Chorlton-upon-Medlock site clearance 1965

[Manx]

Well done TheProfRobin, a nice bit of detective work, two heads are better than one! 

[Rocles]

I found Cowcill St shown here......between Boundary St West and Ludlow St Look in square 1A (at top left of map), at -
http://www.artus-familyhistory.com/Manchester%201930/3c%25252525201930.html

[TheProfRobin]

I found Cowcill St shown here......between Boundary St West and Ludlow St Look in square 1A (at top left of map), at -
http://www.artus-familyhistory.com/Manchester%201930/3c%25252525201930.html

Very interesting Rocles.
1930, so High Street hadn't become Hathersage Road.


Even more interesting is that it doesn't show Cornbrrok Place/Dundalk Street.
I omitted to mention above, because it was just off the bottom of the maps I was showing, that Cornbrook Place/Dundalk was in direct line with Cowcill Street at the Southern end, on the other side of Ludlow Street.  As a short street of 7 houses, it got missed of your map here.  I don't know who produced this 1930 map but it's a devil to read with no easy to follow convention for which way up the text is.


But it's well produced to a higher standard than Geographers' who didn't start producing A to Z till 1936. Their retro historical maps are also not to this standard.


And somewhat sneakily, most mapmakers of cities and towns include a street that doesn't exist so that anyone copying the map, will copy the trap.  Don't know if there is one on this map.  Maybe they also miss one out, although that defeats the object of the map.

[Rocles]

Lots more old maps at the main page, at -
http://www.artus-familyhistory.com/source/Early%20Maps.html

[MargaretB]

I managed to take about 6 pictures before an "engineer" advised me to get back inside.  There were random gas leaks and random fires and I was at risk.  Here are the 6 pictures I managed to take.

Strange that they had fires AND gas leaks!! 

My grandparents house was the other side of Cambridge Street, close to the Dental Hospital and it was demolished so my secondary school could be built - St Ignatius. 

As to the pubs being left standing, the demolition crews used them to slake their thirst after working hard all day!  It was the same in Hulme, whole blocks demolished but the pubs left standing until the very end.

I remember how people had to put signs in their windows saying This House is Still Occupied but even then a stray stone would hit the wrong house!  I have to say that breaking windows in houses about to be demolished was great fun.  I didn't like running across floors that had had the floorboards removed leaving just the joists but my brothers and their friends seemed to think that was great fun. 

Great photographs - have you seen the book Shirley Baker did showing photographs taken around the same time?  Great memories and I now enjoy seeing other people's reactions to those photographs, civilised looks of horror on their faces but to me, it was normal.  That was my childhood. 

[TheProfRobin]

Lots more old maps at the main page, at -
http://www.artus-familyhistory.com/source/Early%20Maps.html

Ah yes Rocles.  Slater's.


The 1935 map there, although is says "fewer unnamed streets" still doesn't have Cornbrook Place/Dundalk St, but shows a whole block where the street is and was in 1930.


But I find the 1930 map a bit "fishy".  Most of it has been redrawn and set in modern crisp fonts, whereas there are bits where the original map can be recognised.  Also whoever did the overlay didn't know the sort of detail that Slater's would have known in 1930, namely that it isn't and never was "Owen's College Athletic Ground", it was "Owens College Athletic Ground".


Nice maps though. 
I have been using the free John Rylands Manchester maps collections:
http://enriqueta.man.ac.uk/luna/servlet/maps2~1~1
although beware
whoever designed the web navigation system for this site never went back and tried navigating the site from a typical computer - a common web designer's mistake.

[TheProfRobin]

Strange that they had fires AND gas leaks!! 

My grandparents house was the other side of Cambridge Street, close to the Dental Hospital and it was demolished so my secondary school could be built - St Ignatius. 

As to the pubs being left standing, the demolition crews used them to slake their thirst after working hard all day!  It was the same in Hulme, whole blocks demolished but the pubs left standing until the very end.

I remember how people had to put signs in their windows saying This House is Still Occupied but even then a stray stone would hit the wrong house!  I have to say that breaking windows in houses about to be demolished was great fun.  I didn't like running across floors that had had the floorboards removed leaving just the joists but my brothers and their friends seemed to think that was great fun. 

Great photographs - have you seen the book Shirley Baker did showing photographs taken around the same time?  Great memories and I now enjoy seeing other people's reactions to those photographs, civilised looks of horror on their faces but to me, it was normal.  That was my childhood.

Dear MargaretB


Yes, quite normal.
I was living in Oxford Place and doing my PhD in Coupland St of which the Western end, towards the Dental Hospital was where they said there be dragons.


Except there weren't dragons.  My gf was a (pupil) midwife who lived in Hathersage Road and would cycle to those 2 up 2 down houses to do home deliveries.  I would accompany her and sit downstairs with the father and the existing children listening to the screams upstairs whilst telling the children, especially the girls, that they were screams of delight.  I always made sure that I had 4 big pennies in my pocket £4/240 = £1/60 = 1 and 2/3p in modern dosh Actually gf made sure I had them.


If there was a "problem" I'd get a shouted coded message from upstairs "Ow ya doin Robin?" upon which I would dash to the nearest phone box (checked out beforehand) and phone Hathersage Rd for the "Flying Squad". If they were engaged, (another fraught delivery phoning in) I just pressed button B, which took a lot of physical effort, and I'd get the 4d back.  If somebody spoke, and said something remotely midwiferish, I'd press button A.  If I heard "Ardwick gas leak emergency service" I'd press button B and get my money back. In those days, if not properly connected, you did not pay.


The Flying Squad was two more bikes with more experienced midwives carrying a few more gas and air cylinders (on their bikes) and if they couldn't cope, they'd use another 4d to call an ambulance which would take the mother to St M Whitworth St West, now a car park.  Two of my 3 children were born in a car park.
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Few Chorlton-upon-Medlock delivering mothers realised that their lives and that of their as yet unborn were in my hands up to a point.  Yet having heard my mother give birth to 4 of my younger sisters in a 2 up 2 down in a Yorkshire village, I was not going to let them down.  It did put me off sex though, for a while.


It was an "engineer" chap, not wearing a not yet invented yellow jacket who frightened me off with fires and gas leaks.  I could see the fires so who was I to disbelieve him?  And he was bigger than me,

[TheProfRobin]

And while we are at it,
let's take a look at what the Luftwaffe were doing to Manchester in 1940.


Here is Medlock Street, Hulme after the Germans tried to bomb Dunlop.  I bet all those cobbles were back in place nest day.

[MargaretB]

Gees!!!!  I remember us going shopping there and my mother had sheets of 1d stamps that were cut up by the assistant to pay the bill which was then put in a capsule and flown across the room up to the accounting office.  We could get in trouble if talking about Gees' because it could sound as if we were taking the Lord's name in vain!

Flipping heck, that photo brought back memories.  I was not born until 1952 so did not see any of that bomb damage for real but certainly played on crofts that were made when the bombed houses were cleared away.

[TheProfRobin]

Gees!!!!  I remember us going shopping there and my mother had sheets of 1d stamps that were cut up by the assistant to pay the bill which was then put in a capsule and flown across the room up to the accounting office.  We could get in trouble if talking about Gees' because it could sound as if we were taking the Lord's name in vain!

Flipping heck, that photo brought back memories.  I was not born until 1952 so did not see any of that bomb damage for real but certainly played on crofts that were made when the bombed houses were cleared away.

I forgot to mention in my midwifery recollections
that it was a complete mystery to me,
a Yorkshire lad lured and captured by Manchester
why Chorlton-upon-Medlock
appeared to be part of Ireland.
Gees!

[TheProfRobin]

Gees!!!!  I remember us going shopping there and my mother had sheets of 1d stamps that were cut up by the assistant to pay the bill which was then put in a capsule and flown across the room up to the accounting office.  We could get in trouble if talking about Gees' because it could sound as if we were taking the Lord's name in vain!

Flipping heck, that photo brought back memories.  I was not born until 1952 so did not see any of that bomb damage for real but certainly played on crofts that were made when the bombed houses were cleared away.

It looks remarkably big.
The John Lewis of Hulme, 1940.

[MargaretB]

I have a copy of my great-grandparents' marriage certificate and their addresses were recorded as "Little Ireland".  I also recall being jerked back into the present day in a History lesson at school when we were studying the Industrial Revolution and the text book talked about Chorlton-on-Medlock which became known as Little Ireland.  From then on, walks to and from school became field trips and I could 'see' how it would have been back then, the cellars that multiple families shared, etc.

[TheProfRobin]

I have a copy of my great-grandparents' marriage certificate and their addresses were recorded as "Little Ireland".  I also recall being jerked back into the present day in a History lesson at school when we were studying the Industrial Revolution and the text book talked about Chorlton-on-Medlock which became known as Little Ireland.  From then on, walks to and from school became field trips and I could 'see' how it would have been back then, the cellars that multiple families shared, etc.

You see Margaret,
to every Manchester conundrum,
like mine about why Ch-upon-M (which wikipedia curiously calls Ch-on-M)
should be so Irish,
there is an answer.
Thank you.
It all fits.
It probably explains generally why Cornbrook Place became renamed Dundalk Street, although we don't know the fine detail.


Irishly speaking, I was in the Arndale Centre on that fateful day and had just paid for a large sea bass (£8) in the fish market when we were hustled out and sent home.  I set my video cam up on my balcony and got the explosion & plume.  Mine was shown on Granada TV news that day and often thereafter. I rushed the footage and gave them it free, because I could not contemplate accepting payment for such a thing, although I asked them to send whatever their normal footage fee from amateurs was, to the fund that supports widows of bomb disposal heroes.  I do understand why those Irish bombed the Arndale Centre and my only gripe, not missing the tiles, is that I got neither my £8 back, nor the sea bass.

[MargaretB]

We always called it C-on-M and only used the Chorlton bit to wind up people who thought they were much posher than us as they lived in Chorlton-[censored]-Hardy.  The fact they WERE posher than us is neither here nor there

I now wish I had paid more attention to all the Irish accents that made up C-on-M in those days.  On a Sunday you could smell the cabbages being cooked and hear the Irish music being played in bedsits.  Many households had lodgers or rooms rented out as bedsits for the Irish young people who came over to make money and start a new life.  It was normal.  Ackers Street was also known for its theatrical digs and I have seen it mentioned in memoirs of some quite famous people as somewhere they would stay when playing the theatres in Manchester.

My dad was Irish and when he died in 1961 he was laid out at home.  People would knock on the door and we would show them to the front room where dad was laid out, they would go in say and prayer/rosary and then just go out again.  His funeral was huge.  He was carried round from the house on the Sunday night followed by a crowd of people and then there was another crowd for the Requiem Mass on the Monday.  Seeing some of those funerals in Belfast during the troubles would remind me of dad's funeral.  The Irish stuck together and supported each other - and argue or fight too.

Saturday nights at chucking out time would always have Black Marias making their way to the Grafton Arms - regular entertainment for us.

Not surprised the area was known as Little Ireland at all.

[Gill Sadler]

Prof Robin, I've just finished reading your memories about the"flying squad". Made me smile. I was born at home in1960 (Hastings Street). My mum often used to tell me about the flying squad having to race to the house just before I was born. Funny, I always thought it was to build the whole occasion up!!! So the flying squad actually existed!

I remember the hospital on the corner of whitworth St/Oxford Street - waiting with my dad in the car whilst mum visited my aunty who had just had one of my many cousins. Remember seeing a nurse walking down the steps wearing the old cap & cloak and thinking how lovely she looked.

My maiden name at the time was "Davies", mum's maiden name was pursehouse. We moved to Glossop in 1968. I wish I could go back in time for just one more day - very fond memories I shall treasure forever.