Bullock's Garage, Cheadle

This digitally colourised photograph shows Bullock's Garage  at 6 Manchester Road, Cheadle.  The building behind, is the Cheadle Institute.  The date is the early 1920s. Garage staff pose for the camera while an inidentified car is filled with petrol from the Pratt's pump. Parked by the kerb is a Renault taxi, a model that was popular in the UK at the time. The showroom on the right has a display of tyres and car lamps. Enamel signs advertise Pratt's Perfection Spirit and Austin Cars. Signage on the windows advertises Spencer Moulton Tyres, Lodge plugs, CAV Lamps and Daimler cars.
Today, there is still a used car dealer at this site.

The Anglo-American Oil Company, established in 1888 was an affiliate of Standard Oil of the USA. The company began supplying petrol in 1889 and in 1896 introduced the Pratt's brand, named after a founder of Standard Oil. By 1900 petrol was supplied on a nationwide scale, delivered in 2 gallon cans by horse drawn carts. They employed 1000 horses for this work. After World War I, Pratt's installed the UK's first petrol pump, at Hale in Cheshire.  Pratt's was re-branded as Esso in 1934 although lubricating oil was sold under its original name until the 1950s.

Hello Dolly Lane !

In this article we will follow a route from from Furness Vale to Bugsworth.  We will start at the bottom Station Road and as we cross the bridge  we pass over the River Goyt, the original boundary between Cheshire and Derbyshire. Look at the change in the masonry of the bridge parapet and you will see where the Toll Cottage once stood.  The bridge is known as Joule Bridge or sometimes Jolly Bridge and this was part of the Thronsett Turnpike . Turnpikes were abolished by Local Government Act of 1888 to much local rejoicing.

The name of this little hamlet of Gow Hole was recorded in 1587 as Jawhill, the earliest record. Various spellings are subsequently found, no doubt, as the name became corrupted: Joliehole; Jollyhole; Jowhole and finally Gow Hole and as we have seen Joule in reference to the bridge. 

The junction of Marsh Lane and Ladypit Road in the 1920s.  The coal wharf is behind the wall onthe right.

Wartime Evacuees in Furness Vale

  On 2nd June 1940 a train arrived at Whaley Bridge from Southend on Sea in Essex. On board were 240 children evacuated due to the war.  They were accompanied by 12 teachers and 11 voluntary helpers.
   Met at Whaley Bridge, the children were first of all given tea, then medically examined and then allocated to their billets. The operation took a considerable time and caused a few tears.  Some billetors refused boys, others would not take girls. Some, confronted with brother and sister wanted to take one but not the other. Some children, boys in particular were hawked around several billets until kindly souls at last gave them shelter.
   Schoolrooms were established at the Mechanics Institute, at Whaley Bridge Church Hall and one classroom was made available at Furness Vale School.

  Wendy Brown is trying to find information about her mother's evacuation to Furness Vale.  Her name was Jean Hill (Rosenberg) and she was just six years old at the time.  She stayed with the Palmers who lived in Park Crescent.

  Val Stenson has added the following information:
"The Palmers were Percy Holmes Palmer (born in Bredbury but had lived in Chapel) & Lillian Gertrude Palmer nee Hodgkinson (from Lancashire) the couple married in Stockport in 1925 & lived at Woodlea off Yeardsley Lane which came under Whaley Bridge UDC in the 1939 National Registration. The couple had no children of their own, Percy worked as a Railway Signalman Heavy Works & Lillian stayed at home. Percy died in 1949 & by then the couple had moved to Melton Mowbury."

  The only "Woodlea" in Furness Vale is currently 236 Buxton Road and some distance from Park Crescent.

  If anybody remembers or knows of the Palmers, or Jean, then Wendy Brown would be delighted to hear from you.

Wendy Brown's niece chatted to here gran about her experiences for a school project and wrote down the conversation|:  

My Nana being Evacuated in World War II

During the War, my Nana was 6 ½ years old.  She had to be evacuated at the start of 1940.  She used to live on the South Coast at a place called Westcliff on Sea.

She was brought up on a steam train.  On this journey she remembers having no food or little and having some water, but the problem was the water tasted of soot because of the steam from the train.  The steam train dropped a lot of children off at Chinley.  When they got there, people either went to a home which made them clean or they went to homes where they were used as cheap labour, specially on farms or if they were lucky, they went to a nice family.  My Nana was lucky, she went to a Mr and Mrs Palmer.

My Nana was never short on food because they grew their own vegetables and kept hens.  The one food she disliked were runner beans because they salted them and kept them for winter.  She disliked them because they had them every day.

She can remember getting to their home in Furness Vale and them giving her a bath.  They kept scrubbing at her.  She remembers them saying “what have they sent us?”  They were saying this because she was very brown (because of a hot summer) and her accent.

When the war was over her mother came up to Furness Vale and Nana went to live with her.  Nana’s mum married a man called Sam Kitchen.  They lived together but my Nana never forgot Mr and Mrs Palmer.

 
  The photographs show the evacuee children  at Furness Vale School

Britannia Mill Buxworth

This is Google's satellite view of the Britannia Mill at Buxworth. Little remains of the four storey mill destroyed by fire in August 2005 and the site is described by many, as an eyesore.  

The mill was built in the late 18th or early 19th century for the manufacture of fustian, a coarse cotton fabric. It was originally powered by water drawn from the Black Brook. The water wheel was fed from two mill ponds. Landed at Liverpool, the raw cotton  was carried by canal to Buxworth and the finished goods were despatched by boat to Manchester. The mill had its own canal wharf next to teapot row. There was some rebuilding in 1851 and the site became part of the Bugsworth Hall Estate.

Fustian manufacture ceased in 1900 and the newly formed Britannia Wire Works Company moved into the now empty mill. Britannia manufactured a range of seating for the furniture, railway, aviation and motor trades as well as  matresses. The wire formed the sprung interiors. The company built up a considerable export business, the mill was extended and theponds filled in. Production ceased in May 1969 and the mill was occupied by PVC Group until the time of the fire.

There are now proposals to redevelop the site for housing. Rivertown Developments based in Buxworth hopes to build up to 110 homes in a mix of styles and size.

The websites of TPM Landscapes and Crowley Associates, planning consultants, not only detail the proposed developments but also provide considerable historical and site information with detailed maps showing how the mill developed. :
 http://www.tpmlandscape.co.uk/consultation/  

 http://crowleyassociates.co.uk/experience/britannia-mill/ 

Trevor Walmsley has recently contacted the History Society. He left New Mills in 1973 and now lives in New Zealand. His father in law, Lawrence Devine, was at Britannia all of his working life and was works manager until it closed in 1969. The photographs are of Mr Lawrence with his daughter Patricia; A calendar from the office and extracts from a patent deposited in 1945 for Ford car seats.

 

 

 

 The following photographs show the blaze being tackled by the fire brigade, the derelict building and the former Britannia road vehicles.