Former Little Theatre, Stockport, Manchester (UK)

Near Saint Peter's Square, Stockport:

"STOCKPORT

GARRICK SOCIETY

The country's oldest 'Little Theatre'

was founded at a meeting at the

Church Coffee Tavern on this site,

24th October 1901"

The Frogs of Stockport, Manchester (UK)

I could hardly believe it when I arrived in Stockport: there were frogs all over! Giant ones! An odd feeling came over me when I thought back to going round Hull after all the toads celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of Philip Larkin's death here. And then there were the bears of Cherokee, North Carolina here, and the horses of Aiken, South Carolina here: yes, this was another must. Of course, this is the town with Robinson's regional brewery, so hopping is important here, but the frog leaflet says that the animals are a celebration of 'all the great changes that are taking place in Stockport', and that each frog is sponsored by a local business. The frogs live here from 29 June 2019 until 28 September.

1. Nexphibian. Connectivity near the town hall.

2. Golding. Named after the hop used in Unicorn beer.

3. KermIT. 'One dapper digital dude'.

 4. Cornelius. In pyjamas and ready for bed at Holiday Inn.

5. Prince Regent. Close to Regent House.

6. Ferdinand. In Mersey Square.

7. Robert. In all his multicolour.

8. BUSter. So the 192 route has had an album in honour of the route?

9. Mrs Mersey - the Happy Shopper.

10. This Little Guiding Frog of Mine. Girl-guiding, that is, in Suffragette Square.

11. Sir Lovealot. Designed by the pupils of St Thomas Primary School.

12. Chemit. 2019 is the International Year of the Periodic Table.

13. Midas. The gold gives it away, perhaps.

14. Sir Norman Frogster. Not to be confused with architect Sir Norman Foster.

15. This Little Froggy Went to Market. Well, what else in the Market Place?

16. Strawberry Fields. Stockport is home to Strawberry Studios of Joy Division fame.

17. Fanatical Frog. Apparently 'wearing some of Stockport's fabulous and iconic landmarks'.

18. Sir Hopaslot. 'Fresh from his starring role in the sequel to Wind in the Willows'.

19. Edgeleap. Something to do with sport.

William Hoyle in Manchester and Blackpool

This post updates and corrects a former one I made last year on William Hoyle, and I'm very grateful to Frances Mary Clifford for pointing out the problems with my post, and for sending me so much information about her great-grandfather and the other William Hoyle I'd confused him with. Both Hoyles were Victorians and both were concerned with drink and its many problems, but they were broaching the topic from very different angles: William Hoyle (1831–86) was a temperance reformer and a statistician who published a number of his essentially scientific findings on drinking behaviour; William Hoyle (4 September 1834 – 14 November 1895), who was Frances's great-grandfather, was more a writer of hymns and songs, often telling of the evils of drink.

William Hoyle, hymn- and song-writer, is the author of the above book with the title-page Daisy Ballads and Recitations (1891), but which (unusually) has the different title 'Hoyle's Popular Ballads and Recitations' on the cover. The word 'Daisy' is interesting, as it suggests the very popular Ben Brierley's (originally fictional) Daisy Nook: a recreational area between Failsworth and Drolysden (now Greater Manchester) which retains that name. Surely the adjectival use of 'daisy' (which Brierley intended as a holiday term) is at the root of Hoyle's use of the word? Please let me know if you have any information on this, either by email or by a simple comment to this post.

In 1863 William Hoyle founded what was to be the biggest regional branch of the Band of Hope: The Lancashire and Cheshire Band of Hope Union, which was immensely popular. Two years later he established the monthly publication Onward: The Organ of the Lancashire and Cheshire Band of Hope Union, which was heavily slanted towards the younger reader. It too was extremely popular and was published in both Manchester and London. Although Hoyle appears to have just contributed to this periodical rather than edited it, he edited the more modest Band of Hope Treasury (1869–90), also a children's temperance magazine.

William Hoyle also published, in many different editions, Hoyle's Hymns & Songs for Temperance Societies and Bands of Hope (the first being in about 1869), and Hoyle's Reciter: Fifty-four original Recitations and Dialogues (date unknown, and some of these being in the Lancashire dialect). He also wrote 'William Foster: a life story' (1895), a brief biography about a man he greatly admired, although this work was never published.

Above is a group photo of the Bennett Street School (Manchester) Superintendents from 1880, which shows William Hoyle seated fifth from the left. Hoyle was a commercial traveller by profession, and like the mysterious William Foster (who died on 5 February 1879 aged 63 years) was a member of the Manchester Independent Order of Oddfellows.

Willam Hoyle now lies in Layton Cemetery, Blackpool.

'IN

LOVING

MEMORY OF

WILLIAM HOYLE,

AUTHOR OF

HYMNS AND SONGS

DAISY BALLADS ETC,

AND FOUNDER OF THE

LANCASHIRE

AND CHESHIRE

BAND OF HOPE UNION

WHO DIED

AT SOUTH SHORE,

NOV^R 14^TH 1895,

AGED 61 YEARS.'

My William Hoyle posts:

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

William Hoyle in Manchester

William Hoyle in Manchester and Blackpool

Paul Morley: Nothing (2000)

In a way, particularly at the beginning of this book, which is non-fiction, it could be said that much of it deals with the writer and music journalist Paul Morley, his obsessional interest in rock culture. It also deals with his life particularly up to the time he was twenty years of age, or eighteen as he thinks at the time, because the reader is drip-fed the information here as it initially came to his often imperfect knowledge.

But it really hovers around this eighteen or twenty period, bringing in Morley's two sisters (Jayne and Carol) and his mother (Dilys). This was when Morley's father disappeared for good, because he (a sufferer from depression who had previously suffered from the electro-convulsive 'therapy' designed to cure him, but in fact which (as Stanley Middleton once wrote so accurately of one of his fictional characters) 'raddled' his brain). (And I know the exact meaning of this because I (for my sins) once assisted on several occasions in the administration of this barbaric 'treatment' at a psychiatric hospital.)

On the final disappearance of the father, he left the family's Stockport home and headed south in his firm's ford Escort van, fitted a kind of pipe to the exhaust, stuffed the window and inhaled the poisonous carbon monoxide fumes until he was dead: in a rather ghoulish touch, Morley says that he looked in the peak of health with his pink face. Not that Morley ever saw it though, because at the beginning he says that the only dead body he ever saw is that of Ian Curtis, and goes on to say that his father (like Marc Bolan and Elvis Presley) all died in 1977. On the other hand, Morley speculates at the end, maybe he didn't see Curtis's body at all. (Ian Curtis of course died in 1980.)

Psychological truth is relative, fugitive, as speculative as many pages in this book, lost in the turmoil of the mind. And suicide brings turmoil to the family, can lead to endless guilt feelings, endless reasoning, crazy thinking, in a way that, say, death from cancer or some other disease, or death in war, etc, can't equal: that doesn't in any way lessen other deaths, but suicide is different. Different because it can seem arbitrary, preventable, pointless, but perhaps above all a denial of the value, even of the existence, of those left behind.

Only very occasionally, and very briefly, does Paul Morley lapse into overwriting of the kind that, for example, destroyed the appalling first (and surely last?) novel that Morrissey wrote, but then that is to be expected. This is a heartfelt search to find his father, to find out what led him to the supreme act of self-effacement, the outsider southerner who proudly owned his own home 'up north', who dressed differently from the northerners around him, spoke differently from them, and finally drove away from his adopted – but in so many other ways unadopted – north to the south, to the tiny Bull's Cross near Gloucester, to do the undoable. I really enjoyed Nothing.

The Shakespeare Window, Central Library, Manchester UK

Rosa Grindon donated the Shakespeare window, which stands at the main entrance to the Central Library in Manchester, in memory of her husband the botanist Leo Grindon. It was designed by Robert Anning Bell. My blog post on the couple is here.

The famous quotation below the representation of Shakespeare is from Act 4, Scene I of The Tempest:

'The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.'

The library itself is Grade II* listed.

 

 

Southern Cemetery #11: Eric Thompson

'CHERISHED MEMORIES
OF
ERIC (Sketchbook) THOMPSON,
THE DEAREST DARLING HUSBAND
OF MARJORIE,
WHO LOST HIS LIFE IN THE MUNICH AIRCRAFT DISASTER
6th. FEBRUARY 1958, AGED 48 YEARS.
SPORTS JOURNALIST, 27 YEARS WITH THE
DAILY MAIL, MANCHESTER.
"Rest in Peace my darling."'

My other posts on Southern Cemetery graves:

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
The Manchester Sound
L. S. Lowry
Maria Pawlikowska–Jasnorzewska
David Martin
George Ghita Ionescu
John and Enriqueta Rylands
John Cassidy
Jerome Caminada
George Freemantle
Leo Grindon and Rosa Grindon

Southern Cemetery #10: Leo Grindon and Rosa Grindon

'THE SHRINE OF BELOVED

LEO. H. GRINDON.

MOST GENTLE AND WINSOME,

TEACHER OF NATURE'S WAYS.

HE JOINED THE

COMMUNION OF SAINTS ON THE

SABBATH EVENING OF NOV. 20, 1904.

IN HIS 87TH YEAR.

THERE WERE ANGELS HOVERING ROUND

TO CARRY THE TIDINGS HOME.

ALSO OF

ROSA ELVERSON GRINDON,

WHO FELL ASLEEP MAY 6TH, 1923,

AGED 75 YEARS.'

Leopold Hartley Grindon (1818–1904) was a self-educated botanist and teacher who wrote many books, including Country Rambles and Manchester Walks and Wild Flowers (Manchester: Palmer and Howe, 1882); The Lesson of a Lovely Life: Glimpses of the Character of the Late Mrs. Wainwright, of Finchwood (Manchester: Palmer and Howe, 1888); The Shakespeare Flora: A Guide to All the Principal Passages in Which Mention Is Made of Trees, Plants, Flowers and Vegetable Productions (Manchester: Palmer and Howe, 1883); and his A History of Lancashire, written in 1882, was edited by Dawn Robinson-Walsh and published by Aurora in about 1995.

His feminist wife Rosa – President of the Manchester Ladies' Literary and Scientific Club – was also a writer: In Praise of Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor : An Essay in Exposition and Appreciation (Manchester: Sherratt and Hughes, 1902); In Praise of Shakespeare's Henry VIII: An Essay in Exposition and Appreciation (Manchester : Sherratt and Hughes, 1902); and Shakespeare and His Plays from a Woman's Point of View (Manchester: Policy-Holder Journal Co., 1930).

In memory of her husband, Rosa Grindon gave the Shakespeare window in the entrance hall of Manchester's Central Library: it was designed by Robert Anning Bell and depicts a portrait of Shakespeare with some scenes from his plays. A link to my blog post on the window is here.

My other posts on Southern Cemetery graves:

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
The Manchester Sound
L. S. Lowry
Maria Pawlikowska–Jasnorzewska
David Martin
George Ghita Ionescu
John and Enriqueta Rylands
John Cassidy
Jerome Caminada
George Freemantle
Eric Thompson

Southern Cemetery #9: George Freemantle

'IN LOVING MEMORY OF

GEORGE FREEMANTLE,

who died May 21st. 1864 aged 61 years.'

 

 

'This memorial was erected by his

friends of the Brasenose Club.'

George Freemantle (1833–64) was an influential music critic on the Manchester Guardian from 1867 to 1894, and was particularly noted for his enthusiastic support of Charles Hallé's aim to bring the best orchestral music to Manchester.

My other posts on Southern Cemetery graves:

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
The Manchester Sound
L. S. Lowry
Maria Pawlikowska–Jasnorzewska
David Martin
George Ghita Ionescu
John and Enriqueta Rylands
John Cassidy
Jerome Caminada
Leo Grindon and Rosa Grindon
Eric Thompson

Gorton Monastery, Gorton, Manchester (UK)

The superb Gorton Monastery, Gorton, Manchester, UK, is the popular name for the Saint Francis Church and Friary. Built by Franciscan friars in the early 1860s – more specifically by Edward Welby Pugin – this Gothic Revival wonder was closed in 1989, when only six ageing friars remained here. It was included in a list of the world's one hundred most endangered monuments in 1997, and restoration on it is still continuing.

The eastern part of the nave looking towards the chancel. The purple hue is from the church lighting, and not from any image manipulation on my part.

A closer view of the chancel windows.

And a closer view of the altar and part of the reredos.

The north aisle, necessarily skewed as I had to avoid light flooding in from the west window: what had begun as a snowy morning – and I post this on the same day that we visited the church – turned into a sunny, blue sky day.

This was not labelled, although I imagine it must be the original piscina mounted on bricks.

The Lady Chapel, currently under restoration.

A number of plaques adorn the pillars, and I was particularly attracted to this one dedicated to Saint Leonard (1676–1751) of Port-Maurice from Liguria, whose complete works (essentially concerning the spiritual and the ascetic) run to eight volumes.

The cloister garden, showing the apse dwelt on in the book below.

Much more about this church is in the above book: Beggars & Builders: My Story of Gorton Monastery by Tony Hurley (1953–2011), the second volume of which was published by The Monastery of St Francis and Gorton Trust in 2013, and is edited by Janet Wallwork and Ray Hanks. I can't begin to understand the odd bits about geometry and mathematics in it, but it is obviously an indispensable guide to this architectural delight.

I look forward to the completion of the restoration, which should take about two more years.

Lemn Sissay's 'RAIN', Manchester (UK)

I'd looked for Lemn Sissay's wall poem 'RAIN' several years ago, but it may have been the foliage in front of it that prevented me from seeing it. With no foliage, though, it shows itself, although this wasn't where I'd originally thought: it's nearer to Manchester than the poem on Hardy's Well wall, and just before the Curry Mile on Oxford Road.

You have to read it from up and down each line to see the sense:

'When the rains falls they talk of Manchester but when the triumphant rain falls we think of rainbows it's the Mancunian way'

 

ADDENDUM: Lemn Sissay has now won the vote for Chancellor of the University of Manchester. Phew! I'm very pleased to say he easily beat the horrendous Peter Mandelson: we don't want dinosaurs, especially hypocrites like the architect of New Labour!

Links to my other posts of Lemn Sissay public poems are given below:

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Lemn Sissay's Poetry in Shudehill, Manchester
The Art of Michael Visocchi and Lemn Sissay in London
Lemn Sissay's 'Flags', Tib Street, Manchester
Hardys Well and Lemn Sissay's Poem