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Recreating the lost Well Hall House with Edith Nesbit
Well Hall House from Well Hall Road, 1909Well Hall House has passed out of living memory.It was built in 1733, was home to some Eltham notables and was demolished in 1930.It stood between Well Hall...
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Two ghost signs for one story ............ out in Dove Holes with a bit of...
Now here’s a ghost sign I once knew.We are just past Buxton heading back towards the city and this is or rather was the Railway Inn at Dove Holes.It was a place I passed regularly during the late 1980s...
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Memories of when the milk arrived by horse, of dye cast toys and much more
When you are around the past there is always that temptation to slide into nostalgia or worse still to adopt a cynical, hard and sneering approach.The first sends you tip toeing down picturesque...
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A little bit of our tiled past on Beech Road above the cocktails and pizzas
John Williams & Sons Ltd 2015I can’t be exactly sure when this bit of tiled wall disappeared behind the false wall at number 32 Beech Road, but I am guessing it will have been sometime in the 1960s...
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A little bit of lost Eltham, the house behind the bank on the High Street
Ivy Court todayThis was the home of Harriet and Lydia Fry. They were born here in the 1820s and died here, Harriet in 1895 and Lydia in 1907.Today it is hidden from view down a passageway beside the...
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Walking through Levenshulme’s history part 1 ............. a railway station
Now there is a lot in Levenshulme that I have missed over the years so here is a short series focusing on the bits that have gone, the bits that may soon go and a lot more that is still there if you...
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The story of one house in Peckham number 22 ............. leaving Lausanne...
The storyof one house in Peckham over a century and a half, and of one family who lived there in the 1950s.*I can’t say I was sad to leave the house in Lausanne Road.True I was happy enough there but...
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Connections ...... Edith Nesbit of Well Hall and William Barefoot Labour...
Edith Nesbit, circa 1890Now I like the way that history continues to surprise you, often taking you in directions which you could not have imagined.Until recently I was not aware that Edith Nesbit had...
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Looking at what we often miss, nu 3 .......... Winter's Building 1909
Now I don’t often look up enough at the buildings I pass and so here are a few pictures of some of our more iconic and interesting buildings.I don’t pretend that they are great photographs but just...
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Barlow Moor Road, Mrs Helen Burt and the postcard makers of Chorlton
It all began with this picture postcard and ended with a chance discovery.The picture is remarkable enough but not an uncommon one of Barlow Moor Road some time in the first years of the 20th century...
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The story of one house in Peckham number 23 ............. heading for a fall...
The story of one house in Peckham over a century and a half, and of one family who lived there in the 1950s.*In the park, 2005Today I went looking for the place of one of my more terrifying moments.I...
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Women and the Great War, part 1 ............ Barnet Postwomen circa 1914-18
Now there will be a lot of sloppy history presented to us over the next few years, and a lot of it will focus on the role of women in the two world wars.The received package of sleek easy to take in...
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Past the Four Banks and up to Redgate Farm in the summer of 1900
Looking across the Isles, 1882This is another one of those walks I would like to have taken if only to set the contrast from what I would have seen just fifty years earlier in the summer of 1853.Now I...
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Back at school in Well Hall
As I grow older I have come to admire the old board schools which were build in the decades after the 1870 Education Act.They were solid brick or stone buildings, warm in winter and cool in summer. The...
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The story that began with a painting and ended with Richardson's the bakers,...
At the Corner, 2015Now here is one of those stories that just went off in a direction I couldn’t have predicted.The spot is familiar enough to generations of people who have bought cakes and bread from...
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The Manchester Blitz and a new exhibition at Southern Cemetery
Now the thing about anniversaries is that sometimes there is a danger that in all the hype the real stories are lost.Manchester bomb damage, 1940So as we enter the second year of the centenary of the...
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Walking through Levenshulme’s history part 2 ............. a police station,...
Now somewhere I should be able to find the name of the architect who designed the police station in Levenshulme and with a bit of digging discover the exact date it was built.I have passed it loads of...
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The story of one house in Peckham number 24 .................... the missiles...
Thestoryof one house in Peckham over a century and a half, and of one family who lived there in the 1950s.*Atomic bombing of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945I was 12 when the Cuban Missile Crisis threatened...
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Discovering Eltham
Cover of the new edition 2000I am back in Eltham where I grew up in the 1960s on the Progress Estate.They say you should never go back to the places of your childhood and there is something in...
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Looking for "June" The Ladies hairdresser and Busy Bee Stores, sometime in 1930
Looking "June" the Hairdressers on Wilbraham RoadI never underestimate the power of a collection of old local adverts to offer up fascinating stories and pretty much take you all over the place.So here...
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