chorlton’s history, because A J Adams has been in the precinct for over 30 years and Tony is now the oldest trader in the complex.

And that is worth remarking on, after all if we go back thirty years many of the names I was familiar with have long gone, from the big stores like Woolworths, to the small independents like Quarmbys, Burts, and the wool shop.

So this Christmas like the others stretching back to into the early 80’s will be celebrated by a tree from Tony.

Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*A J Adams,
19 Chorlton Place,
Chorlton cum Hardy,
Manchester,
0161 881 1349

Now I have never lost my love of the children’s history books I read back in the 1950s.*

The cooling earth

And so I have returned with another old favourite, and lest anyone thinks this is just a bit of nostalgia I have to say that these books offer up a fascinating glimpse into how history was being written for children and how some writers had embraced the idea that the past is not just about Kings and Queens along with a few of the good and the powerful.

R.J. Unstead and Edward Osmond wrote social history which explored everyday lives and broke new ground by explaining how geography and nature played a part in shaping the history of our country.

The Fotress Home

Added to which there were an abundance of fine illustrations by some of the leading artists of the day.

Of these the pictures of Alan Sorrell and Ron Embleton stand out as excellent examples of historical accuracy matched by a realism which then and even now I find most compelling.

And so to The Pictorial History Book which was published in 1955. It is a wonderful book covering the history of Britain from the very beginning of the Universe, through to the 1950s lavishly illustrated and offering a mix of short paragraphs with longer explanations of events and detailed fact summaries covering everything from timelines to biographies data.

My copy I think must date from Christmas 1955 or soon after. It is now very battered and in danger of falling apart, having lost its protective cover a long time ago, and yet it is still magic to read, and often is a first port of call for information long before those adult reference books or a trawl of Wikipedia.

The New Model Army

So yes, a tad nostalgic indulgence perhaps, but also an exploration of how history was being presented to young people in the 1950s.

And of course it has become history itself for the book drips with the optimism of the 1950s.

The last two pages FROM TODAY INTO TOMORROW, are full of pictures accompanied with comments about“cheap air travel will make distance of no importance, [with] Holidays in the tropics taken all year round,” “the drudgery will be taken out of housework by many labour saving machines” and “students from the Commonwealth will come to Britain to be taught in our technical colleges and universities.”

All of which was introduced by “In recent years the idea has been accepted in Britain that no citizen should be left unhelped if he is sick or if there is no work for him to do.”

Now that then and now is a pretty sound way to sign off on a history book.

Pictures; from The Pictorial History Book, & Co, Ltd Sampson Low, Marston & Co, Ltd, 1955

*Books Children,http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Books%20Children

Now there is a moment as the train pulls into Piccadilly railway station when you get sight of the city.

It doesn’t last for long but it’s enough to tell me I am home.

And in the same way Peter’s new painting captures the same exciting mix of the old and the new, along with the iconic and the controversial.

It was painted looking out from the car park at Exchange Quay across Cornbrook to the city centre and is dominated by the Beetham Tower which continues to elicit a mix of opinions.

If I am honest I sway with the wind and have never quite made up my mind.

Some days it is the “abomination of desolation” dwarfing everything and offering nothing of style and beauty made worse by the way it dominates the skyline and is easily recognisable from as far away as Disley in the south to Hyde in the east.

And yet at other times I found myself reflecting on that simple observation that the city is constantly renewing itself and it is nonsense to think that Manchester should turn its back on the new.

After all there will have been more than a few who were appalled at the construction of Sunlight House in the 1930s, the CIS building in the 1960s, and slipping back even further will have castigated the Watts Warehouse which is that ornate Victorian Building which towered above its surroundings when it opened in 1856.

That said I have never reconciled myself to Spinningfields which could be any business centre anywhere in the world.

But then many of our Victorian and Edwardian buildings could be qdropped into Leeds, Newcastle or London and would pretty much blend in so enough said.

All of which just leaves me to ponder on whether Peter will wander down from Deansgate into the heart of Spinningfields and paint the shock of the new.

Painting; looking across Cornbrook to the city © 2015 Peter Topping

Web:www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk

Facebook: Paintings from Pictureshttps://www.facebook.com/paintingsfrompictures

It is all too easy to become cynical about public service and the achievements of local government.

Back in the 19th and early 20th centuries local government more so than Westminster was at the cutting edge of improving the lives of local people.

As Sidney Webb said the “municipalities have done most to socialise our industrial life.” And so a resident of Manchester, Birmingham or Glasgow could benefit from municipal supplies of water, gas and electricity, travel on municipally owned trams and buses, walk through a municipally maintained park while knowing his children were being educated in municipally run schools.

“Glasgow builds and maintains seven public ‘common lodging houses’; Liverpool provides science lectures; Manchester builds and stocks an art gallery; Birmingham runs schools of design; Leeds creates extensive cattle markets; and Bradford supplies water below cost price.

There are nearly one hundred free libraries and reading rooms. The minor services now performed by public bodies are innumerable.”*

And all of that was evidenced not only in the Corporation parks and schools and baths but in the town halls which were solid examples of both civic pride and local democracy.

So here is Woolwich Town Hall built in 1906 and opened by Will Crooks

Picture; Woolwich Town Hall, courtesy of Kristina Bedford*

*Woolwich Through Time, Kristina Bedford, 2014, Amberley Publishing,

I was born into a house that was not only falling down but also over crowded.

This wasn't unusual for residents of Pomeroy Street but what was unusual was that the houses in the street were all different as if built at different times in the
1800's.

Our house had two rooms and a scullery downstairs and two bedrooms upstairs and these were shared between my mum, dad, sister, two brothers, my Nan and
Uncle Jack.

My Nan had lived in Pomeroy Street since her marriage but in the early 1930's she left my granddad and crossed the road to live with us bringing Uncle Jack with her.

Uncle Jack wasn't a relative at all but a friend of my dads, he had no family and had lodged with Nan and granddad since his early 20's and stayed within the family until he died in 1988.

You may wonder how we all fitted into this tiny house well Uncle Jack and Nan had the front room as a sitting room which also doubled up as Uncle Jacks bedroom while Nan went next door but one to sleep at my Aunts house.

I can see her now putting on her coat, picking up her alarm clock and going out of the front door to go to bed. We had the back room as a living room and my two brothers shared the back bedroom while me and my sister shared the front bedroom with mum and dad.

Despite everything it was a happy house and everyone got along.

There must have been cold rainy days but I can only remember the sunny days which we spent playing on the bomb sites or hanging around the cocoa factory in the hope of getting a bit of cocoa which we would mix with sugar to make a 'dip' or getting some free crumpets from the crumpet factory.

Once we'd broken up for the school summer holidays it was time to get ready for hop picking.

A few families in the street used to go hopping so it wasn't unusual to see vans or lorries loading up with tea chests and bits of furniture ready for a summer in Kent. I remember one year my mum sitting in an armchair on the back of a flat backed lorry while us kids dangled our legs off the back.

We must have been a sight to behold as we drove through the Kent countryside.

Then in 1953/4 the Council condemned the houses on our side of the street and one by one families moved out and into the new flats that had been built since the end of the war.

Most families moved into the flats including Nan and Uncle Jack. My dad wouldn't live in a flat so we went to live at Bellingham which none of us could settle to.

I still came back to New Cross to go to school and to see Nan and my mum carried on working at the café in Kender Street.

When I got married in 1966 I left for the Church from Nan's flat and spent the first year of married life back in New Cross.

Whenever I've been back to New Cross in recent years there's very little left of the place I grew up in but the memories are a treasure to hold.

© Margaret Nash 2015

Picture; family pictures in the Pomeroy Street, from the collection of Margaret Nash,

Always regularly check your old collection of photographs is not a piece of advice I follow which is a shame, because had I dug them out more recently I would have come across this one of Barlow Moor Road.

I can’t remember when I took it but it is before the digital camera which puts it at around 12 years ago. And I have to admit the quality is rather lacking but it tells a story.

The parade dates from about 1912 and in its time has been host to many businesses. Shortly after it was opened the first shop on the block was a sweet shop which by the late 1950s was selling electrical good and when I took my picture was Martins the Estate agent and since then has gone through many changes becoming more recently a computer repair shop.

But for the best part of the 20th century the central section was Shaw’s Motor Garage. It was there when A.H. Downes recorded the scene in 1959 and was there soon after the parade was built. And sometime perhaps around 1912 Mr Shaw had opened the first kerb side petrol pump which in the way things were done was captured on camera.

The caption on the picture says 1912 but I am not so sure and I think a trawl of the directories might push the date a little later although having said that the car registration places the car at 1913.

But I am getting carried away. Charles Shaw was living on Wilbraham Road in a house now demolished next to the Royal Bank of Scotland and described himself in 1911 as a motor engineer which was logical step forward for a man who a decade earlier had been a cycle agent.

There is more to the Shaw’s which I shall leave s for another time. They after all were one of those families to move from bikes to cars which in itself is the story of the 20th century. But it does take me back to my imperfect photo, for there briefly exposed above the tattoo shop was part of the old Shaw sign which takes prominent position in the old photograph.

Ah I hear you mutter all this for an old sign but to me it is the very heart of history. Here boarded up for perhaps fifty years is a little bit of the past that takes us right back to the early 20th century and offers us some continuity for there is still a garage behind the present line of shops.

Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson and the Lloyd collection

Walking down Kender Street looking for the cocoa works and finding a lost cinema

Somewhere in Chorlton in 1929

William Barefoot and a day in the archives of the Peoples’ History Museum in Manchester

Down on Burnage Lane with an uncertain future for one of the big old houses

A little bit of Christmas 1959 ............... with a thank you to the Eagle Times

Waiting for the coal man

At the Woolwich Hippodrome sometime between 1907 and 1916

Skating on the meadows ........ the story that just won't go away

Telephones Boxes I have known ............. part 6 goodbye to the blues ones

A Valley Grows Up ..... revisiting an old friend

Back on Lausanne Road with another bit of street furniture and the memory of a street game

Mrs Sykes, the Diggle Hotel and more than a bit of complicated history

Buddy Watkins and talent shows I wished I had seen at Woolwich Town Hall

From furniture shop to restaurant, Coupe to Croma

One hundred years of one house in Chorlton part 60 ............ traditions and continuities

Looking to a bright new future ............ history books from the 1950s

Looking towards the city across Cornbrook and reflecting on style and taste

Celebrating our Municipal Town Halls part 3 .......... Woolwich Town Hall

Growing up in Pomeroy Street in the 1930s ............. Margaret Nash remembers

Always check your photo collections