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Piccadilly Gardens ....... the early years nu 4 on a warm summer's day in 1956
Now this just captures a carefree summer’s day in Piccadilly Gardens back in the 1950s.It was taken in 1955 and pretty much has the lot.The two stylish young women attract some but perhaps not that...
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Bits of Salford I like ........... nu 1
The picture says it all.Location; around the LowryPicture; Salford, 2015 from the collection of Andrew Simpson
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Piccadilly Gardens ....... the early years nu 5 deckchairs and a floral display
We are in Piccadilly Gardens sometime in the 1950s and the image pretty much speaks for itself.It will have been the summer and I guess sometime around dinner time judging by the number of people in...
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Buddy Watkins and talent shows I wished I had seen at Woolwich Town Hall
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...
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“Come .... where the sun shines longer” .............. down at the holiday camp
Now we never went to holiday camps which had nothing to do with my parents being sniffy.It was just that Dad worked in the tourist trade driving people across Europe on sight seeing tours and was away...
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Crossing the Mersey in 1955 to Jackson's Boat
Like many of Derrick A. Lea’s pictures of Chorlton this one was made in the winter.We are at Jackson’s Boat, that pub across the river and the year is 1955.Now I have written about Mr Lea already and I...
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Today at Southern Cemetery at 1 pm
Emma Fox, of Manchester Guided Tours, and local military historian David Harrop will lead people around the cemetery visiting:Commonwealth War GravesGraves of recipients of the Victoria CrossCivilians...
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Salford Station ............ the one you miss
It’s the one you miss. Salford Central Station is on New Bailey Street and is set back between two railway viaducts. So travelling out of Manchester into Salford even on foot it was not the most...
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In Piccadilly before the last tram ran
Now this is another of those how to date a picture stories where either dear reader you sit back in awed wonder at my detective skills or just mutter tedious big head and move to the bottom of the page...
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The magic of crossing the river at Woolwich by ferry
Now the ferry is just something that sticks with you no matter how many years it is since you were on it.And it still has the power to win friends. So when we were heading back to Manchester I...
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On Chorlton Green with Derrick A Lea in 1957
We are on the green sometime between 1955 and ’58 outside the Horse and Jockey.Now I know this because the artist who drew the scene completed a series of pictures of Chorlton during this period. He...
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Flags of the World, a little bit of our history
Now you can be very stuffy about history. At least one of my history teachers dismissed everything that had happened after 1914 and more recently my use of online historical sources was ridiculed as...
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Bits of Salford I like ........... nu 2
The picture says it all.Location; around the LowryPicture; Salford, 2015 from the collection of Andrew Simpson
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On the Thames in the summer of 1978
I have never lost my love of the river.We never lived far from the Thames and of course trips to town took you either under it or more likely over it, and once we moved to Eltham there was always the...
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On Market Street a century and a bit ago
Now I can't be remember when the first photograph was taken but it wull be sometime at the beginning of the last century.I did research the picture in detail and looked through the directories to match...
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An unfamiliar photograph and a lost cottage
Sometimes you come across a picture which you know has rarely seen the light of day and yet must at one time have been familiar to everyone in the township. It’s of the parish church looking north from...
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On Blackfriars Street in 1894
We are on Blackfriars Street sometime at the beginning of April 1894.Now I can be pretty certain of that because our old friend Samuel L Coulthurst wrote the location on the picture and the dates on...
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The first Christmas card of November
Now if like me you are old enough to remember those letters to the Times on hearing the first cuckoo of spring, here is another.In this case it’s the first greetings card for Christmas.A first in that...
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When all eyes were on Chorlton, the local elections of 1928
Now I know that local elections do not fascinate everyone, but the 1928 election here in Chorlton had got the lot. It was fought out against a backdrop of worsening unemployment figures and an...
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Down at Eltham Palace in the summer of 1958
Now I am back at Eltham Palace, a place that first captured my imagination back in 1964 and continues to do so.*This is the cover to the 1958 Ministry of Works Official Guide-book price One Shilling.It...
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