| Author |
 Topic  |
|
Doc
Keeper of the Scrolls
2010 Posts
|
|
 Posted -
17/05/2004
:
13:00
|
CHILDHOOD 1945 TO 1953
1945 was an important year in my life for lots of reasons; I had changed school to St Thomas’s CofE School at Heaton Chapel, later in the year we were to move house from Norris Avenue to Napier Road and of course, the war with Germany was at an end.
The first consequence of the end of the war with Germany was Victory in Europe Day, or as we knew it VE day. The whole of the avenues got together and we had a bonfire and feast on the unmade road at the junction of Bankfield Avenue and Newby Road. The celebrations went on all evening and it was amazing the amount of food and drink, both soft and alcoholic that saw the light of day that night. I should think that it would be very difficult for anyone who hadn’t experienced the war to appreciate what a joyous evening that was. It was a total release from fear and an overwhelming sense of elation that we had won! Imagine Cup Final Fever and multiply it many times. The church bells rang for the first time since 1939 and all sorts of clandestine pyrotechnics were let off. I should think the railways were desperately short of fog signals for weeks afterwards! We knew that we still had to finish the job in the Pacific, VJ night was going to have to wait for a while but this wasn’t the point, the reason for the celebration was that for the first time for six years we were absolutely sure we were safe and had survived.
Later of course we got news of the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I have to tell you that this didn’t have any more effect on us than the great raids on Hamburg, Dresden and Cologne. Years afterwards, during the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the war I was asked what my attitude to these terrible events was. I had to say that through my frame of reference, having been bombed myself, I thought at the time that the raids and the loss of life were a good thing. Your scale of values gets slightly distorted when you have been a victim yourself. I don’t apologise for this attitude, I was there and I recognise that in the circumstances prevailing at the time it was quite natural to welcome mass destruction as long as it was the other side which was suffering it.
The war was over, but the memory lingered on in many ways. We still had rationing, it was to get more relaxed but didn’t finally end until 1954. I have an idea that bread was about the last thing to come off. Work started on re-laying the tram lines on Wellington Road North outside the school at Heaton Chapel and the labourers were Italian prisoners of war. They were a cheerful bunch as I remember them, always laughing and cooking interesting things on the coke braziers which were an integral part of any construction project in those days. During the day it kept a big 5 gallon cast iron kettle with a tap instead of a spout, on the boil. At night it was the sole comfort for the night watchman who guarded the hole in case anyone tried to pinch it, or so we thought. The EWS tanks were still with us and bomb sites were being cleared of rubble before re-building could start. Father started to keep more regular hours, he always managed to get home for our Thursday treat at the Carlton. If he was late we used to have his tea ready made up into sandwiches and a flask brewed. We’d all pile into the car, go to Stockport and be nodded in by Phyllis Hill in the cash box, up into the circle and father would eat his tea while we relaxed to the strains of the Nutcracker Suite, the Skater’s Waltz or Jealousy. Either these were the only records the Carlton had or, and this was mother’s theory, Mac Parker liked them better than anything else.
We had become proud owners of a 1936 Vauxhall 14 saloon car and weekend trips out into the country became common. Petrol was still rationed but I have an idea Father had access to some by reason of his work. I can never remember shortage of juice being a reason for not going anywhere.
By modern standards luxuries and entertainment were thin on the ground. The war had been a terrible strain in all ways and the effects couldn’t be expected to go away overnight. The government made sure we all knew this and did everything it could to hold down expectations. This strategy worked and there was an air of making do as best we could while we waited for the golden dawn we had all earned.
Some things changed immediately. Ice cream reappeared and we saw our first bananas, oranges and grapefruit. Belle Vue pleasure gardens in Manchester reopened for business and we started to go there regularly. Belle Vue was a wonderful place, you entered by a big gateway in a high brick wall and inside there was a zoo, an amusement park with roller coaster, roundabouts, the Caterpillar, dodgem cars, the Waltzer and the usual penny attractions such as hoop-la, coconut shy, rifle ranges etc. You could buy candy floss and ice cream and there was a boating lake and cafes. There were other, more exciting attractions like the Wall of Death where intrepid Australians drove motor bikes round a vertical wall, supported only by centrifugal force. Later this was modified and became the Globe of Death which was an enormous wire mesh ball and they could go one better and ride upside down! There were elephant and camel rides and the chimp’s tea party every afternoon in the zoo.
In the evening there was a ballroom but that didn’t interest me at the time. More exciting was the speedway where there was dirt track motor bike racing two or three times a week and on Saturday night, joy of joys, there was a fireworks display on an island in the boating lake. This was so big that we could see it from the attic windows in Bill Rae’s house on Clifton Grove and watching it from there used to be a regular part of our weekend entertainment.
The biggest single annual family entertainment was the Christmas visit to the Circus at Belle Vue. The ringmaster was George Lockhart who was the absolute epitome of everything a ringmaster ought to be resplendent in black riding boots and breeches, a red tail coat, a white shirt and bow tie and a shiny black top hat. Father used to insist that we presented him with a cigar every year and Dorothy and I would venture out into the limelight for our moment of father’s glory! The circus had the lot, equestrian acts, clowns, performing elephants and other animals, high wire walkers, trapeze artists, jugglers, balancing acts and of course, the grand finale every year, the lion tamer. I know all the arguments now about cruelty in animal training and agree with most of them but at the time it was pure magic. Our frame of reference had been distorted for six years by death, destruction, slavery and fear, a bit of high class entertainment like the circus was good for us.
I became a very keen train spotter. Our favourite spot was alongside some railings overlooking the deep cutting where the main line passed under Heaton Moor Road after crossing the viaduct. There was a series of books published by Ian Allen which contained the numbers and details of all the locos owned by the different companies and the object was to underline as many of these as possible. ‘Collecting engine numbers’ is an object of derision nowadays and it makes me angry that our dedication, research and deep knowledge of the workings of the railway system in those days is dismissed so lightly. We were so knowledgeable that we could usually tell what type of engine was coming before it came into sight by the sound it made. We knew about valve gears, compounding and what every engine’s normal duty was. Remember that there were hundreds of different designs of loco in those days, a hang over from the days when every line had its own ideas of what a good engine was. Due to the war none of the engines had been scrapped and we had a parade every day on the main line of engines that were transport history, there were plenty that were 80 years old still working and doing a useful job. Occasionally we would take cheap day return tickets to centres like Crewe and Doncaster to see a different cross-section of locos. Anybody who dismisses this sort of dedication and useful knowledge as sub-normal activity is only demonstrating their own total lack of appreciation of things mechanical. Personally I would select Morris Dancers, competition ballroom dancers and power joggers for this class and would perhaps be just as guilty of lack of appreciation.
I still went with father to GGA on Saturday morning but in summer we used to go into Manchester, have lunch in a restaurant opposite Victoria and Exchange Station and then go on to Old Trafford to see the cricket. Father had become a member through the influence of friends. I can remember at this time we came out of the restaurant one day and father paused in front of a shop window. “This is where they sell dirty books” he said, and that was that, it was about as near as he ever got to sex education. I was completely baffled. I hadn’t the faintest idea what he was talking about, I’d started pinching his fags and smoking but hadn’t any idea at all about sex. He went to football in winter but I never got invited, probably because I never showed any interest. I met his friends, Jimmy Fitzsimons who had a tyre business in Prestwich and later became Lord Mayor and chair of the committee that built Ringway Aerodrome as a municipal partnership, Eddy Clark who was heavy haulage manager for Pickfords who had taken over Edward Box and Father Sewell, a Roman Catholic priest who was a wonderful character. He took a great interest in a home for fallen women and they were always pulling his leg about it. We were once round at Jimmy’s house and I knocked an ashtray off the arm of the chair I was sitting in. It landed upside down and I couldn’t understand why everyone laughed when they saw what was stamped on the base; ‘this has been stolen from the White City’. (The big greyhound racing venue in Manchester near Trafford Park.)
Father knew a bloke called Billy Ralph who was a scrap merchant on Grey Mare Lane in Manchester. I suspect he had the contract for scrap at GGA and that was how they met. Billy had started his career as a rag and bone man and had done well. We went to his house at Poynton for tea one day just after the war and it was the biggest eye-opener I have ever had. The house was enormous, set in well tended gardens and fronted on to Poynton Pool, a fairly large lake. There were servants to wait on us and I knew I was in the presence of power! I remember Billy giving me a bit of advice I never forgot. He showed me his fingers which were all damaged at the tip. He told me that this had happened when he got his fingers trapped under a machine bed one day and he had made the mistake of pulling them out. He told me that if he had stood the pain and left them in while his mates lifted the machine he wouldn’t have lost his finger ends. His advice to me was that if it ever happened to me, don’t pull away! This phrase reminds me of a bloke I came across later at Grammar School. He was the cricket coach and was an Australian professional. I can’t remember his name but he was the first Australian I ever came across apart from my dad. All I can remember is that every time I was in the nets for batting practice all he used to do was shout “Don’t pull away!”
Harry White was still one of father’s best friends. He was still up to his old tricks, doing anything he could to make a bob or two. Soap was rationed and he came across a job lot of ex-army soap which he bought for a song. He found out why it was so cheap when he took some home, it was foot soap and was full of grit. In the end he decided to have a go at making caravans, this turned out to be a success and he eventually made enough money to retire. Lal died and he married a younger woman, he sold the business and they retired to the seaside where they were very happy until Harry finally shuffled off the coil. We visited them a few times and I remember being most impressed when his wife said Harry had taken up painting and used to hire young ladies to pose for him in the nude! During 1945 Harry was visiting us a lot and eventually we found out why. Father and mother bought his house at 6 Napier Road, Heaton Moor. We moved in and had our first Christmas there that year.
Napier Road was a completely new experience. Heaton Moor was once the favoured area for well-heeled Manchester business types who had to commute into town each day. The houses were large and well built, especially those fronting on to Heaton Moor Road. Napier Road was slightly down market from these. We lived in a terrace of four large Victorian houses. There were three large rooms and a scullery on the ground floor, a full set of cellars below to match these and three bedrooms and a bathroom on the first floor. Then there were three large attic rooms, the one at the front was always used as a playroom, we had a quarter size slate bed billiard table in there, the one at the back was converted into a bathroom and the middle one was my bedroom. I had a floor to myself and my own bathroom, it was like heaven.
It was evident that this house had been designed to be run by servants, indeed, the bells were still in place in the middle cellar. Every room in the house except the scullery and the bathroom, had a fireplace including the cellars. In the large kitchen was a massive cast iron range with a back boiler and a large oven. This served us for about a year but by then GGA had put the Rayburn stove on the market and we got one, perhaps on area test! Mother thought it was grand, she had the gas stove in the scullery and the coke fired Rayburn in the kitchen. Her joy was made complete when one day a van drew up and delivered a brand new Servis washing machine. In less time than it takes to tell, it was plugged in and filled with washing. By the time father came home the house was full of wet clothes and he then had the unpleasant task of informing mother that the washer wasn’t for us, he was fiddling it for a mate of his. I don’t know what was said but a week later we had our own machine and all was well! We got a refrigerator after a while and the days of milk ‘turning’ or going sour, especially in hot weather were over.
One very strong memory of Napier Road was the day father nearly bled to death. He loved his hot bath and I used to be called on to scrub his back for him and examine the large scar on the back of his neck for blackheads. He told me that the wound had been caused by a German bayonet. It had never been stitched and it was obvious it had been a serious wound. I had to be careful when I scrubbed his back because he had two polyps in the middle of his back just below the shoulder blades. He got fed up with them getting irritated in hot weather and one day told me to get his cut throat razor out of the bathroom cabinet and “Cut the buggers off!”. Looking back, he must have been fairly confident in my ability to do it. I got the razor and sliced them off. Blood poured out of the two small wounds and in a couple of minutes the bath water was dyed red! At this point father got the wind up, “Get Tommy O’Connell!” he shouted. I have an idea we were in the house on our own because I can’t remember anyone else helping. I rang Tommy O’Connell and luckily he was in, he was with us in about ten minutes and he played hell with father but said not to worry he could fix it. Father wrapped a towel round his waist and we went into the kitchen. Tommy told me to light the gas stove and I assumed he needed some boiling water, I always associated this with doctors and midwives. He went into the kitchen and after a few seconds, came out, pulled the pad of lint away from the wound where I was holding it and pressed a silver spoon shaped object on the wound. Father yelled like a stuck pig, the spoon was a cauterising iron! I say iron, it was actually made of platinum, Tommy showed it to me afterwards. Of course, the most important thing as far as father was concerned was the fact that there was another wound to do and boy, did Tommy make him wait! Cruel though it was, the treatment was a total success, the bleeding stopped and Tommy congratulated me on my neat surgery! It strikes me, writing this now, that there mustn't be any such thing as a ‘normal’ childhood, or were we an exception to the rule?
We soon got to know our neighbours, there was Mr Turner, a retired builder, who rattled round no. 4 with his housekeeper. No. 8 was divided into two flats, upstairs was Miss Smith who ran the Christian Fellowship in a house near the Clifton Garage on Heaton Moor Road, Dorothy tells me she used to go there but I had forgotten this. Downstairs was Mr and Mrs Murray and her sister. He liked to be known as Captain Murray and was a bit of a laughing stock I’m afraid. I suspect he had some sort of a clerk’s job in the city and they were rather poor. At sometime there had been a storm in a teacup connected with the fact that when he left for work in the morning, ‘Captain’ Murray used to slam the gate. Ever after that he went through his little ritual, he would march through the gate, slam it, shout “Au revoir Dear” to Mrs Murray in the doorway and then whistle a few bars of Colonel Bogey as he set off up the street. There was a nice family in no. 10, the Copleys who had an only child, Peter. I spent a lot of time with him in a small shed at the end of the garden where he kept his treasures and a small museum. We would talk, read and listen to music on an old wind-up, 78rpm record player. We hadn’t got many records and I remember the favourite was ‘Jewels of the Madonna’. I can’t remember who was in no. 12 when we moved in but shortly after 1945 Jack and Mary Brannan moved in. Mary was a wonderful kind woman who hadn’t had any children of her own and gave us kids all the love she had. Jack was a strange bloke who I suspect had a bit of a chequered history. I have an idea he once had a very bad motor cycle accident and never fully got over it. He was manager of the Odeon cinema at Didsbury and a very witty man. They had originated in Mold in Flintshire and neither ever lost the distinctive soft North Wales accent.
On the opposite side of Napier road was a house occupied by Mrs. Sherring who’s son, Geoff, had been a prisoner of war in Hiroshima when the bomb was dropped. He had a large black moustache and we called him Tojo. One word of explanation as to our access to the backs of the houses. Only the end terraced houses had direct access. We had to go up to Heaton Moor Road and down a lane at the side of the Clifton Garage to get to our back gardens without going through the house. It had a curious effect in that there was a complete separation between our lives on the front street and at the back. We used the back far more than the front because this was where the garden was and access was easier. Later on we built a garage at the end of the garden and so almost always left the house by the back door.
There was one deterioration when we moved to the Moor. I can never remember us being really hard up at Norris Avenue but it soon became clear that we were under pressure. I suppose the expense of doing up the house and expanding our stock of furniture plus the mortgage was taking its toll. Remember father was being taxed as a single man. I don’t know what his wage was at the time but ten years later it was about £850 per year. Whatever the reasons, mother had to go out to work part time at John Williams grocery shop at Moor Top. This wasn’t the end of the world but it was a pointer as to how things were going and a harbinger of worse news later.
Meanwhile, I was serving out the last two years of my primary education at St Thomas’s. When I say serving out, that’s exactly what I mean. Miss Hogg had done too good a job on me and after a few weeks the teachers had decided I was so far in front of the other pupils that I needed special treatment. They put me to learning poetry by heart and going for Mr Bowers’s, the Headmaster’s, tobacco once a day. For two years I did nothing and still harbour a strong feeling of resentment against teachers who could treat a pupil like this. I knew it was wrong at the time but heeded my early training, I just buckled down and made the best of it I possibly could. One saving grace was that about this time I discovered Stockport Public Library. Having worked my way through Percy Westerman, Shalimar and a few other favourite authors I turned my attention to the non-fiction shelves. I decided the best thing was to start at the shelf nearest the librarian’s counter and work my way through the lot. To this day I am still a pretty fair hand at the construction and history of early lighthouses amongst other, similarly esoteric knowledge. I read everything I could get hold of and found that if I went to school with a book all the teachers left me alone. This suited me because I didn’t like them, particularly a bloke called Williams who had, according to rumour, been in the navy during the war. His breath smelt terribly of tobacco and strong tea and for this reason alone I was glad to avoid him.
This went on for two years until the time arrived for me to take the entrance exams for grammar school. I had the choice of three, William Hulme’s, Manchester Grammar and Stockport Grammar and took all the entrance exams. I failed the lot but by a massive stroke of good luck, somebody dropped out and I got the last free place at Stockport Grammar School. I was beginning to experience the effect of the ‘Random Improbability Factor’ on my life. Some people call this luck, whatever, it had got me through the war in one piece and was evidently still working!
Stockport Grammar was a major break for me. It was a very good school and was staffed with the same teachers who had been there before the war. Retirement had gone by the board because of the demands of the armed forces. The ones I remember were Fred Norris who taught French. The Bursar did maths and geometry and I can’t remember his name, Bertie Boake for physics, Willy Herrman German (of course! How did he avoid internment?), Eddie Bromley for woodwork, Gosling and Beckwith for PT as we called it then and, most beloved of all, Ben Varley my house master who taught us geography. They all wore academic gowns and mortar boards and discipline was absolute. We even had a sergeant from the Corps of Commissioners in the lodge at the main entrance. It was high class and demanding.
I’d like to say I was happy and did well. Not true I’m afraid, even now I’m not sure what the problems were but I had a terrible sense of inferiority and was a middling scholar. I was bullied quite a lot when I first started and I think that this had a greater effect on me than I realised at the time. One can never be sure about things like this but one thing that persuades me there may be some truth in this is the fact that I can remember one of the bullies in particular and the thought of him still makes me very angry. I feel sure that if I met him tomorrow the first thing I would do would be to drop him and then remind him of the misery he caused me all those years ago. No doubt there is some very thick scar tissue there somewhere!
I think I surprised everyone when I started to blossom in my first year in the fifth form, I had two years at this level because of the way my birthday fell in the academic year so I took my school certificate exams twice and finished up with 13 of them! At this point, Bertie Boake in particular was certain I should go on to A Levels but I wasn’t so sure. My father asked me at this point what I wanted to do, I never had a moments hesitation and to this day don’t know where it came from but I said I wanted to go farming. Right said father, get a Farmer’s Weekly and find yourself a job. I went and had a look at one farm in Cheshire and one in Warwickshire. I didn’t like the first and a week later had started what was to be a very happy year with Mr Lionel and Mrs Addy Gleed at Harrods Farm, Whatcote near Shipston on Stour. I lived in with another lad older than me, Graham Maaz, there was a tractor driver called Arthur, a herd of cows and 300 acres of land. This was now my world.
I can hear you asking the question, what possessed father to let me do exactly what I wanted? There’s a good answer to this but I didn’t discover it for many years. At the time I couldn’t believe my luck. Years later I discussed this with father and this is what he told me. When he was a lad he had a teacher called Mr Sweeney who thought the world of him. Father wanted to be an engineer and the best way to do this was to go to school in Sydney. Mr. Sweeney’s father was principal of Dulwich College, a very good private school in Solihull, Sydney. He died and it was decided that young Sweeney should go back to Solihull and take his place. He offered to take young Leslie McDonald with him and finance him through school until he was 18 but grandfather wouldn’t let him go. At the time, father was glad because he wasn’t sure about committing himself to school until he was 18 but in later years he realised that this had been a golden opportunity spoiled by his father imposing his will on him. So when the decision had to be made for me he gave me the choice. That way, I’d never bear him a grudge for a wrong decision. I never have done so I reckon he was right.
Things were changing in other respects. Dorothy and Leslie were growing up and I think we managed to range through all the facets of sibling rivalry. Basically we did our own thing. I was quite happy to be left alone to read or pursue any other of my interests. I remember one Christmas I got a huge Meccano set. It was second-hand but was the biggest you could get and then some. I immediately built a steam roller and then took it to pieces and started on something else. I had run out of plans after about three days and father set me on to building a bridge that would carry my weight across a four foot span. With a bit of criticism from him I designed and built the bridge and it survived my weight. Then father told me he was most impressed because I’d re-invented the Warren Truss, a well known design for load bearing girder structures. From then on I always had something on the go, a cable railway across the garden, cranes galore and various mechanisms just to see what they would do. Besides the Meccano, I built electric motors, crystal sets and set ups for electro-plating. I remember collaborating with Tony Iddon on soap-making. We both found the same thing, if you left it on a window ledge it would take the paint off in twelve hours. We got hold of a bottle of sodium balls from somewhere, this metal is so reactive with water it has to be kept submerged in oil. We took it into a school playground at Hazel Grove and tipped the lot down a grid in the yard. God knows what it did to the grid but the combination of yellow flames and steam was a wonderful fireworks display!
Dorothy tells me that at one point we decided we were going to put on a play and charge people for entry. We decided to do ‘The Speckled Band’ and had to find a part for Leslie, in the end we put him up a step ladder and made him hold a frame up in front of his face, he was one of the family portraits! Leslie has since added to this, he says that it was Peter Copley who instigated the play and he was the director. I often see the name Peter Copley on the credits of BBC plays and wonder whether it is the same person.
It’s not often I’m sure about anything concerning sex but there are two facts I am absolutely sound on. The first is that I hadn’t the faintest idea where babies came from until after I was eleven years old. I am sure of this because I first heard the incredible truth in the cloakroom at Stockport Grammar School. I can see the blue raincoats to this day as I received the information that was to alter my whole life! The second is that it was at about the same time that I discovered that if you did certain things with certain bits of your body it felt nice. There is no truth in the rumour that it sends you blind and hair grows on your palms, if there was, we would all have needed gloves and white canes. It wasn’t long before we graduated to the opposite sex. My father once told me that there was a providence that looks after drunken men and idiots, there must be one that looks after pubescent young lads as well. I am happy to report that I survived with honour intact and what is more, to leap forward a bit, I came out of the army a virgin. Talk about a slow starter!
The school was at Davenport, about three miles on the North side of Stockport. At first I used to go on the tram which took me from the corner of Heaton Moor road right to the school gates. Then I got a sit up and beg bicycle with a three speed gear and used this to get to school. It was a Royal Enfield, and according to the advertisements for it was ‘Built Like a Gun’ but actually weighed more than any gun ever made. I had made friends with a bloke called Syd who was manager of Bradbury’s Cycle shop on Heaton Moor and spent all my spare time helping him repair bikes, build wheels and generally make my hands useful. I think father was quite impressed because one glorious day he laid out £35 for a proper drop handlebar touring bike. It had a Sturmey Archer three speed gear but with a bit of help from Syd this was soon converted to a four cog derailleur with double chain wheel giving me eight gears. I was one of the boys.
I had two good mates at school, Tony Iddon, son of Jack Iddon the Lancashire cricketer and Ian Smith son of Mrs Smith the District Nurse for High Lane. What really welded us together was the fact that for one reason or another, none of us wanted to play the usual sports which were compulsory every Wednesday afternoon (we had school on Saturday morning to make up). They wouldn’t let me play rugby because of my glasses and the only time I played cricket I scored 40 runs and took three wickets. For some reason they didn’t ask me again. There was a bit of a clique operating I think. The only alternative was cross-country running and we all found this incredibly boring. We were talking to Mr Beckwith, one of the PT instructors one day and mentioned that we were all keen cyclists. He said that if we could find a way of proving how far we had ridden and in what time, he would let us cycle instead of run. I don’t know what he had in mind but we gave him the shock of his life when, on the first Wednesday we rode to Llangollen and back! We proved it by getting a chit signed at the local police station. To tell you the truth it nearly did us in but after that there was no trouble, every Wednesday afternoon we set off and rode to our hearts content. They were sure we were serious because we very soon became super-fit. Even at 63 my legs are still in good shape and I put a lot of it down to the thousands of miles we cycled each year.
I had another good mate at this time who I’m still in contact with, William Innes Rae of Cliffe Grove which was on Heaton Moor Road almost opposite the top of Napier Road. I met Bill and his brother Tony as a result of being on the choir at St Pauls. This reminds me that religion is a topic that needs filling in before we go any further.
I think it’s fair to say that father had no religion but a strong philosophical streak. He always said that if he clung to any religion it was Buddhism largely because a Buddhist priest had rescued him in the West Indies during his world travels before the Great War. This bloke nursed him back to health and father was with him for a year. He said that the thing that attracted him to Buddhism was the fact that they did try to make some sense out of the human experience. He gave the example of a child dying of some terrible disease. The western religions, on the whole, would say that God moves in a mysterious way and the death had to be accepted. On the other hand, a Buddhist would say that the death was a good thing, the soul of the child had evidently led an impeccable life in it’s last incarnation and God had decided to spare it the travails of this one and allow it to go on towards the next life immediately thus getting it to Nirvana quicker than would otherwise have been the case. Father’s point was that even though there was no proof of this, if the parents believed it at least gave them a structure within which they could find reason and hope. I can’t see a lot wrong in this line of thought myself and have been strongly influenced throughout my life by this conversation. When he was in hospital for the last time the Sister confided in me that they were having a bit of trouble finding a Buddhist priest for father. I told her the story about his ‘conversion’ and said that I didn’t think it would be the end of the world if they failed. However, I have an idea they found one in Bradford and that father passed away under the auspices of Buddhism. I think he would have liked that.
Mother had been reared in a strong non-conformist tradition. She was Chapel really but tolerated Church of England. I think this was mainly because they were the nearest churches to us both in Heaton Norris and on the Moor. We went to St Martin’s for one service a day until I joined the choir and then she came to both Matins and Evensong. At this time I was attending Wycliffe Sunday School at the top of George’s Road, about a mile from the house. With hindsight, this was a wonderfully old-fashioned Sunday School, remember that they were invented in Stockport. Everything was taught by parable and the Bible, there were star card markers and prizes for attendance. They even had bible knowledge examinations and I remember winning a beautiful leather bound bible as First Prize for 98/100 in Bible Knowledge. Unfortunately this got into the hands of my daughters later on, and not realising what it was, they destroyed it. To this day, I often surprise people by using obscure quotations from the Old Testament, not quite what they expect from me and all down to the dedicated non-conformists at Wycliffe SS.
When we moved to the Moor I started to go to St Paul’s. I joined the Sunday School and the choir. We practised twice a week I think on Tuesday and Friday so I made five visits there a week. There was a paid organist and choirmaster, Mr Snow and the Rector was Alfie Jeff, he was a Mason and we were a popular church for Masonic ceremonies which were an eye opener for young lads like us. I remember one day during the week there was one of these services and the church was packed with elderly men with shiny aprons and all, sorts of regalia. What sticks out in my mind was that one of the men on the front row fell asleep during the sermon, his head drooped towards his chest and after a while we could see that something brown and liquid was running out of his mouth and down all his magnificent regalia. It was beer, he was so full of booze that it just welled out of him. What a mess, his mates got him outside and returned without him.
I think we were a good choir. We sang some very good stuff and I really enjoyed it, I still have a soft spot for Tallis, Stainer and plainsong. Eventually, Bill Rae became leader on Cantoris and I led on Decaini. For those of you not versed in the more esoteric details of the church, Cantoris was the left side of the chancel facing the altar and Decaini the right. We were fairly high church I think, not quite bells and smells but certainly turning towards the altar during the Creed and we always entered in procession following the cross carried by the Verger. This might not seem important but these matters were viewed very seriously by the congregation.
Snow didn’t last long, we didn’t like him. One winter we got so mad at him that we went on strike. This was serious stuff when you consider the time and the ethos we had been raised in. Tony Rae was the leading light and he led us in our class struggle! We went to practise on the Friday night but refused to go in. They carried on without us and we piled up snow over the vestry door until it was completely covered. I vaguely remember us filling all the keyholes with candlewax but can’t remember if this was at the same time. We also got up the tower and threw pigeon muck at everyone below including Alfie Jeff. Great stuff. Snow left shortly after this, I think we were a catalyst for this action, doubtless there had been other sources of friction we knew nothing about. We were never punished in any way beyond a good communal talking to. One thing that surfaced many years later was the recognition that there was something funny going on. Snow took me down into the room below the vestry which we used as a clubroom, it had a Ping-Pong table. He wanted to have a look at my penis to make some estimate of how long it would be before my voice broke. At the time, though horribly embarrassed, I thought this was all par for the course. Years later I realised that it was abuse, funny how your mind blanks these things out.
While on the subject of choral matters I must say something about oratorio. Mother came from a choral tradition and she was well into oratorio. At that time, in Stockport, we had a wonderful opportunity to indulge our passion. Apart from singing Messiah at St Paul’s under Geoffrey Barber our new choir master, there were frequent performances at local halls and chapels. When I look back and remember the names of the soloists I realise how lucky we were. Heddle Nash the tenor, Owen Brannigan the bass, Kathleen Ferrier the contralto and Isobel Baillie the soprano were all regular performers. I still have mothers bound scores of Messiah, Judas Macabeas , The Crucifixion and Elijah. The Messiah was performed every Christmas on the wireless and mother and I used to sit there with the score following every note and criticising the runs! Many years later, Margaret Sharples and I went to Huddersfield and heard the Huddersfield Choral singing The Messiah in the Town Hall, it was magic and the back hairs still rise when I think of it. Even to this day, no Christmas is complete for me without a full Messiah either on the radio or from tapes. In later years also, when I was living in King Street, Margaret persuaded me to go with her to the chapel at Salterforth where we sang in a do-it-yourself Messiah. It was a wonderful experience but the funny thing was that when we first started I went and sat with the tenors. It wasn’t until we started singing that I realised I was a baritone at least and had to do a quick move round the back of the organ to join my fellow singers! The conductor asked me what was going on later and I told him that the last time I had done any singing was before my voice broke, I didn’t know what type of singing voice I had. Later on he congratulated me on the way I sang the runs and said it was obvious that in my youth I had done some fairly serious singing of the Messiah. It’s wonderful what skills you pick up and don’t even recognise.
As for my attitude towards organised religion, I have to report that I have no time for it. I suppose that part of this is that I distrust any type of team effort or organised philosophy. I’m too much of an individual and if there is a god or some sort of a supreme being I reckon my relationship with him, her or it is a private matter and doesn’t need organising by some sort of shop steward! My mother told me once that I was never baptised. I was told once by a priest that this meant I was doomed and could never go to heaven. I told him that if his god was so petty that he would punish a child for the omissions of the parent he mustn’t be much of a god and I wasn’t too worried about being in his club. I believe that what we have to do is lead good and useful lives and try to leave the world a better place than when we came in. If everyone did that I reckon the world would be a much better place.
Sorry about that diversion, but it needed filling in somewhere, back to Bill Rae. The Rae family lived in a large house like ours and I would say were in very similar circumstances. Bill’s father worked for the Calico Printers Association in Manchester and his mother, whose maiden name was Innes was definitely a bit higher class than us lot. She was a lovely lady who worked her fingers to the bone for her family and I have fond memories of her. She and mother got on very well together and I have an idea that Mrs Rae was the person that father turned to when mother vanished. Yes, that’s right, we had a bit of an upset in the family. I can’t remember exactly when it was but I came home one day and there was a note on the table from mother saying she had had enough and was off. I was home first and rang father who came home at once. It was a very distressing time for us all and I’ve blanked most of it out of my mind so I can’t say much about it. I think it must have been when I was about twelve years old but am not sure.
We managed without her with help from friends for I think about three months and then mother turned up again. At the time we asked no questions, we were just glad to see her back.. Years later I asked her about it and she said it was largely money problems. She had run credit up at the grocers and was concealing the fact from father that the debt was growing. It got to the stage where she knew it was all going to come out so she went AWOL. She told me that she went to the seaside and took a summer job, I think it was Blackpool. With hindsight, this was very unsettling and might have contributed to my unhappiness at school and I’m sure that Dorothy and Leslie felt the same. Dorothy has since told me how badly she felt about it. She was scared in case her friends found out that mother had left us and thought it was her place to act as ‘mother’. It was a bad time. However, I have never harboured any resentment about it, even at the time I think we all realised that somehow, mother had been in an impossible situation and had just had a break. Given the modern penchant for ‘counselling’ I often muse on the traumas we had to cope with from our own resources and wonder whether the end result was a stronger personality or irreparable damage. God knows but he or she is keeping quiet.
By about 1950 we were well established at Napier Road. I was plodding through school and was about to start blossoming a bit academically, father had settled down a bit at work I think, the rush of the war years and reconstruction was easing and he took to gardening in a big way. We built rockeries, ponds, greenhouses and pergolas together and even got a dog. This was an Alsatian called Bess and was, with hindsight, a disaster. None of us had any interest in her and she languished in a kennel at the side of the garage until eventually she developed paralysis in her back legs and had to be destroyed. Looking back, she had a hard life and I always feel sorry about it.
School work was getting harder, we had lots of homework but I was beginning to enjoy quite a lot of it. My favourite subjects were woodwork, physics, chemistry and, surprisingly, spherical trigonometry! My English wasn’t bad but my languages were a bit of a disaster. On the whole I wasn’t doing badly and was never frightened of taking my end of term report home.
Outside school it was a gas. We were still cycling and I spent a lot of time up at High Lane with Ian and Tony and we cycled over the whole of Derbyshire and anywhere else we could reach in a day. All we needed was a bottle of water and a few sandwiches and that was us, off into the blue. We never got into the racing scene but I remember on one occasion we were coming out of Buxton over Long Hill down to Whaley Bridge and a Wolsley police car pulled us up at the bottom. The driver was furious, he had been trying to catch us up all the way down and reckoned we were doing over 60 mph.! There was no doubt about it, we were fast, especially down hill but we never had any accidents apart from the usual punctures and broken spokes. We were very good about looking after our bikes, we kept everything lubricated and in good order and it was useful training for other, more serious locomotion later in life.
Eventually, in 1952 and 1953 the dreaded examinations hit us. I did fairly well the first year, went into the top fifth form concentrating on science and took another bunch of exams the following year. At this point, as I have already described, father gave me the chance and I took the option of hard work, leaving home and the wide world. As with so many other choices during life I wonder at times what would have happened if a different route had been taken. On the whole, I’m well pleased, I can’t see how things could have been better and in the end I didn’t miss out on any of the schooling. The education went on all of my life and hasn’t finished yet.
With hindsight, this was the end of childhood and the beginning of my foray into the wide world. I feel I am allowed at almost 64 years old to make some assessment of the experience so far. I don’t suppose my mother and father ever had access to any ‘expert’ advice on child-rearing. They just followed their instincts and experience. They occasionally resorted to mild corporal punishment but it was very infrequent and I don’t think for one minute it did me any harm. I had a healthy respect for them and authority in general, Mrs Ackroyd and her cane had done a good job! However, I think this was tempered by my genes, my father was an Aussie after all!
Hindsight is wonderful in that it is 20/20 vision in most areas but there are whole swathes of experience which, in order to defend ourselves, we either paint with a rosy hue or bury. It can be a very difficult process recognising these things and even more difficult and painful raising them into the light. Fifty years after the events, six months after starting to write and after a lot of thinking I’m beginning to get some clues as to why I have always had problems dealing with emotional matters. I make no criticism of my mother and father, God knows I understand the mechanisms that drove them now, but if there was one serious deficiency right the way through childhood it was emotion.
The first time I ever remember my mother kissing me was shortly before she died and even then it was just a peck. I can’t ever remember having what I would call a proper cuddle. I think the reason for this was that in order to survive, their life experience had taught them to keep emotion under a very strong check. I have absolutely no doubt as to their love and care for us, the problem I see is that they never allowed themselves to show it. The consequence of this was that they taught us to act in a similar way. I say ‘us’ because I suspect that Dorothy and Leslie had the same experience but it is so painful a subject I have never discussed it with them.
All my daughters tell me the same thing, that they were actually frightened of me when they were children. Like my experience with my parents, they never had any doubts about my dependability or loyalty to them but looking back, I repeated the mistakes I had learned as a child. I think the root of it may be that it is dangerous to invest too much emotion into a relationship because when it is taken away the pain is so much greater. My excuse for this behaviour is that I was shaped by powerful forces and didn’t have the equipment to deal with them, all my energies were taken up by the struggle to survive, earn a living and provide for my family. I used to think that the phrase in the Bible about the sins of the fathers being visited upon the children even unto the third and fourth generation was an oblique reference to venereal disease! I can see now that there is a lot more to it than that.
A further influence was the natural hardening process of being raised during the war. We were familiar with death and fear at a very early age and I know this changed us. We were, and still are, a much harder generation than today’s children. I realised later in life that I was a good man in a crisis, I have a very clear sight of degrees of risk and the consequences of actions and am far better equipped to make these types of assessment than today’s youngsters so on the whole I think that whoever was responsible, I had a pretty good childhood. As for the effects of all this on my children, they carry some of the damage forward but my assessment is that they are far better than I was at recognising the problems and dealing with them. They have more room and freedom in their lives than we had and the end result is that the affect of things like war and struggle lessen as they filter down the generations.
I’ve painted a pretty black picture for you. I don’t want to over-egg the pudding, it wasn’t all bad and there were cuddles and kisses at Hey Farm, but perhaps not enough……..
Anyone who came through the war as a child had a baptism of fire and everything else that happened afterwards was easy in comparison. We didn’t have the problems of dealing with the economic consequences of the war, all we knew was that we had won, the sirens had stopped and the silence was wonderful. I can see now that we were all to be affected and that the consequences would ring down the years.
9354
Back to Index
|
|
| Replies |
| Author |
|
|
Stevie
Mad Woman of Thornton
834 Posts
|
|
Posted - 18/05/2004 : 00:39
I feel quite breathless after reading this! I may be 20 years younger and thankfully didnt have to endure the war but I can feel so much empathy for a lot of what you have experienced as a child.
I too was considered too bright for my peer group in secondary school so after 3 and a half years with the same class and the same teachers I was moved to the A+ group at the age of 14. It was all different teachers, often different subjects, I had to drop French as the new group studied German and as I hadnt been taught it for the last 3+ years they left me to my own devices for the course of that lesson. My new classmates had been together from the start and certainly didnt welcome this shy, quite and timid supposedly 'bright' star. It was the 1st time the school had ever attempted this kind of transplant and it all ended in diaster. My schoolwork suffered terribly, I went from top of the class in all subjects to bottom of the new class, my self esteem such as it was disolved and I ended up truanting for the 1st time in my life! Its a long story and to this day I prefer not to think about it!
My mum also did a vanishing act due to financial problems. Thankfully it was only for a day, my dad found her and brought her home! He worked for Ford Motor Company and 30 odd years ago the strikes there were second to none. Without fail, every year there would be a lengthy strike over pay. One partucular year the strike had gone on for weeks and my parents were desperate on how to get by with a mortgage and 5 children, so Dad took a job on a building site, the problems was we lived in Essex and the job was in Liverpool. This meant he worked away all week and came home for w/e's only. This went on for about 12 weeks. During this time my Mum was put in charge of the finances and I dont really know what happend, just that we came home from school, my Mum had vanished with my younger brother in his pram, Dad arrived through the door all the way from Liverpool and nobody knew where she was. He was gone for hours combing the streets and eventually he found her sat on a park bench in tears! He brought her home and the matter was closed! Years later he would often tease her about it but I think to this day it is something she is deeply ashamed of!
Also Stanley, you inability to show physical emotion! I too had parents that demonstrated little or no affection. I was terrified of my Dad when I was growing up and seeing the contempt he treated my Mum with, and most females If Im honest, I knew then that wasnt for me, as and when I reached adulthood! If we were good, we were ignored and if we werent ... Oh how we knew the consequences! This is something I have learnt to change! I always vowed to myself if I ever had children, it would be different .... and it is! My daughter and I have a close loving relationship, she can talk to me about anything and everything. She was raised with hugs, kisses, encouragement and praise... we have no secrets, she to my pride, considers me to be her best friend! The sins of the father do not necessarily have to be visited on the child!
Stanley, what have you done! I have talked tonight about issues I havent discussed with even close friends, memories I buried a long time ago and never intended to revisit! To be honest Im not convinced its a good thing to travel backwards in time, going forwards can be hard enough at times!
Edited by - Stevie on 07 Jun 2004 01:37:33
 |
Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart
36804 Posts
|
|
Posted - 18/05/2004 : 06:46
Now that's a new experience! Everyone who has read the memoir up to now has kept stumm! As you'll probably realise, it took a bit of self-persuasion to start writing and I had many qualms about just how honest I could be, bearing in mind that in the end someone would read it. I decided (with hindsight I am sure it was right) to be totally honest. It was intended in the first place for my kids and grandchildren and I paid them the compliment of thinking that they wouldn't be too harsh on me. All my daughters have a copy and nobody has blanked me yet!
Your last paragraph is the best endorsement there can be for writing something like this, it triggers people off into thinking about their own lives. It's entirely up to you and anyone else who reads what I write to make up your own mind whether it is a good exercise for you. All I can relate to is my own experience and it certainly did me good. (Wait until you get into the rest of it!)
At the moment, I stand back and look at this chapter, I'm reasonably satisfied with it still. I look at the affect it has had on you, and how honestly you deal with the same experiences i had. It all helps us to sort things out in our own minds and I firmly believe that we can't be any good for anyone else if we are screwed up by repressed thoughts. Of course, there is a limit to how far you go and this is a personal boundary. The deeper you dig the more you find and any sensible person realises that there comes a point where you can't be sure about the veracity of the memory. The mind can play funny tricks. Look at the problems that have been caused by psychiatrists hypnotising people to retrieve 'memories', many of which can be proved to be false. So, if you do go down the road, place sensible limits on how deep you go and where you call a halt.
What a nice surprise to read something like this first thing in the morning. I can't help reflecting that as long as people are interacting in public like this there could be hope for the human race. It shows levels of honesty and trust that can do nothing but good. What a good man Doc is! Look what he's triggering off.
Thanks for a nice experience.
Stanley Challenger Graham
Barlick View
stanley at barnoldswick.freeserve.co.uk |
Clem
New Member
4 Posts
|
|
Posted - 22/12/2005 : 03:01
I stumbled on your entry while Googling- and what a surprise. I wish my memories were as clear as yours are.
I entered St T's Infants in 1956, and stayed the course till 1963 when I 'passed'the entrance exams for Cheadle Hulme, William Hulme and SGS. Like you I went to SGS but stayed through till 18, leaving for Manchester Uni- one year then up to S.Martins Lancaster.
Your description of Society in Heaton Moor resonates so clearly with my memories. We lived in Heaton Chapel in the same 'grove' as one set of Grandparents, and my grandmothers anecdote of informing her friends--'Oh, my dear, Heaton Chapel- but thats the wrong side of the railway- no one will ever visit you there'. We moved when I was seven to Wellington Road North- a large house opposite the vets. I remember bus routes the 92 to school for 3 1/2 d or the 18, 20,or 27 for a faster journey for a happenny more. I don't remember the tram lines, they had gone again by 55- but the Stockport to Manchester tram was the 34 ?
You talk of teachers- at St T's in my time Noah Williams was the headteacher and your description fits- he was a layreader I believe. The two top classes were taught by Mr Bowers and Mr Bowden- Mr Bowers was I think Deputy head. Mr Bowden had a daughter of my age Hilary. They had gone by the time I was in those classes. The year 5 teacher was a Mr Forsyth- who predicted entry to SGS by 'constructive ridicule'. He would be mortified if he knew how upsetting it had been. My year 'six' was a Mrs Smith who came in on the 27 or the train from Whalley Bridge. Noah Williams was low church, and my father was reputed to be rather high- and yes it did matter.
As a child you were not told these things- it is fascinating to hear of your experiences.
Onto the SGS crew- I remember a 'Frankie Norris' who used to live somewhere in Heaton Moor. I was forced to repeat 'O level French' because I was letting the school down by failing it. The second time I failed it, I was refused permission to resit- because I would be letting the school down. Funny world- I now spend 6 weeks a year in France- and I am just as happy doing the Sudoku in Liberation as in the Guardian. As I did Latin and Science (2nd class citizen) I was never taught by Mr Hermann, but I did accompany his daughter Cathy to her 6th form dance- she went off to music at the Royal Northern I think- and I brought up my kids with German as their first language. Jimmy Gosling was still there he and John Stanley, the art master took the year seven tutor groups. Houses had ceased to have much relevance.
It is interesting that you 'tailored your own PE' programme- I evaded team games by 'sailing'and thus needing to practise my swimming at the Petersgate baths (89 from Brackley Rd) while at St T's year 6 had used Reddish baths. (no 9 to Holdsworth Sq and walk). This was exciting because Reddish was not Heaton Chapel- this was not our patch. Not only was there a social divide but a religious one- Methodist not CofE.
Yes I moved away- Lancaster, Herefordshire, West Didsbury while working in M8, but then Chatham and industrial North Kent. Of the values instilled by St T's and a super selective education- well, I am an informed atheist- and worked 12 years as a traditional Labour councillor.
Greetings from Rochester.
|
Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart
36804 Posts
|
|
Posted - 22/12/2005 : 04:52
Nice piece Clem and I enjoyed it. Mr Bowers was the head at St Thomas' from 1945 'til 1947 when I was there. Main thing I remember about Noah was that his breath smelt rotten! He used to shove his face up to yours and scream at you and the smell was the worst part. I was with a bunch of the lads from SGS only last week. We meet up occasionally, we all left in 1953 and out of the five close friends all went on to engineering and four onto up and downers (steam engines) We always say we wondered what they would have thought. They were happy and eventful days and served me well, I'm glad it triggered you off. I'm very impressed that you took Willie Herrman's daughter out.... Didn't even know he had one. Fred Norris lived on the road alonside the railway line at HM. He used to see us trainspotting next to the little wooden shack that sold models opposite the station entrance on the other side of the road. He couldn't understand why we were doing it.... I can't remember when they took the tram lines up but they burned all the Manchester trams at the big depot at Didsbury. They'd never let them get away with it now! Posat some more, you'll be amazed how your memory will recover if you push it, it's all in there somewhere! Best, S.
Stanley Challenger Graham
Barlick View
stanley at barnoldswick.freeserve.co.uk |
Clem
New Member
4 Posts
|
|
Posted - 22/12/2005 : 09:54
I stumbled on your entry while Googling- and what a surprise. I wish my memories were as clear as yours are.
I entered St T's Infants in 1956, and stayed the course till 1963 when I 'passed'the entrance exams for Cheadle Hulme, William Hulme and SGS. Like you I went to SGS but stayed through till 18, leaving for Manchester Uni- one year then up to S.Martins Lancaster.
Your description of Society in Heaton Moor resonates so clearly with my memories. We lived in Heaton Chapel in the same 'grove' as one set of Grandparents, and my grandmothers anecdote of informing her friends--'Oh, my dear, Heaton Chapel- but thats the wrong side of the railway- no one will ever visit you there'. We moved when I was seven to Wellington Road North- a large house opposite the vets. I remember bus routes the 92 to school for 3 1/2 d or the 18, 20,or 27 for a faster journey for a happenny more. I don't remember the tram lines, they had gone again by 55- but the Stockport to Manchester tram was the 34 ?
You talk of teachers- at St T's in my time Noah Williams was the headteacher and your description fits- he was a layreader I believe. The two top classes were taught by Mr Bowers and Mr Bowden- Mr Bowers was I think Deputy head. Mr Bowden had a daughter of my age Hilary. They had gone by the time I was in those classes. The year 5 teacher was a Mr Forsyth- who predicted entry to SGS by 'constructive ridicule'. He would be mortified if he knew how upsetting it had been. My year 'six' was a Mrs Smith who came in on the 27 or the train from Whalley Bridge. Noah Williams was low church, and my father was reputed to be rather high- and yes it did matter.
As a child you were not told these things- it is fascinating to hear of your experiences.
Onto the SGS crew- I remember a 'Frankie Norris' who used to live somewhere in Heaton Moor. I was forced to repeat 'O level French' because I was letting the school down by failing it. The second time I failed it, I was refused permission to resit- because I would be letting the school down. Funny world- I now spend 6 weeks a year in France- and I am just as happy doing the Sudoku in Liberation as in the Guardian. As I did Latin and Science (2nd class citizen) I was never taught by Mr Hermann, but I did accompany his daughter Cathy to her 6th form dance- she went off to music at the Royal Northern I think- and I brought up my kids with German as their first language. Jimmy Gosling was still there he and John Stanley, the art master took the year seven tutor groups. Houses had ceased to have much relevance.
It is interesting that you 'tailored your own PE' programme- I evaded team games by 'sailing'and thus needing to practise my swimming at the Petersgate baths (89 from Brackley Rd) while at St T's year 6 had used Reddish baths. (no 9 to Holdsworth Sq and walk). This was exciting because Reddish was not Heaton Chapel- this was not our patch. Not only was there a social divide but a religious one- Methodist not CofE.
Yes I moved away- Lancaster, Herefordshire, West Didsbury while working in M8, but then Chatham and industrial North Kent. Of the values instilled by St T's and a super selective education- well, I am an informed atheist- and worked 12 years as a traditional Labour councillor.
Greetings from Rochester.
|
wayne
New Member
3 Posts
|
|
Posted - 10/03/2006 : 14:11
Hi,
Stanley, that is an interesting story- powerfully written and evocative. I enjoyed reading it, especially as I'm working on someone's memoir just now. What brought me here was actually research for this project. I've been googling for information and saw that somebody mentioned the 89 bus. I am wondering if any forum users will be able to help me...
According to the stockport handbook for 1952, the 89 bus ran from St. Peter's Square Stockport to ALbert Sq. Manchester at a frequency of every ten minutes. I am interested to learn if anyone recalls the route it took. Where was the stop in Peter's Square? Does anyone know what buildings/ retailers were close to the shop? And did the bus pick up in Mersey Sq. as I believe many other services did at the time? I would be indebted for any information.
Many thanks,
Wayne.
|
Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart
36804 Posts
|
|
Posted - 10/03/2006 : 15:38
I can't remember a lot about the buses because I used to cycle everywhere from about 1950 onwards. Lots of buses, both corporation and North Western Road Cars used theterminus in Mersey Square, that was a big open space in front of the Plaza and there was a witing room there that was very handy for the down and outs. In those days there was a lot of slum property on the noprth side of Prince's Street, right back to the line where the Mway runs now. Was St Peter's Square at the top of the hill behind the Plaza? There was a statue of Cobden there and the main building was the Palladium? I always get the Palladium mixed up with the Hippodrome in Prince's Street, both theatres and music halls. I remember seeing Wilson Kepple and Betty at the top one, Norman Evans doing 'Over the Garden Wall' and Kitty Reilly and Lucan McShane? what was the stage name. (Old Mother Riley!) Frank Randall. There was a pub on the market side of the theatreand if you went down towards Wellington Road the library was at the end on the left and sme small shops on the right hand side of the road, the most exciting of which was almost at the end and had magazines in the window like 'The Naturist', 'The Body Beautiful' and one I never understood at the time which had traffic lights on the front, I found out later it was 'The Red Light' by Marie Stopes? one of the first books on birth control.
It was a different time then and in many ways a different world. Funny thing is I am certain that Bowers was headmaster at St Thmas' school and Noah Williams was an underling. I have an idea he was in the navy during the war? We used to go to Reddish to the baths as well, rows of wooden fronted changing rooms round the bath. At SGS we used to go to the Blue Lagoon over the other side of the road behind Mile End School, remember that? It was an open air pool, no wonder it always seemed a bit run down. Very high diving board and we used to go up and jump off it, nobody dived, it was too high. I wonder if they'd let kids do that nowadays? We were too interested in bikes when puberty hit for girls to make any real impact. I did my first grade sex education at Hazel Grove of a summer's night but never really got past first base. Hard to believe it now but I was a virgin when I came out of the army in 1956! I suppose some of us were slow starters, but good men once we got the hang of it!
They were good days, there were worse places to grow up and the education was superb, we all came out with skills.
Stanley Challenger Graham
Barlick View
stanley at barnoldswick.freeserve.co.uk |
wayne
New Member
3 Posts
|
|
Posted - 10/03/2006 : 18:59
Thank you Stanley, that's a big help and very kind of you to take the time to reply. It is all long before my time but I was up there yesterday comparing the modern with old pictures. Cobden is still there and I have a few photos of the palladium though it's long gone now. The information on the waiting room in Mersey Square is new to me as is your recollection about the shop! Both are a great help.
Many thanks,
Wayne.
|
Clem
New Member
4 Posts
|
|
Posted - 10/03/2006 : 19:30
I concede that Bowers was the head preceding Noah Williams. The 89, and 92 shared the same route from Plymouth Grove to Princes St lights Mersey Square, stopping at every stop. It turned left into Mersey Square then immediate right. There was a setting off stop outsides Boots. At the other end of the square there was a traffic island at the end of Chestergate, the 89 then turned up the hill (Petersgate) and terminated at an island with I believe the Cobham statue. On leaving, it went past the 'Baths' to the traffic lights at the corner of Wellington Rd South. Here was the library. It turned right down the hill, giving a fine view of Mersey Square to the right. At the Princes Street lights it went straight over onto Wellington Road North. The pickup stop was just after the lights. I believe to the left over a tall wall and a lot lower was the Stockport Corporation Bus Garages. The Bus station in Mersey Square was operated by North Western, and coaches used to stop there too, along with buses operated by Stalybridge, Hyde ....?.
I have a 1967 school book, called Starting Points- that has a photograph of Mersey Square taken in some time before that, it shows a double decker 27 in the foreground a Petersgate in the background.
|
Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart
36804 Posts
|
|
Posted - 11/03/2006 : 06:13
Clem, wonderful how we trigger each other off.... I remember the bus stop at the bottom of Wellington Road North. The building behind was the old tram sheds and there was a door in the wall that fascinated me, it had a sign on it saying 'decontamination centre' whether it was for gas attack or not I don't know. I have an idea that it was where bedding and clothes from houses in quarantine because of infectious disease were fumigated. There was a CI finger post sign and I can see it now, 'London 182 miles'. Up the hill you passed the old L&NWR warehouse on the left just before Belmont Bridge. There was a fork to the right somewhere there that took you to Reddish and passed the Empress Ballroom. 'The largest triple sprung maple dancefloor in the North of England'. Up W Road North the next major junction was where Heaton Moor Road crossed connecting to the road to Reddish. There was an imposing Williams Deacons Bank on the corner of W Rd North and Heaton Moor Road. Half a mile further on was St Thomas' School (and the fork to Reddish..... I had that wrong, the triangle was the opposite way round. ) next major junction was a mile firther, McVitie's biscuit works on the left and Monarch laundry on the right. That was the Stockport boundary and from then on the buses and trams went straight through to Manchester. By the way, there was a continuous tram service from Picadilly right through to Hazel Grove. Not sure if Manchester Corporation ran this service, Stockport certainly did. In the fifties some of the trams still had an open section on the top deck front and back. Back in stockport, if you turned left down Didsbury Road there was a pub on the corner and then slum property between there and the viaduct. Joe Hibbert's barber's shop was just beyond the pub on the corner of an alley leading down to the river. Joe had a bad leg and always had the chair next to the open fire. There were four chairs and it was always busy, all hair was burned on the fire. A little bit further on was a blacksmith's shop, Luke Lister's. beyond that the road hit the railway at the bottom of Belmont Road(?) and on the left was Roger Bennet's butcher's shop. Up the hill and you were out into new property once you passed the big pub at the top on the left where Huntsman's Brow met Travis Brow. Then Cheshire Sterilised Milk on the right at the top of the lane that led down to Needham's foundry (every grid in the north of England seemed to have been made there!) There used to be a big circular Emergency Water Supply tank on the spare ground there. Then on to the small group of shops between Bankfield Avenue and Norris Avenue. Beyond there a new estate on the left and going up the hill on the left was the Mary Baines Home, destroyed by a land mine one night, many kids killed. Up the hill and on the right was Barnes' Home, it was either a reformatory or an orphanage, not sure which. Enough, I could sit here all day....... Keep this going , it's triggering stuff off I thought I had forgotten years since.
Stanley Challenger Graham
Barlick View
stanley at barnoldswick.freeserve.co.uk |
wayne
New Member
3 Posts
|
|
Posted - 11/03/2006 : 13:24
Great stuff, thanks Clem! Thank you both, keep reminiscing!
|
Clem
New Member
4 Posts
|
|
Posted - 11/03/2006 : 15:39
A few more random flashbacks.
the 92 was a joint service from Manchester Corporation Transport and Stockport which explained the two liveries. I believe my mother told me that in the days of the trams, it used to stop at Crossley Road, and the collectors would be switched from one set of wires to the other- possibly because they ran on different voltages, or AC DC?
At Crossley Road you had Crossley Brothers (?Bus Manufacturers) and Fairey Aviation- and then Fairey stainless- that had connections with the emergent nuclear industry.
The 37 and 47 buses terminated there and then ran through Heaton Chapel, following Manchester Road and down Lancashire Hill to Tiviot Dale (and then presumably along Chestergate to Mersey Square)- on the occasions that I took this route I would alight at Tiviot Dale and walk though along Princes Street. Where they went I have no idea- but it was outside the 'safe zone' of my personal space.
Buses with the exception of the 27 (Buxton) all had rear platforms and no self respecting grammar school kid would ever wait for it to stop before jumping off- what were traffic lights for- if not that.
The 28 took you to Hayfield, where you could walk over Kinder to Edale where there was a station, and a train that brought you back to (?Tiviot Dale)- this was rarely done- but the fact that you could was a psychological safety valve. (Reference to Ewan McColl- the Manbchester Rambler- and the Great Kinder Trespass)
Wellington Road was the new road- a turnpike- a toll road built when Wellington was a hero (1815?)- the old road was Manchester Road. At the split, opposite St Thomas' was a peculiar small building -the Toll Bar- which in 1969 had become a bank - either a National provincial, or a Westminster- later to merge.
Around here were the shops- Charles Booth (grocers) there were two other branches. A Cycle shop (was that Reynolds)- a post office, a wallpaper shop Mrs Watkins. On school lane there was a Co-op, a newsagent, a cleaners and round the corner Brian Gurney's toy and Model shop. The Chapel House Hotel (pub) was on the Manchester Road/ Broadstone Road junction.
Though I used bits of the Reddish Canal when dog walking we never really appreciated the urban heritage of the great mills that still hadn't been demolished.
|
Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart
36804 Posts
|
|
Posted - 12/03/2006 : 06:54
You want esoteric information? Stockport was 460v DC and Manchester 400 volts so the Manchester trams would need another resistance in the circuit. The Stockport trams would probably have been able to manage without swapping, they would just be on a slightly lower voltage. The Crossley factory at the boundary was road vehicles, wagons and a lot of municipal stuff. They had a gas engine factory in Manchester on the way to Bradford (Manchester). I remember the toll house and yes, it became a bank. There was another famous engine maker just before you got to SGS on the left, Mirlees, Bickerton and Day. They made very large stationary diesels. I can remember being allowed to stay up to hear all the mills and locos sound their whistles at midnight on New Years Eve. Another sound that stays with me is lying in bed and listening to the locos and the rattle of the couplings (old fashioned chain couplings) in the shunting yards between Cheshire Sterilised and Belmont Road.
Stanley Challenger Graham
Barlick View
stanley at barnoldswick.freeserve.co.uk |
Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart
36804 Posts
|
|
Posted - 16/06/2006 : 05:43
I've brought this back up for Mo who was asking about school memories.....
Stanley Challenger Graham
Barlick View
stanley at barnoldswick.freeserve.co.uk |
IanEd
New Member
1 Posts
|
|
Posted - 16/08/2006 : 10:38
just stumbled in, through the courtesy of a vague Google.
"They made very large stationary diesels" - the field alongside somewhat surreal with the large castings stood resting and rusting. [ Mirrlees Blackstone ]
I'll just link these and be on my way.
Photos of Stockport circa1950
Photos of Hazel Grove circa 1950
SGS early 70s
best wishes
Ian
Edited by - IanEd on 16 August 2006 10:41:37 |
|
|
|
|
CHILDHOOD 1945 TO 1953
