Tuesday 19 March 2024

A history of Chorlton in just 20 objects number 8 ....... a railway ticket circa 1920

A short series featuring objects which tell a story of Chorlton in just a paragraph and  a challenge for people to suggest some that are personal to their stories.



The railway had come to Chorlton in 1880, and provided a quick service into the heart of the city. It took just seven minutes to travel from Chorlton into Manchester and was one of the factors which helped the development of new Chorlton allowing people to work in the commercial heart of the city but live within a few minute’s walk of the countryside. I can’t tell you when the ticket was issued but I think it must have been between 1892 and 1947. I can be fairly certain because the Fallowfield Loop line to Fallowfield and Guide Bridge was opened in 1892 and the Cheshire Lines Committee or CLC which ran the lines out of Central Station through Chorlton ceased in 1947 when the railways were nationalized. Had we travelled on that ticket it would have taken us just seven minutes to get to Fallowfield, passing through Wilbraham Road station. And had we elected to go all the way to Guide Bridge we would have been on the train for just 22 minutes having passed through Levenshulme, Hyde Road and Fairfield, but our ticket was only valid for Fallowfield so I suppose that was where we would alighted.

 Picture; from the Lloyd collection

The grimy ones ........ our River

Now here is another of those short series taken from the family archive.

All were taken around 1979 and offer up scenes of the River which we knew but most tourists seldom saw.

Location; the River



Pictures; the River, 1979, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Piccadilly Gardens ....... the early years nu 2 trenches in Piccadilly

Looking across to the site of the MRI sometime after 1911
Now Piccadilly Gardens continues to excite a wealth of feelings from those who miss the old sunken gardens and have no love for that concrete slab to those who dwell on the seedy last days of the old park and point out that in these cost cutting days the present space is pretty low maintenance.

Of course before 1914 there were no gardens just the site of the Royal Infirmary which when it was demolished left a debate on what to do with the site.

It took a few years before the Corporation decided that this was a perfect place for a park in one of the busiest parts of the city.

This much I knew but what I didn’t know was that in the June of 1917 according to the Manchester Evening News the Red Cross “found a practical use for the old Infirmary site in Piccadilly ....[turning] it into a miniature sector of the Western Front.

Manchester Evening News, June 1917
The front line trenches and their equipment are said to be perfect in every detail.  There are grim touches of realism here and there, - like the torn and tattered heap of clothing nearthe terrible barbed wire entanglements to represent a dead Boche.  Some rare and valuable war relics may also be seen, including some fine specimens of enemy guns.

With infinite labour the trench diggers who were the convalescent soldiers from Heaton Park, have passed right through the heavy masonry and substantial brickwork of the old Infirmary foundations.”

There is no record of what the "convalescent soldiers from Heaton Park" thought of the task and I have yet to dig deeper to discover what the public made of the “miniature sector of the Western Front” in the heart of the city.

But once they had explored the trenches they could go on to visit the adjoining museum which “was wonderfully interesting.”

All of which just begs the question of why the display was produced.

Given that it had been produced by the Special Effects Committee of the East Lancashire branch of the Red Cross I suspect that along with its propaganda value it was linked to the organisation’s campaign for volunteers and funds.

I do know that Heaton Park had had its on set of trenches which were open to the public and no doubt so did other parts of the country.

Pictures; the site of the Infirmary, date unknown from the collection of Rita Bishop and Trenches in Piccadilly ............ a New Use for the Old Infirmary Site June 1917,  the Manchester Evening News from Sally Dervan

Monday 18 March 2024

A history of Chorlton in just 20 objects number 7 ....... a plough 1894

A short series featuring objects which tell a story of Chorlton in just a paragraph and  a challenge for people to suggest some that are personal to their stories.

This was the last time the land opposite our house went under the plough.  The year is probably 1894 and the field was Row Acre.  I can be pretty sure that the chap at the plough was Alfred Higginbotham whose family had farmed here since the 1840s.  Row Acre stretched down from Cross Road to what is now Acres Road and was divided into strips.  Along with the Higginbotham’s parts of Row Acre were farmed by the Bailey family, Thomas White and John Brundrett, and perfectly echoed the medieval idea of a community each working a strip of land.  And of course the plough reminds us that we were a farming community. The image was originally dated 1896 but that was the year the Rec was opened, so I think we can push the date back by two years

Picture; Ploughing Row Acre before it became the Recreation Ground, 1894 from the collection of William Higginbotham

Painting Well Hall and Eltham ....... Nu 4 our house on Well Hall Road

An occasional series featuring buildings and places I like and painted by Peter Topping.

Now there had to come a time when I decided my bit of Well Hall Road should be recorded.

It came out of a conversation with Peter about the house two doors down which had been bombed in the Great War.

Tricia Lesley discovered the original war time photograph, Daniel Murphy tracked down its location to the same block where I grew up and with Tricia’s help we uncovered the full story.

All of which I have written about* and with that all done I asked Peter to paint the house knowing that in doing so our house would  get a look in.

But modest as I am I was content that part of it would be obscured behind that small tree.

Back in the 1960s when we moved in to 294 the spot was dominated by a tall oak tree which I guess had been planted when the estate was built.

It pretty much hid our house completely and in the fullness of time will do so again, but for now that's my old bedroom very much as I remember it and that will do for me.

Painting; 294 Well Hall Road, © 2015 Peter Topping 

Web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk

Facebook: Paintings from Pictures https://www.facebook.com/paintingsfrompictures

*Zeppelins over Well Hall,
http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Zeppelins%20over%20Well%20Hall

“a true representation of the present state of Manchester” …… September 1907

This representation of Manchester I like.

And I guess it is the one countless people have had of our city stretching back to the time when the first smoky factory chimneys rose from the ground and helped coin that description of Manchester as the “shock city of the Industrial Revolution”.*

Certainly it chimed with an H. R., who wrote "I hereby present to you Sept 14. 07 with a true representation of the present state of M/C, as it is presented to our eyes, by night.  

Isn’t it really Beautiful?  Doesn’t it look a healthy place to live in?”

He/she was writing to a Mrs. McKeilty in Ballynahinch which my Wikipedia tells me is "is small town. On Census day (27 March 2011) there were 5,703 people living in Ballynahinch (2,326 households), accounting for 0.31% of the Northern Ireland total and representing an increase of 6.3% on the Census 2001 figure of 5,363."**

Which I rather think would make it smaller than Gorton where H.R. was living in 1907 at 28 Jackson Street.

Reading the rest of the message I think he/she was from Ballynahinch and so the contrast with Manchester must have been very striking.

The card was published by the The Cynicus Publishing Company of Fife and  was established by Martin Anderson, who according to one source was “better known by his pseudonym Cynicus, was a Scottish artist, political illustrator and publisher”.***

His early working life involved producing illustrations for a variety of publications, before setting up in his own business in London in 1891, and from there setting up a postcard company publishing his own designs in 1902.

After a promising start his business like many suffered from a fall in the popularity of such picture postcard and the company went into liquidation with his stocks of prints and original work were sold for a fraction of their real worth.

A further attempt at a similar business also met with failure when the market for seaside picture postcards declined with the outbreak of the Great War.

Mr. Martin produced a series of anti-war posters and cards, which got him into trouble with the authorities. 

“In 1924 his Edinburgh shop was destroyed by fire, everything inside it was lost, and he did not have the funds to repair and restock it. 

He retired to his castle-like mansion in Balmullo to live in increasing poverty. A final edition of The Satires of Cynicus was published in 1926.”***

He died in 1932, and was buried in an unmarked grave, without a tombstone, and the final indignity was that his home was extensively vandalised after his death.

Leaving me just to say I am a great fan of his work which I have written about on the blog.****

Location; Manchester in 1907

Picture; Lovely Manchester, 19907, from the collection of David Harrop

*Briggs Asa, Victorian Cities, 1968

** Ballynahinch, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballynahinch,_County_Down

*** Cynicus, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynicus

****The Last Car from Woolwich ..... Manchester .... Rouken Glen and pretty much everywhere ……. the story with a sad ending, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2021/07/the-last-car-from-woolwich-manchester.html


Sunday 17 March 2024

A history of Chorlton in just 20 objects number 6 .... three concrete stumps 1959


A short series featuring objects which tell a story of Chorlton in just a paragraph and  a challenge for people to suggest some that are personal to their stories.

They are gone now but for almost all of the time I have lived in Chorlton, there were three concrete stumps on Wilbraham Road outside what is now the takeaway burger outlet. At some point when part of the building was the pottery studio they had been decorated with colourful tiles but I have to confess I thought little about them.  Only once did I ponder on whether they had been the base for petrol pumps which of course was what they were for here was Wilbraham Garage.  It wasn’t the first in Chorlton, that was probably Shaw’s on Barlow Moor Road but still it is an indication of how far the motor car had taken over.  The three stumps supported four pumps which stood in front of the shop and garage and like Shaw’s were in a row of conventional shops and houses.


Picture; Wilbraham Road,, A E Landers, 1959, M18423, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass