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Walking into Eltham in 1862
The parish church in 1860So, yesterday I was with Bradshaw in 1862 on Shooter’s Hill and today I want to continue to explore one of the walks laid out in the Illustrated Handbook to London and its...
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Walking past New Cross 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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A little bit of the Ottoman Empire in Chorlton in 1900 Women from Damascus
Woman from DamascusIt began as a story of one house in Chorlton with the odd name of Damascus House and has turned into a search for the work of Pascal Sebah.The house was one of those big semi...
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A sightseeing trip to Woolwich and those old wooden prison hulks with their...
Now I had completely forgotten about those old 18th century prison hulks moored at Woolwich and also of the excellent little book by Mr Reg Rigden*The Floating Prisons of Woolwich and Deptford,...
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Memories of Billingsgate Market, that fishy smell and the promise of the Tower
Now we are on the Lower Thames Street in 1927 it didn’t look that different when I was regularly wandering along it in the late 1950s.We usually got there around 10 on a Saturday by which time all the...
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Back with Pascal Sebah and the lost world of the Ottoman Empire circa 1873
Three men in Kurdish costume, 1873I am back with Ottoman photographer Pascal Sebah.He opened his first photography studio in Constantinople specializing in recording the peoples and costumes of the...
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Renshaws Buildings in Martledge
Even I have to admit that this bit of road and kerb stone is not the most exciting picture of Chorlton and yet it is all that is left of Martledge that part of the old township which ran from the four...
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Who mourned the passing of the trolley bus?
I was too young to have caught one of those old Corporation trams.Even so I have a soft spot for these tall stately vehicles which dominated our towns and cities for over half a century.But I have...
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The Asylum Tavern
Now there will heaps of people far more qualified to pass comment on the Asylum Tavern.The last time I passed the place will have been in the summer of 1960 and given that I was just ten I doubt that...
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Oswald Field, five cottages, a slice of rural Chorlton, and a bit of a...
Today I decided to take a walk along one of the old field boundaries. But of course as you would expect I have chosen to take the journey sometime in the summer of 1845. Now this is not as difficult...
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A little bit of Tudor History in Well Hall on a summer's day in 1964
Well Hall Pleasaunce, August 1964This is one of those photographs we all have in the collection.It was taken in the summer of 1964 and there amongst the smiling children and their parents is one of my...
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Make a date with the Red House ........... home of William Morris ...
Now I am a great fan of William Morris.For years we had his wallpaper up in our hall, I have reproductions of some of his work and have read News From Nowhere,but I never visited his house in...
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Passing through Derby Station on a Sunday in September ............
Now sometimes it is the unremarkable picture which offers up a story.The train was passing through Derby on its way from Bristol to York and Lois caught the moment mainly I suspect because Derby was...
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That Congregational Chapel sitting nicely against the Beetham Tower
Now I like pictures that contrast shapes and history.So here is one taken by Andy Robertson down at Castlefield in February.The tall tower of the old Congregational Chapel sits nicely against the...
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In Bolton in 1937, before the National Health Service
Before the NHS, The Working Man's Hair Specialist, Bolton, 1937Now the National Health Service has always been controversial. Even before its inception there were those who branded it as an...
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When the Thames was a working river nu 1 ........... looking north towards...
It is just one of those simple things that as you get older there are more and more things you can use as a bench mark marking the passage of time.And this is one of them for while the painting dates...
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Oswald Field, five cottages, a slice of rural Chorlton, and a bit of a...
Yesterday I walked the field boundary of Oswald Field and today I want to think about the cottages.There were five of them and they might have looked something like Grantham’s Buildings which stood on...
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Travelling on LCC tram number 1622 with memories of the Old Kent Road and...
Now I missed travelling on a tram by just a matter of years, but had I been born a little earlier I might well have been on this one that rattled its way up from the Old Kent Road to Westminster.And...
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A chance to visit St George’s Garrison Church in Woolwich
Now here' one to do.Today's mailing from Shooter's Hill includes the news that "will be open for London Open House weekend, despite not appearing in the Open House brochure. Between 10am and 5pm on the...
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When the Thames was still a working river nu 2 ............. across to St Paul's
It is just one of those simple things that as you get older there are more and more things you can use as a bench mark marking the passage of time.And this is one of them for while the painting dates...
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