Walks I wish I could have taken, ...... up Liverpool Road towards Deansgate in the spring of 1849

The station and staiton master's house

We are on Liverpool Road just a little under twenty years after the opening of the Manchester terminus of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway.

The station and its warehouse had been opened in 1830 and so successful had the venture been that two new warehouses were added very quickly followed by a second platform to accommodate the increased number of trains, and just fourteen years after its grand start all passengers operations were moved to a bigger and grander station at Hunts Bank.

There had been high hopes in the last decades of the 18^th century that the area could be developed into an estate of fine houses like those on St John’s Street but the proposed plans to bring a railway into Manchester had pretty much scuppered that idea.

Instead the land from the Duke’s Canal at Castlefield, north to St John’s Church and east towards Deansgate was filled with more modest houses which were the homes of craftsmen, textile workers, warehouseman and a whole range of lesser occupations. 

The station master's house

Many of which were dependant on the collection of warehouses, timber yards, and coal sites which served the network of canals and now the railways.

The Duke's Canal which had come into the city in the 1760s was but the first of more canals, while our rail terminus was soon joined by the viaducts of the Manchester South Junction and Altrincham Railway which cut through the southern edge of the city.

So in 1849 this spot at the bottom of Liverpool Road may not have offered green fields and scenic views, but it was a place that many visitors would have flocked to because here like the cotton mills was what was making Manchester a new and different type of city. As the German Johann George Kohl wrote

“I know of no town in Great Britain, except London, which makes so deep an impression upon the stranger as Manchester.  London is alone of its kind and so is Manchester.  Never since the world began, was there a town like it, its outward appearance, it’s wonderful activity its mercantile and manufacturing prosperity, and its remarkable moral and political phenomena......”*

The entrance of the first class booking hall

And had he stood at the bottom of Liverpool Road looking up towards Deansgate this frenetic industrial landscape is what he would have seen.  Almost directly behind him was a dye works and just over the river the Regent Bridge Mill while just out of site behind the viaduct was the Elm Street Paper Mill and in all directions were  those timber yards, warehouses and coal yards.

So we shall accompany our visitor up Liverpool Road past what had once been the station entrance for first and second class passengers and was now the company’s offices.  And with a bit of luck we could get a glimpse at the three warehouses of which the first held corn, groceries and butter and the remaining two are given over to cotton. 

Here there is that smell of locomotives which is a mix of steam and oil along with the distinctive clunk of railway wagons being uncoupled and manually pushed into the warehouse on turntables. 

The station and warehouse complex, 1842

Each wagon can be unloaded beside the warehouse but the company had copied the design of the canal warehouse which allowed a boat to go into the building.  

Now this presented a problem because a railway track is not a canal and so getting the wagon into the warehouse involves uncoupling each wagon and turning it at right angles and pushing it in.

But enough of such industrial detail for just beyond this spot was the Oxnoble Inn so named after a type of potato landed at Potato Wharf and a reminder of the amount of agricultural produce that came in the Duke’s Canal.

But if you didn’t fancy the Oxnoble there are three others to chose from, starting with the Queens, Arms, the Railway and Quay Tavern and finishing with the White Lion. And if that was not enough you can throw in seven beer shops which means that a quarter of the shops along our route are given over to alcohol.

That does still leave plenty of grocers, a butcher’s, a druggist, a baker and a large number of furniture shops.  Less welcome are the fish stalls at the top of the road where it joins Deansgate.  The smell is pretty intolerable and has led to the residents’ complaining to the authorities who accept there is a problem but are not prepared to clear them away and lose the revenue that come from the stalls.**

St Matthew's 1850 from the front

On a more pleasant note there is the fine looking Sunday School sandwiched between Wellington Place and Duke Street.  

The entrance is on Liverpool Road but I rather like the rear with its rounded wall.  It was built with money voted by the Government to celebrate the victory at Waterloo and is the Sunday school for St Matthews Church which a little further up the road.

It is built in the modern Gothic style of architecture and according to one guide book “when viewed from the large open space in front has a very elegant appearance.  

The height from the ground to the top spire is 132 feet [and] the west gallery contains a fine organ by Nicholson of Rochdale and the choral service is performed here on Sundays, at half past ten and half past six.”****

All of which is fine but does not hide the fact that just beyond the church in the area known as the Haymarket was what one report described “as a great nuisance [which] at certain times  bears all the appearances of a public privy rendering access to the Church yard & Vestry  from the quarter altogether impossible.   

Looking up Tonman Street with the shambles ahead

Filth seems to have a magnetic attraction hence the whole eastern boundary of the Churchyard as well as the yard itself as far as practicable is the depot of all sorts of refuse from dead rats to decayed cabbage leaves.” 

Which “in the course of years, this open space having never been paved, its level has risen to the top of the stone parapet on which the iron palisading of St. Matthew’s church yard is fixed some 18’’ or more perhaps above the original level.  

To secure access to the Churchyard and through this east gate a sufficient space has been kept clear by propping up the surrounding accumulations with wood.”

Now that I suspect is not the sort of attraction Mr Kohl would have reported with enthusiasm, and I think it a good place to stop the walk.

The church, hay market, shambles and pubs

If we did walk on past the church and the Haymarket along Tonman Street ahead of us would have been the Alport Shambles which was also known as the Butcher's Market.  

It is there just behind St Matthews and the tall chimney may well be part of it.  

I suspect our residents would have been no happier about that place. 

Not that Ebenezer Heap of the Saint Matthew's Tavern or his fellow landlord, James Crowther of the Haymarket Inn would complain over much for long hours in the shambles meant thirtsty customers in their repective pubs.  

Something which may have also been why Mary Morrell opened her beer shop next to to the Haymarket at number one Tonman Street.

So I rather think we shall retrace our steps and look again at St Matthews Sunday school, which was opened in 1827, with its fine entrance facing Liverpool Road and the elegant mock battlements running down each side.

Next; on to Camp Street and its mean secrets, St John Street with its posh houses, and the search for the home of Cholera victims

Pictures; The former station on Liverpool Road, S. Langton, 1860, m62891, St Matthews’s Church, 1850, m71038, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, Liverpool Road from the OS map of Manchester and Salford, 1842-49, courtesy of Digital Archives, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/

*Johann George Kohl, “Journeys Through England & Wales 1844, quoted from Visitors to Manchester, complied by L.D. Bradshaw, 1987, Neil Richardson

** Manchester and Salford Sanitary Association, Deansgate District, Report of the Visiting Committee 1853, Appendix A.

***The Strangers Guide to Manchester, H.G.Duffield, 1858

****ibid Manchester and Salford Sanitary Association,

The Wool Shop on Beech Road

Now I belong to a generation that was dragged round wool shops as a child.

My mum, her friend and later my sisters all knitted and so the trip to the shop was a regular part of my Saturdays.

It started with the knitting pattern, went on to an endless discussion about the colour of the wool and finished with walking home with loads of the stuff.

Then there was the smell. Wool shops had a distinctive smell, which was a sort of warm perfume smell which followed you home and stayed where ever mother was knitting.

There was something else about the wool shop which for years I couldn’t quite work out what it was, and then recently it came to me, it was always so very quiet, as if there were secrets about knitting that could only be uttered in a low almost conspiratorial way.

Ours was a traditional wool shop. The wooden shelves which reached to the ceiling were made of a deep dark wood which shone in the sunlight and were heaped high with wool.

 And then there were the wooden and glass counters which today you only see in shops pretending to be old. Through the glass top you could see more wool and all sizes of knitting needles.

So the day Mrs Rogers announced that she was going to try out a knitting machine it was if she had admitted to multiple affairs over the preceding twenty years. I wouldn’t mind but it wasn’t even that she was going to buy one; all she wanted to do was try it out.

 But that marked her out as a flighty thing who would soon be buying a Christmas cake instead of making one and no doubt had already used custard powder and meat spread.

Nor did the torture of the wool shop stop there. Once home the wool had to be wound into balls, which could be only done using the back of a chair but usually involved me having to stand with my arms outstretched and the wool was pulled from me and went into balls.

So I suppose I chose to ignore the wool shop on Beech Road.

But talking to people they remember it with affection as place where you could get what you wanted and be given helpful advice, which I reckon makes our wool shop a bit of an exception.

It had moved from the building that juts out from Daniel Sharp’s house beside the old Methodist chapel to a more central spot near the post office.


It’s demise says much about the way Beech Road has gone, but then it is too easy and cheap to complain that while you can buy novelty cards and interesting glassware it is no longer possible to buy a lamb chop or do all the veg shopping along the road. People have voted with their feet and prefer to buy everything under the same supermarket roof at the same time.

This really is a shame because between Muriel’s’ green grocery shop, the Italian deli, George’s wholefood shop and Etchells I could buy all the family wanted with just the odd visit to Hanbury’s.

 It became a proud boast that I never had to go off Beech Road. Still things are looking up with the new deli so perhaps we can have a mix. Well perhaps not yet a wool shop, the tide has yet to come back for that.

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Picture; the Wool Shop Beech Road July 1978 from the Lloyd collection

Down at the Castle in the High Street with a bit of historical magic

Now one of the best things about history is when you get to touch it.

And for me it doesn’t that matter much whether it’s a Roman coin or a glass medicine bottle from the beginning of the last century.

To touch the object and know that somewhere on it will be the fingerprints of the person who first made it and a story that will twist and turn in all directions is magic.

One of my greatest treasures is a Viking oyster shell which had lain in the mud of Jorvik for a thousand years before the archaeologists of the City of York brought it back into the day light.

Back in 1978 when it was uncovered there were so many that they were put in a wooden barrel and were on sale for 10p.

The other find was from the back of our shed where Dad had carefully placed thirty copper earth rods made for one of those very early wireless sets.

The batch dated from the 1920s, had sat in our garden shed in Well Hall for years and had been made in the Acnaconda Works, Salford which is just down the road.

All of which is an introduction to this 17th century trade token which Tricia shared with me.

Tokens like this were issued by traders in the absence of low value coinage, and was a practice which extended into the 18th century.

In Eltham the oldest dates from 1649 and bears the names of Nathaniel and Tasmin Mercer who were running the Castle, while another from 1667.

They were unearthed when the old Castle pub was demolished, and also found was one for William Crich of the Grocers’ Arms Deptford dated 1663.

Now imagine how over the moon I was when Tricia said  "I have been investigating the attached farthing tokens concerning The Castle for some time. 

I have been trying to find out who the initials belong to (NT & wife T) reading your post today I now know it to be Nathaniel & Tasmin Mercer. So I am handing it over to you to add to your blog seeing as you have done all the hard work.

The description is as follows. 17c farthing token issued by NM and wife T at the Castelle Taverne, Issue date 1649, denomination farthing, metal copper alloy, diameter 14mm."

And that is it.  A pretty neat bit of joint research.

Location, Eltham

Picture, the 1649 Castle trade token courtesy of Tricia Lesley

The story of one house in Lausanne Road number 33 ............ the works "Jolly" in Brighton, October 1963

Dad and a Glenton's coach circa 1949

The story of one house in Lausanne Road over a century and a half, and of one family who lived there in the 1950s.*

I remember the first time I went to Brighton.

It will have been sometime in the autumn of 1963 and was what has become known as a “jolly” but was officially “the works outing” and amongst my Dad’s colleagues was simply a “Beano.”

Of course these dos weren’t exclusive to work places, many pubs, clubs and institutes would have their day out in the sun with just that right mix of beer, sand, sea and fish and chips.

For Glenton’s it was always the south coast while for Tudor Crisps in Peterlee where I worked briefly it was Whitby or Scarborough and for the countless pubs and factories here in Manchester it was Blackpool.

In many ways the destination didn’t matter, it was the journey which usually involved several pub stops along the way, a “slap up meal” before and after a walk along the front and more pubs and hotels.

Off on a "chara" early 20th century

Most of those on that Glenton’s do were from the garage although there were a few from the office at New Cross and I think a couple more from Saxton’s the estate agents who owned the coach company.

Unlike most our trip was not in the summer but mid October when the season was over and the coaches parked in the garage and the drivers taking a long well earned rest

Such trips have a long history stretching back to the charabanc which was a horse drawn vehicle used for sightseeing and works outings usually to the countryside or seaside. They were usually open topped and were common in Britain in the early 20th century.

In time the horse gave way to a motorised version which often had a detachable body so that when the summer season was over the vehicle could be used as a flat bed lorry.

Horse drawn "chara", late 19th century

They were not very comfortable and by the 1920s were being replaced by the coach. These might still have a canvas top but were far more comfortable.

And here there is another connection with Glenton’s because for years back in the 1930s a model of Dad's coach proudly sat in the office window at New Cross, and by degree by the 1950s made its way to the back of the office and finally came home to our house where I played with it for years.

It was a beautifully crafted model which in the untender care of a six year old slowly lost much of its finer detail until all that was left was the chassis and four wheels.

All of which is perhaps a lesson on what a five year old should be given as a toy.

As for that day in Brighton it passed well enough.  Dad I think had gone out of duty and perhaps to fill the numbers I was invited along with my friends Jimmy O’Donnell and John Cox.

For me it was a one off and while I have been on work nights out I have never repeated the “Jolly” and have yet to return to Brighton which has along ago reinvented itself, unlike Blackpool which continues to offer that mix of cheap fun by the sea enlivened by the procession of hen night groups.

All a long way from Brighton and that day out with Glenton’s but thinking about it perhaps not.

Pictures; charabancs from the early 20th century, from the Lloyd Collection.

*The story of one house in Lausanne Road,  http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20story%20of%20one%20house%20in%20Lausanne%20Road

The College of Knowledge ........ Gladtsone, Churchill and the pick of Canned Heat, Fleetwood Mac and Pink Floyd

We all have a small collection of photographs which are very personal.

And this is one of mine, because for three years it was here that I studied History, Government and English.

The building is the College of Commerce, or as we tended to call it the College of Knowledge, and for those that are a little sad, it was ColCom.

In 1969 when the picture was taken it had just become part of Manchester Polytechnic which went onto become the MMU.

I have yet to get an exact date for the picture, but if it were taken in late September or even later in that year, then the chances  are that I was there somewhere on the 10th or 11th floor which is lost to the picture.

For many the college is more notable as the place where on Saturdays in term time you could watch some of the best groups as varied as Pink Floyd, the Moody Blues, Barclay James Harvest, Fleetwood Mac, Roy Harper, Canned Heat and the Edgar Broughton Band.

What I hadn’t realized when I signed up for this hallowed place of learning, was that we were but a few minutes’ walk from the city centre, which in turn meant that rather than go to the library between lectures, I was off exploring town, and my education was so much the better for that.

Alas like everyone of the schools and colleges, I attended or taught in, this one closed long ago and is currently being developed, but that is another story.

Suffice to say I have nothing left of my time there, save the degree certificate, although looking back I wish I had bought into the College scarf, which was dark blue with white stripes.

Even the book shop, whose sign is just in the picture, is no more.  It was Haigh and Hockland with a much larger branch by the University.

Location; the old College of Commerce

Picture; the College of Commerce, 1969, Courtesy of Manchester Archives+ Town Hall Photographers' Collection, https://www.flickr.com/photos/manchesterarchiveplus/albums/72157684413651581?

Walking Woolwich and Eltham in 1948 .... no 1

Now I am back with my copy of the Official Guide to Woolwich which was published by the council.

It includes Eltham and Plumstead, and was the “Fifth Edition”.

I have no idea when it was issued but looking at the images and some of the listings we must be sometime between 1948 and the early years of the next decade.

And over the next two days I shall concentrate on some of the images from the book and leave it at that.

The observant will clock that many of the pictures are attributed to Wells of Woolwich, while in the second post the motorbikes in the picture were for “Export”, which in the cash strapped immediate post war years was a vital way of earning money.

So that is it, and I shall continue till I run out of pictures.

Location; The Metropolitan Borough of Woolwich, circa 1948

Pictures; Well Hall,  from The Metropolitan Borough of Woolwich, circa 1948, and the Woolwich coat of Arms, courtesy of  Gary Luttmanm2021

The Chorlton Carnival "the most considerable effort of its kind undertaken in the city"

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.

Walking through Chorlton, date unknown

These earlier ones I have researched and written about in my book but those from the 1930s are still as yet only a vague promise of things to come.

This is all the more important given that they will soon pass out of living memory and I doubt that there are many accounts of what went on.

It was it seems linked to the Alexandra Rose Day which was the prime fund raising activity for medical charities in the Manchester and Salford area and dated back to the first held in London in 1912.

There were a number of carnivals across the city during the 1930s but ours seemed to be the biggest, according the Manchester Guardian in the June of 1937, “The gala held in St Margaret’s playing fields, Chorlton-cum-Hardy, on Saturday [June 19th] may be said to mark the opening of the charity carnival season. 

 

The parade

It has a history of five or six years, but already it has become perhaps the most considerable effort of its kind undertaken in the city on behalf of the Manchester and Salford Charities’ Fund.”*

The format was much the same with the crowning of a Rose Queen a procession through Chorlton “of characters in comic and fancy dress, on horseback, cycle or on foot.” and the gala which included Morris dancing, a horse show and a brass band competition. The 1937 show had excelled itself with five bands taking part but so far there is no record of whether our own band won a prize.

I must confess a little pride in knowing that the procession set off from the Rec after the crowning of the Queen and have often speculated whether Joe and Mary Ann Scott who lived opposite in the house we now occupy were in the crowd.

Oswald Road

A generation earlier and most of the horses competing for prizes at the show at St Margret’s playing fields would have been from the local farms but by the time the carnival was staged the contest was between the tradesmen. Men like Enoch Royle and Bill Mellor who were coal merchant or the many shop keepers who still delivered in the years before the last world war.

And it may have been the war that contributed to it coming to an end. The last seems to have been in 1938 and the break of ten years and changing attitudes made it less likely that it would come back.

In 1948 the Labour Government had introduced a national health service which made the penny finding activities of hospitals and medical charities less necessary.

And for those with a keen sens of the past here is Andy Robertson's picture of the same spot taken a few years ago.

Oswald Road, 2016

He says, "re picture in today's blog. I think this must be on the corner of Ransfield (Richmond Road). 

It is not the ones on the corner of Claridge or Kensington and I know of no others. 

Also if you check out that old Lloyd photo you posted of Oswald Road a while back there is that big Tree!"

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Picture; Horses being paraded along Oswald Road sometime in the 1930s, courtesy of Mrs Kay, from the Lloyd collection and the shop on Oswald Road, courtesy of Andy Robertson

*Manchester Guardian June 21 1937