A view of Werneth Low

A view taken across the fields towards Werneth Low. Note the Cenotaph is missing which makes it pre 1921 !!. Also, note the path leading down to the old Isolation Hospital.

The same path now leads down to Alder Community High School.

Dean and Noble

Below is a postcard which shows, amongst other shops, Dean and Noble, which stood on Market Street on the corner of the Borough Arcade..
The advert below is from when it stood lower down Market Street next to the alley, Longmeadow Passage.
Dean and Noble had an iconic status in Hyde as a place where you could buy almost any small electrical item or accessory




Here is a still from a 35mm cinema reel of silent adverts that were used at the Theatre Royal Cinema.

Thanks to Werneth Low for the postcard and Stephen Hill for the advert :)

Much appreciated !!

Pole Bank Hall

Here is a postcard of a  lovely shot of the main entrance to Pole Bank Hall which we don't often see ...
 
 

Many thanks, as always, to Werneth Low :)

Hyde Market Place- Past and Present.

Hyde Market Place
I much prefer the old look .


Then

Now



Many thanks once again, Werneth Low . :)

Ollerenshaws Farm.

Here is a postcard supplied by Werneth Low.
It shows Ollerenshaws Farm which stands on Werneth Low Road over to the Greave side..
I'm not sure if the present name is still the same.





Present day photo


Map showing its location. The farm is top right.

Many Thanks to Werneth Low for the loan of the postcard :)

Bits and Bobs part 1

Over the next few days I will post some odds and sods that were sent to us by Werneth Low.
These are just the sort of things we are looking for.


Ashton Brothers in its full glory.


Ashton Brothers R.I.P.


Many Thanks to Werneth Low for sharing.
Much appreciated. :)

Old Local Buses

Here we have a 211 Hattersley-Hathershaw 1965 Daimler Bus Photo Postcard.

 

This postcard is a 1955 Atkinson Double-Decker Stalybridge-Hyde Tram Bus.

 

Pretty May Queens.

A postcard of a Hyde May Queen Procession.
Any information of when and where is appreciated.





from wikipedia

Today the May Queen is a girl who must ride or walk at the front of a parade for May Day celebrations. She wears a white gown to symbolise purity and usually a tiara or crown. Her duty is to begin the May Day celebrations. She is generally crowned by flowers and makes a speech before the dancing begins. Certain age groups dance round a Maypole celebrating youth and the spring time.

The Junction Inn

The Junction Inn was situated at 150 Ashton Road in Newton. 
It was opened  in 1857 and was named after the new rail link at Hyde Junction which was run from the main Manchester to Sheffield route .

At the rear of the Junction there used to be a small factory making hats and many of the workers would call in for much needed refreshments.




EDIT:
After much detective work by many people it appears that the postcard is of The Junction Inn which stood on the corner of New Mills Road and Chapel Road, Hayfield and NOT the one on Ashton Road as stated on the back. It was demolished about 1934/5. 
This piece of information comes from David Stafford.

Many Thanks, David :)

Rosemount Chapel Interior

Here is a lovely postcard sent to us by Werneth Low.
It shows the interior of Rosemount Chapel in Flowery Field.
It was quite similar to the old Zion Congregational interior.

I was christened in this chapel :)



Many thanks for the loan of the postcard.
Much appreciated.

Joel Lane View

Here is a postcard of a lovely old view of Joel Lane.

The postcard is currently for sale on Ebay.

Joel Lane Primitive Methodist Chapel can be seen to the right of the postcard.

Postcards.

 Here is a collection of Hyde related postcards through the years.


Flowery Field Unitarian Church


Hyde Cemetery


Looking towards Hyde from St Annes Road Denton


Bennett Street Newton

Union Street Congregational Chapel

Union Street Congregational Chapel 

Founded in 1814

Built in 1822 /  rebuilt in 1843

Main church building demolished circa 1970 ?

 

The Church is still thriving as the United Church, on Union Street in Hyde.

It can be seen centre of the photo, with the library to the left.

MEMORIES OF HYDE 1958 – 1962 Part 10

BY ROGER CHADWICK

The end of June 1958  saw Mum, Gran and I make the annual pilgrimage from Glen Wood to Godley Station.  We were on our way to the annual fortnight in Bournemouth. 

But that summer saw me staying in Bournemouth working on a market garden – for at that time Hyde had absolutely no work for temporary or unskilled workers. 

The pay at the market garden was low, the work boring and at times dangerous as I was shinning up ladders rolling “sylglass” between the greenhouse panes or taking new growth from the axils of tomato plants and for variety, feeding each and every cucumber plant in a vast greenhouse with one barrel-load of horse muck per day.  The summer did have its bonuses – I found very good “digs”, a smashing girlfriend whose father worked for De Havilland and I came home brown as a berry, ready for third year at Durham University.

This was the time when I realised I could not be in Hyde for much longer and still needed to work for the family income.  An enquiry at the Office of the North Western Road Car Company informed me that there was work for “temps” in the summer months.  I jumped at the chance! 

Mottram Road

I spent a fortnight in Conductor School and was then assigned to Glossop Garage and placed under the watchful eye of a senior conductor and an Inspector.  Very soon I was in charge of a vehicle and when on early shift, learnt to wake up at 0300 hrs, brew up, dress smartly in full uniform and stand under the lamp on Mottram Road(A 57) waving my billy can and hitching a lift so as to take a bus out for 0500.  Most days I got a potato lorry bound for West Yorkshire but then meant a long walk from The Gun Inn,  Hollingworth to Charles Street in Glossop.  Sometimes a newspaper van would oblige.  Occasionally one of the drivers would pick me up – sometimes in a car, sometimes on a motor bike.  Yet I never missed a shift in three years on the buses.  Thankfully most of the shifts started later and I could travel to work on the 0530 or 0600 service 125 to Glossop.  Coming home at night was sometimes difficult, The Company put on a “ghost” bus for late workers as far as Mottram Junction but you never got lifts from motorists so it was “shanks pony” for 2.5 miles home!  The shift that saw me work the Glossop Saturday Midnight Circular 190 taking all the boozers home was no fun when it was half past one in the morning before I got in!

Stalybridge, Hyde, Mossley & Dukinfield Joint Transport and Electricity Board Crest

It was a funny feeling to work on a bus route that passed my door and which I knew so well and to sit in the crew room at Glossop with North Western and SHMD guards that knew me from boyhood.  I often worked the 125 Limited Stop to Denton, Hyde and Old Glossop. It was an 8hr 31min “turn” and you worked hard with full loads to Hyde, full loads to Manchester and the same at night on return workings.  On one such trip we came into Chorlton Street, and went out immediately, fully loaded..  Late running was frowned upon.  Traffic jams were frequent around the city and you didn’t get a clear road until beyond Ardwick. 

 Belle Vue circa 1963

By Belle Vue I was dying to use the Public Conveniences. 

Going down Broomstair Brow I was desperate but I knew that there were facilities in Hyde Bus Station.  Never was I so glad to arrive at Hyde Bus Station and find relief – but then – it suddenly dawned upon me that I was in a cubicle!   There had been no urinal and I was too desperate to notice. I did now – I was in THE LADIES!!!  I really do remember breaking into a cold sweat.  Was I going to be arrested?   Someone might have already called the police for our bus was fully loaded and waiting immediately outside.  What if a lady came in?  Here goes – with head held high walked out pretending that nothing untoward had occurred, I emerged into the sunlight.  Suddenly there was a roar of laughter and cheering from the passengers and driver!   They had all seen what had happened and were going to make the most of it. It took me weeks to live that episode down.   Nowadays, such an incident would be world news!

Hyde Bus Station - The toilets were to the left behind the bus shelters.

I learn a lot about the British Public whilst on the buses and I will come to that in the next chapter.  My first driver warned me when I started that I would learn things about people’s behaviour that no college course could teach.   Bye – he was right – but they were good years with eight to ten weeks on buses, enjoying the travel, the “crack” with mates and the fun with passengers.  Of course, there was the bonus of good wages, plenty of overtime, Sunday double time, rest day working, spread-over penalty payments for split shifts.  I was to get married in 1963 with this “bus money” behind me!  My mother, instead of taking my wages for board and lodge took the money and then secretly saved it all up for when I needed it.

In some ways, these were the happiest years of my life!!

Thanks to Roger for his continuing memories of Hyde.
They are much welcomed and enjoyed ! :)

 

MEMORIES OF GROWING UP IN HYDE 1953 – 1962 Part 9

By Roger Chadwick

The school week at William Hulme’s G.S. was six whole days, there being lesons on Wednesday and Saturday mornings and compulsory sport until 4.00.p.m. on both afternoons.  Drama and School Cadets added yet more hours to the schoolday and at busy times I would do homework in Manchester Central Library getting home around 9.30.p.m. only to be off again at 7.30.a.m. in the morning.   Half term consisted of a Friday and a Monday tacked onto a weekend but the school holidays were longer.   These factors meant that my time in and around Hyde was becoming increasingly sparse! In those days, Sunday truly was a day of rest with shops closed, bus services curtailed and nowt to do unless you were involved in a church.

Just after my 15^th birthday, with the expenses of adolescence rising, some money had to be raised.   In the summer of 1954, I started labouring at Ashton Brothers Bayleyfield Mill, hauling tubs of cotton bobbins to Italian lasses, (many of whom had already done 8 hrs in the Pan Yan Pickle factory in Glossop) in what was then called the Pirning room and then sorting boxes of cotton in the cavernous damp cellars.  Weekday work began at 7.30.a.m. and finished at 5.30.p.m with 20 minutes for breakfast and 60 minutes for lunch.  Saturdays began at the same time and work finished at 12.30.p.m.  I was not allowed in the weaving shed because that was for skilled workers and overlookers only and I was very glad not to be in that infernal noisy place: nor was I allowed in cotton waste where men worked in cotton overalls and “plimsolls”.  One spark in that department and the whole mill would have gone up like bomb!   My first wage amounted to £6.8.10d (£6.44p) – a phenomenal wage at that time for labouring when teachers and other professions were  getting much less.  It was hard work with long hours but good money and I loved the smell and atmosphere, the views of Werneth Low from five floors up, the coarse cackle and vulgarity of the women in the cop cellar, the hot juice of lunchtime meat pies and endless tea from the steel urns provided.  We have an old cotton bobbin in the kitchen which is converted to an egg timer.  It still stinks of the mills….lovely!

Redferns Rubberworks

Sadly, the days of Lancashire cotton were numbered and I had to find other work in the summers that followed.  I biked to Harden’s Engineering, North’s Atomic Clothing, Redfern’s Rubber Works, Oldham Batteries, Daniel  Adamson’s and a host of other industrial concerns but the message was always the same , “no vacancies for unskilled work…nothing part time….etc.”  1955 saw me cutting malt loaves and sorting hot white loaves and milk buns in the Bread Factory on the road from Denton to Brinnington.  The following year  I was clipping and weeding graves for six weeks in Denton cemetery.  There I was a dab hand with the weedkiller and did untold damage through ignorance rather than malice.  I started learning the art of gravedigging!  But the money was poor compared with Ashton Brothers.

Whenever I see pictures of St Stephen’s Church,  Floweryfield, I am reminded of an intensely sad time.

Coming home from holiday work in July 1956, I was told of the sudden death of a school friend, David Oldham.  He had died of an unsuspected brain tumour.  His father was the Organist of St Stephen’s and the family were closely connected with that church.  It was my first experience of death and along with Pete Broughton and Barry Broadhurst(the son of George Broadhurst the painter and decorator),  we bore David into church for the funeral service.   His parents were much comforted by what we did but I am sure it was a case of “put a brave face on…”.  David was an only one, like most of us in those years.

Some three weeks after this sad event I came home from work and found the family gathered in the back room.  Straightaway I knew there was something up. “Where’s mi father….” I asked… only to be told that he had died on the 125 bus coming home from work.   I had to attend Platt Lane Police Station in  Manchester that night so we were glad of evening buses!   My father had to be identified and my mother couldn’t do it.  “Are you Roger Chadwick, the son of Harry Chadwick?....is this your Father?   Having answered the questions, the paperwork had to be done and I could not say that the police sergeant was sympathetic.  But then, he had to do his job and cards and sympathy and teddy bears were light years away.  This was the first time I had seen a dead body.   But my Vicar was brilliant and gave my atheist father a wonderful funeral!  

“These things happen”….is a truism even if it doesn’t help much.  The fact of the matter was that my mother had to go to work and had to manage to keep us on her wages and the £4 widow’s pension.   It was now even more important that I get work to support the family.  But this was not going to be easy as it was the time of a mini recession and temporary work became even more difficult to find from 1956 onwards! 

I would like to thank Roger once again for sharing his wonderful memories with us !
They are a pleasure to read. :)

Woodend Lane - Past and Present

Below are various postcards of Woodend Lane in Hyde.
It must have been considered a local beauty spot judging by the amount of photographs and postcards that are around.



 






Present day photo
It's nice to see the original wall still remains. It now belongs to Charnley House residential home which is the oldest residential home in Hyde.

MEMORIES OF GROWING UP IN HYDE Part 6

1939 – 1955 by Roger Chadwick

Between 1945 and 1948, the bus fare from Glen Wood to Hyde Market was 1d both for adults and children. It was regarded as a good value ticket but when your pocket money was between 3d and 6d, it was wiser to walk the three stops and save the money for pies! 

Readers will gather that food has and always will be important to me. I am fortunate to bear the same weight at 74 that I had at 18! Walking about makes you observant and I knew every part and parcel of that 10 minute amble!

   

 Mottram Road

Mottram Road was quite “elegant” even in those post war years with Victorian terraces, huge houses and rows of cottage style dwellings. John Oldham’s, Grocers, was just down the road and between the shop and the Bankfield Hotel were what we called “the dolls houses” as they looked so small and neat. Past Grange Road you came to Sober Row, so remembered because of the stone plaque in the middle terrace house bearing the words “Be sober, be industrious, be economical”. Then I might cross the road to avoid the temptations of Proctors Chip Shop, buy stamps at the sub post office and then hurry past the Co-op at the corner of Lumn Road with its crepe paper window decorations and ginger cat! After a passing the tram shed on Lewis Street and Smith’s The Butchers I would eye all the cars and take in the whiff of unburnt petrol at the garage before Ridling Lane and Clarendon Street.

Co-op on Lumn Road corner

There was a lovely fruit pie outlet just below the road that led to the Hyde Lads Club and The Ritz!

When I was about 7 or 8, Mum took me to meet Mrs Young at the National Savings Shop and to buy Savings Stamps. These bore the portrait of Prince Charles with blonde hair aged about 3! It was the start of saving money for the future. Round the corner was Lever’s, the Gents’ Hairdresser where I would deliberately attend for the short back and sides at the busiest time of the week so as to study the Dandy and Beano comics in detail. In those days, Mr Lever, chain smoking and coughing, would sterilise the shaving heads and briefly use the cut throat razor above the ears and below the hairline. That implement frightened me to death especially when being “stropped” for shaving the older gentlemen 

The Reform Club Building reminded me, like many more lads of my age, of the lady dentist from the school dental clinic on the first floor. “Keep still, this is going to hurt…what’s the red tie for… are you a communist?” She brooked no nonsense and was downright rude. Pleasanter moments were spent in Warburton’s Pork Butchers with the huge Kelvinator Fridges and blue tiled images of pigs on the walls, a scrupulously clean environment, smelling of butchers’ mace as the pork and pies were served out to the huge queues. Then perhaps across the road for a saunter round Woolworth’s. The manageress was usually found in one of those glass screened shoulder level offices and had a tremendous hooked nose which fascinated me. Not so the goods on offer as I always thought of them as too cheap and nasty and everything at a penny or a halfpenny short of a round number: I never cared for Woolworths but thousands did!

Woolworths, with Abbey National which was the site of the UCP cafe

The UCP( translated “United Cattle Products” for foreigners..) across Hamnett Street and the Shaw Hall bus stop was a favourite haunt for an “illicit” plate of faggots and peas or a savoury duck. It was always full and smelt wonderful. All those cubicles where people met to eat and chatter and meet friends and family. You would think I never got fed at home!

As I remember it, Hyde Market was held every Tuesday and Saturday. The square was packed jam full of stalls and people and buses were off-loading at every street corner. I am pleased to see that the elegant Tram Stops have been preserved and The Town Hall makes an excellent backdrop even now. What no longer seem to exist are Meschias and Levaggi’s Ice Cream Kiosks where I would squander pocket money, always leaving some for the horehound candy in the Market Hall. The smell of that candy filled the place. Summer months would see me rushing home with dripping bags of wimberries(bilberries) for deep plate pies with custard!   

Meschias Van on Hyde Market

Early teenage years would find me in Market Street gawping at the lovely new “rexine” record players at 15 guineas in Callers window – something I desperately wanted but was way beyond my income. No so the suet puddings, gravy and chips at Ibbotsons Café which were always wonderful for a growing lad’s appetite. Thence to Cooke Brothers for cheese off the slab and butter from the barrel and perhaps a swig of sarsaparilla or dandelion and burdock at the Herbalist’s fascinating premises. I never cared for liquorice sticks but loved pink “kalai”(is that how it is spelt?) that came in spills of paper where a wet finger would enable me to lick the glorious taste. When sweets came off ration I didn’t go mad for them. I still don’t!

These days, you can eat or drink anything you want and the huge choice doesn’t excite me at all. The times of shortages after the war made me really appreciate and enjoy absolutely anything that was on offer. Hyde could offer plenty enough even in those hard times. It was a wonderful place for me!

Thanks so much for your wonderful memories, Roger.
They are a delight to read.

Mystery House

We recently received this postcard from Elsie who wondered where this splendid house was/is ? She isn't even sure whether it's appertaining to "our" Hyde. 

It looks awfully grand.
Has anyone got any ideas ? 

 

The Mechanics Institute

The following was very kindly sent to us by Susan in response to a question we had the other day regarding the Mechanics Institute.

Many Thanks Susan ! :)

More "Now and Then"

Susan Jaleel has very kindly sent us some more "now and then" shots
Postcards and information below !



This is a strange postcard and the original looks as though it has been hand-coloured.  I wish I could date ,it but, alas, there is nothing on the card to give a clue.  I'm fascinated by the guy standing at the pavement edge outside the Clarendon.  He could be a policeman with his tall hat! The Mechanics institute was a great landmark, also. The sheer size of it made it unmissable !



Same spot in 2007 - taken on a Sunday morning and the shops are open!



This card of Stockport Road, taken from near the junction with Rowan Street and looking towards Zion [although you can't see it] is dated 1907, but I think it's very easily recognised even today.  When I was young there were still shops there on the right - Mr Dain's paint shop, who also sold lamp oil, McGowan's paper shop and then I think there was a wool shop just beyond them, although in the mid-50s Roy and Lil Kerfoot opened a very small grocery business in there.  Then there was Griffiths shop on the corner of Knight Street.



Same spot in 2007.

We can't thank you enough for sharing all your great postcards and information with us !
Keep them coming, Susan. They are very much appreciated by the Blog Readers !