Altered Images

Mill Cottages

Gee Cross Mill

View From Hobson Moor

Auto Masters

Garden Street

Woodend Lane By Gaslight 

Ashton Brothers Last Stand

The Grapes

Werneth Low Road

Cobbled Street

Hyde Pit Head

Paintings by Local Artists

When I showed the drawing of Vulcan Street by Trevor Grimshaw recently one of the comments on the post mentioned the Abbey Gallery at the top end of Market Street near the Dowson Road junction. I was passing there yesterday and noticed in the window some paintings by Owen Traynor and a few others of local scenes by other artists. This is a photograph I took which shows a painting by Owen Traynor of the War Memorial, one by him of the cottages at the top of Higham Lane and one of St George's Church by an unknown artist.

Market Street View

Here is a view of Market Street with the Philanthropic Society building with the sign at the top intact. This was destroyed a few years ago when the shop had some work done on it.

Next door is the North Cheshire Herald office, then Portfolio Camera shop and on the far right, the Crown Pub before it was closed down.

Unsure of the date but would probably put it in the late 1980's ?

Charles C Smith

We've got a few drawings and paintings by Charles C Smith and on the back of some of them is this information about the artist. There are also little stickers showing his address as Mansfield Crescent, Denton.

'Tame Valley and Gee Cross Mill'

'Coombes Rocks'

'Hyde Town Hall'

No title on this picture, but I don't think it needs one

There's also no title on this picture, but it's in the Werneth Low Country Park

Help Needed.

  

The following email from Claire Hufnagel was received by us recently. I do hope someone can help her.

 Over to Claire...

 I wonder if you could please help me.

I was given this information (see below) about The Bridge Inn as it could refer to either Samuel Smith my gggrandfather who died in 1854, and who appears in the previous censuses as a beer seller in Hoviley Brow, Hoviley Lane & Hoviley Bridge, or his son Samuel Smith who figues in the 1861 Census and his widow Martha Ann Smith (née Turner) in 1881 as running a pub at 14 Cheapside. No name of the place appears at 14 Cheapside in 1861, 1871 or 1881.

But in the 1891 and 1901 Censuses, with different owners,  this address, 14 Cheapside, has the name "Hatters Arms". In 1911, it is still a pub but no name.

Do you know anything about this change of names. Do you know if The Bridge Inn and the Hatters Arms are the same place?

"The Bridge Inn, 14 Cheapside, Godley. Owners: *Walker and Homfrays, was Watson, Woodhead and Wagstaffe. The Bridge Inn was a beerhouse near the bottom of Cheapside, so named because of its proximity to the bridge crossing Hoviley Brook." (There was once a ford at this point known as Hoviley Ford.)

"The Bridge Inn was established around 1856 by Samuel Smith and in 1916 the renewal of the licence was refused because there were too many licenced houses in the area; within two hundred yards there were two fully licenced and two off licences. The owners of the Bridge Inn, Watson, Woodhead and Wagstaffe, a Salford brewery, stated in their defence that over the past five years they had spent over £22 pounds on alterations, and the landlord, Frederick Scott, protested that he had just purchased three dozen new beer glasses."

Information taken from "A History of the Pubs of Hyde and District" , by Paul Taylor

* Walker & Homfrays of Salford was registered as a brewery in 1896 (though appears to have been in existence earlier than that) and was bought out by Wilsons of Newton Heath in 1949.  In 1929 Walker & Homfrays themselves had bought up the Creeses Brewery in Hyde.

Oakfield Primary School

Here are some school photos sent to us by Norman Ovens. They show both him and his brother, Phil.

Oakfield Primary School  circa 1973

Mrs Reynolds Class

Must be the 1970's judging by the bright colours and assortment of mullet haircuts :)

Mrs Rileys class

As usual, if you know any more of the names,  please let us know.

Many thanks, Norman.

We will remember them.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning


We will remember them.

Owen Traynor

Although we've got a couple of pictures by Owen Traynor I didn't know anything about him till I started to put this post together. He has his own website, which you can access here and below is an extract from that site telling you about Owen.

"Born in Ashton-u-Lyne in 1934, Owen has always lived in Dukinfield. Took an interest in drawing as soon as he could hold a pencil and the fascination with depicting the things he saw around him has never waned. Educated at St Mark's School, Dukinfield and the County Grammer School, Hyde. Began painting seriously in oils at the age of thirteen when many of his subjects were taken from local scenes and he also experimented with more decorative and abstract themes.

After National Service in the army where he served in the Canal Zone, Egypt, he took a teacher training course at Bretton Hall College of Education, near Wakefield. This was a specialist college for art teachers. From 1958 he taught art at West Hill Sc hool, Stalybridge as head of Art Department and many of his pupils have retained their interest in the subject, quite a few becoming professional artists.

Due to an eye infection he had to abandon oil painting for a while and during this period a colleague gave him a set of watercolour paints to try. He took to this most difficult medium at once and the oil he was working on remained unfinished. He never tried oils again. He retired from teaching in 1985 to devote the rest of his time to painting and has been busy ever since. He held his first one-man exhibition in 1968 and his work has been in demand since then. He was the winner of the first Glossop Pro Loco Competition. In 1985 he won the Manchester Council/Manchester Evening News Painting Competition.

Has been awarded prizes by the Society of British Painters and the British Watercolour Society. Commissions have been completed for people throughout Britain and for Greater Manchester Police, Hyperlast, Barclays Bank and Manchester University to mention a few. Reproductions of his work have been published by Felix Rosensteil's Widow and Sons, London and Portfolio Fine Art, Manchester. His work was selected many times for the Laing Competition and he was presented with the Yorkshire Television Award for Painting."

These are the two pictures which we have have for several years:

Market Street - Long Lost Shops

Whilst supermarket shopping is good  because everything is under one roof, I do still miss the old days of going to lots of different shops on a Saturday, with my Mum, to get the shopping .

Woods was a very popular shop.

I think this is circa late 70's to early 80's.

Please feel free to correct me me I'm wrong.

Thanks to Diane for sending the photo to me.

Much appreciated.

Trevor Grimshaw

This is a picture that we've got by Trevor Grimshaw showing St George's Church and on the back of the drawing is a sticker showing where it was drawn:

My early 1960s A-Z shows that Vulcan Street ran between Cross Street and Boardman Street and parallel to Great Norbury Street:

Vulcan Street isn't named on the 1897 map of Hyde but it does show the passageway depicted in the drawing:

Greenfield Secondary Swimming team

The following photo was sent to us by an old friend of mine, Norman Ovens, who now lives in Michigan, USA.

He writes
"I remember the races in Hyde baths, a place I used to live in as a kid. I can't remember who we raced against , it may have been within the school. Names I remember are on the picture".

Greenfield Secondary School Swimming Team 1977

If anyone recognises anymore of these little cuties please let us know. :D

Thanks Norman, much appreciated. 

I hope you and the family are well. x

Remembrance Day song and video

A very poignant song and video written and sung by Terry Kelly from Canada.




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kX_3y3u5Uo