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Wattle and daub cottages in Chorlton
The story of how we lived here in the first half of the 19th century.There may still have been upwards of fifty wattle and daub houses in the 1840s in our township. They were constructed from a timber...
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Beginning to discover the story behind the envelope .............. from South...
Now sometimes you know that you are just at the beginning of a story and with patience, a bit of good luck and a heap of research it will all come out into the day light.And that is pretty much the...
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Out on the highway in Orilia, Ontario in the summer of 1942
There is something iconic about this image to anyone who grew up in a city in Britain in the 1950s.We are in Orilla, Ontario sometime in 1942, and with very little imagination it is the sort of place...
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Stories of balaclavas and adventures .......... out on the edges Peckham and...
Now if you have never read The Balaclava Story, and the Christmas Party by George Layton then it’s time to do so.*They are set in the north of England in the post war period and chronicle the all too...
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Rediscovering Cheetham .............. nu 2 the old Temperence Hall and the...
Now there was a time when the old temperance snooker hall in Chorlton was the extent of my knowledge of both these buildings and of the movement that lay behind their construction.But they turn up all...
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In the parish graveyard
I wish I had spent more time exploring the parish grave yard.But when you are growing up wandering past the monuments to the long dead is not very high on the agenda.And yet for the historian they are...
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Of sewers, music halls and deep deep tunnels, Barlow Moor Road in 1911
Barlow Moor Road, circa 1911They're moving father's grave to build a sewer ........ They're moving his remains to lay down nine-inch drains, To irrigate some rich bloke's residence.* It was one of...
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Watching the grapes and thinking about the harvest of 1847
The rapes in 2015Now it would be fair to say that the weather has not been good.A fact that led me to post “Things I have not done over summer” which included, not applying sun tan lotion or eating al...
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T.B. Mitchell, furniture dealer, and manufacturer of custom coffins
One of the things that continue to fascinate me about the internet and social networking is the way it allows you to share other people’s history.And so in that true spirit of internationalism here is...
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Rediscovering Cheetham .............. nu 3 Crumpsal Public Library
In time I will dig into the history of the public library on Cheetah Hill Road. Andy who took this picture told me that"it was operational into the early '70s when it was replaced by the facility in...
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Painting New Cross ................ the Fire Station
Some things about Queen’s Road don’t seem to have changed in fifty years.The Fire Station is still there and so is Edmund Waller School but much else has gone including that row of shops from Lausanne...
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Looking at the parish church from the south in 1903
Now I like this picture of the parish church. It dates from around 1903 and comes from Some Records of Eltham 1060-1903 which is a marvellous little book written by Rev. Elphinstone Rivers who was the...
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The Chorlton Carnival "the most considerable effort of its kind undertaken in...
Now there is a story to tell about the Chorlton Carnival which ran through the 1930s and echoed the village celebrations of a century before. These earlier ones I have researched and written about in...
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Rediscovering Cheetham .............. nu 4 St Luke's churchyard and Mr Boddy
We all have a favourite graveyard picture.It will either be one we have taken or fallen across and sometimes there will also be a story behind it.This I think will be one of Andy Robertson’s...
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Selling watches in a Canadian winter in 1900
I am back in Canada with the Orillia Museum of Art & History featuring one of their pictures from Canada’s past. In this case an advert for J.B.Thompson watchmaker and jeweller, Orilla, Ontario.I...
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Looking for Kay's sweet shop on the corner of Old James Street and Scylla Road
Now I went looking for Kay’s sweet shop recently.It was on the corner of Old James Street and Scylla Road and like so many childhood memories of over 50 years ago it has long since gone.Today it is...
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In the parish graveyard at Eltham
Eltham Church from the north, 1870I can’t remember the last time I wandered through the parish churchyard but given that I left for Manchester in 1969 it will have been a long time.Had I done so in...
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When the Brook emited "noxious odours and offensive gases which polluted the...
I would have liked to have listened into the discussions between the seventeen Chorlton households who sometime in the summer or autumn of 1863 decided to ask the city of Manchester to build a water...
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In Dukinfield with Andy Robertson and the Princess Cinema on King Street
Now we all know that there is nothing sadder than a pub with no beer, but perhaps worse is the old cinema with no customers and not even a discarded bag of popcorn to show what happy times the place...
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A new chapter in the story of the Whalley Hotel
There will be many people who have their own story about the Whalley Hotel and even though it closed without much warning the stories still go on.Well I say stories but for now it focuses on just one...
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