More Memories Of Bredbury
A Memory of Bredbury.
I was born at 83 Kingsway in August 1952 at my grandparents' home. My mother was Joan Carter (nee Harrison) who was born in Bennett Street, Ardwick, Manchester and my father was Brian Carter who was born in Rotherfield Peppard, Oxfordshire. My grandparents were Charles Leonard Harrison who was born in Ardwick and Elizabeth Ellen Harrison (nee Cunningham) who was born in Branson Street, Salford.
I was baptised at Our Lady & St Christopher's Church at Barrack Hill.
I am part of the Cunningham Clan who have mostly stayed in the Manchester area and we meet up 2 or 3 times per year when I come up from the 'deep south' and invariably, we meet up in a pub such as the Royal Oak at Didsbury, the Spread Eagle at Otterspool or pubs in Marple or Chorlton.
My friends in the Kingsway area were Robert Brown, Pat (ricia) and Peter Sullivan, the Janketer brothers et al.
I did my first school year at Bredbury Primary School at Barrack hill. Our teacher was Miss Wrigley. I didn't like the school so then started going St St Mary's at Marple Bridge.
Half my life was spent in a removal van!!! My parents kept moving. I think my father was trying to escape the rent man!!! I ended up going to six different schools! Apart from my various homes pre-school age, we moved to Crewe, Leeds and then Burnley.
I've written several family history profiles and still am writing. Some of my key memories are:
1. Playing down the 'banking' to Dark Lane and the woods, playing in the field that once separated Osborne Street from Kingsway and cutting my head ducking under the barbed wire fence!
2. Fishing in the two ponds next to (I think) 106 Kingsway.
3. The shops on Highfield Park Road, eg Youds Newsagent, Bealey's Grocery, Partington's Butchers and the fish and chip shop. Sadly only a Chinese Takeaway exists now. Chester's bakery shop on Bents Lane.
4. I bought many an airfix aeroplane kit from Leonard's on Bents Lane, often on the way back from church.
5. Across the road from Leonard's was a little abattoir. It's now a bistro.
6. I also remember the steelworks on Red House Lane and watching the extrusion of the red hot steel bars. It's been housing there now for many years.
7. Bredbury station where we would pay 1 shilling & 9 pence for a return ticket to Warwick Road to go and watch United. I am still a United supporter but, strange though it may seem, I am also a big City follower.
8. However, I will never forget my Saturday evenings with my father at Belle Vue speedway, Hyde Road, Gorton. I have followed the Aces all these years although I am lucky to get to one home match a year now.
So much seems to have changed in and around Bredbury since I moved to Crewe around 1961. I always used to come back 'home' for my summer holidays and I still get to Bredbury regularly. The motor cross course on Ashton Road has gone; many shops have closed or have changed; the 'flea pit' cinema has gone from Romiley. When I pass 83 Kingsway, I always stop for a few moments and remember great times. It was a really happy household and I hope all those who have lived there since 1989 and those who live there now have also found it a happy place to be. I have lived in Kent now for 36 years - more than half my life. People often say: 'Would you go back to live in Manchester?' My reply: 'Look at those lovely blue skies over the Kent Downs. It's raining in Manchester! Yes I will go back - in a wooden box and into the family grave at Highfield Cemetery!'
I would be please to hear from anyone who knew about (or has information on): the coal mines in Bredbury, the Botanical Club which was just off Bents Lane, people who worked at the steel works, and anyone who might have known members of my family. Thank you. David Carter, Maidstone, Kent
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What most adults were not aware of was the fact that there was an opening into the bunker ((which was our 'den') and that the shaft was only boarded over with broad
railway sleeper-like boards, through the cracks of which we dropped objects that, as far as I can remember never made a sound, we used to imagine it was bottomless! The bonk was also the site for our unofficial bonfire, the wood for which was stacked over the shaft to keep it dry until the 5th. I do remember a story about the post office manager nearly falling into a shaft which terminated in his back garden! Of course nearby were the remnants of the slag heaps which were utilised as motorcycling and cycling tracks, among which were at least two open and untended 'bottomless' mineshafts.
I rode a delivery bike, pushed a handcart and tended the horse and cart on weekends while my boss Tommy Hall, who owned Bents lane's hardware store made the big deliveries to St Mark's church and other civic establishments. I was thirteen and fresh from confirmation at St Christopher's Barrack Hill, I attended Highfield Secondary Modern school for boys because I could not afford travel to a Catholic Secondary education, which might have served me better, Mr Edwards didn't like us and sent us across the road to Harrytown Girl's school for one on one tuition from a Priest as the RE teachers were C of E! They were bourgoisie to a man and I never met a good one apart from a half-crazy upper middle class music teacher and the librarian. My two sisters fared just as miserably next door at the girl's school. Iremember most stopping with my handcart, full of paraffin, firewood, coal, coalbricks and firelighters at the bridge on Redhouse Lane and watching the great steam engines pull away from the steelworks and disappear underneath me with a roar, enveloping me briefly in great exhillarating gouts of steam, smoke and soot! Then it was downhill all the way. I was also born in 1952 and moved to Bredbury as part of the Manchester 'slum clearances' of the 1950s early 1960s.