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Walking down Kender Street looking for the cocoa works and finding a lost cinema
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, 1872We lived at...
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Somewhere in Chorlton in 1929
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...
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William Barefoot and a day in the archives of the Peoples’ History Museum in...
William Brefoot, date unknownNow 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...
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Down on Burnage Lane with an uncertain future for one of the big old houses
“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...
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A little bit of Christmas 1959 ............... with a thank you to the Eagle...
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...
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Waiting for the coal man
Enoch Royle the coal man circa 1930There 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...
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At the Woolwich Hippodrome sometime between 1907 and 1916
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...
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Skating on the meadows ........ the story that just won't go away
Skating on the meadows in 1914Now 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...
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Telephones Boxes I have known ............. part 6 goodbye to the blues ones
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...
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A Valley Grows Up ..... revisiting an old friend
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...
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Back on Lausanne Road with another bit of street furniture and the memory of...
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...
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Mrs Sykes, the Diggle Hotel and more than a bit of complicated history
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, 2015But what started as astory about that...
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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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From furniture shop to restaurant, Coupe to Croma
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...
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One hundred years of one house in Chorlton part 60 ............ traditions...
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...
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Looking to a bright new future ............ history books from the 1950s
Now I have never lost my love of the children’s history books I read back in the 1950s.*The cooling earthAnd so I have returned with another old favourite, and lest anyone thinks this is just a bit of...
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Looking towards the city across Cornbrook and reflecting on style and taste
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...
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Celebrating our Municipal Town Halls part 3 .......... Woolwich Town Hall
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...
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Growing up in Pomeroy Street in the 1930s ............. Margaret Nash remembers
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...
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Always check your photo collections
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...
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