Thanks to the National Lottery Heritage Fund, we were able to spend some time pondering how best to use the materials and make sure that people could discover the fascinating history in a safe way.

Last week we were able to install our panels along the railings at Burnage Academy on Burnage Lane. Here you can find out what Burnage was like before the estates were built and what it was like for people moving to the area.

You may also have noticed tiles popping up around the area. These are copies of the wonderful squares stitched and painted by the people of Burnage for our community quilt.

The exhibition will stay up until mid-September. So get out and see it for yourselves.

And if you made a square for our community quilt, or if you have a favourite tile, take a picture and share it with us.

In fact, it was not just a threat, tenants could be evicted if they failed to keep their houses tidy and their gardens maintained. This news article explains how John Rattigan of Avon Gardens had been faced with having his home repossessed by the Corporation because his garden was ‘very untidy and full of weeds’.

Imagine arriving in Burnage, from a more typically industrial area with little to no green space, to find you had a vast garden which you had to maintain yourself or face eviction!

Did you or your family have any run-ins with the Rent Man or the Corporation for what they deemed unacceptable maintenance? Let us know your stories at contact@burnagehome.co.uk

It must have been wonderful for the families coming to Burnage from the slums of central Manchester. Not only moving into spacious houses with gardens and tree lined avenues, but also being able to join the many associations that were available in the area. A lot of these were based  at the local churches. 

At St Margaret’s Church, there were numerous community associations: the Brownies, the Guides, the Cubs and the Scouts.

The Scouts

In 1907 Lord Baden- Powell Baden Powell sounded an antelope horn and called 20 boys from cross sections of  society to start an 8 day camp at Brownsea island, Dorset. At this point he had no intention of starting a new movement and simply wanted to provide a programme of activities that other existing organisations could use. In 1910 he retired and founded the Boy Scouts Association. He and his sister Agnes Baden- Powell then started the Girl Guide movement in 1912. The original scout promise was ‘I will do my duty to god and the Queen. I will do my best to help others whatever it costs me. I know the scout law and I will obey it’. It was said that this gave boys a focus and aim. 

The scout group in Burnage was started in around 1911.  One of the scout masters at St Margaret’s, Bob Garside, hand wrote 75 journals with photographs and articles on his time in the scouts. These are now kept in Archives+ at Manchester Central Library and can be viewed upon request. Garside wrote

‘They are the only record in existence of a large and varied number of maniacs who have gathered round me in the course of the years’.

He held warrants as assistant chief cub master and rover leader as well as holding various divisional offices. He spoke of camps and events he had attended all over the country, including a  house in the grounds of Dunham massey, Cheshire and a Rovers guest house in Whaley Bridge Derbyshire.

The Rover Scouts.

The Rover Scout movement was formed during the First World War, 1917, for older boys, aged 15 to 18.

The Brownies and the Guides

Toni interviewed Sheila Brown who was very heavily involved in the St Margaret’s Guides, even being awarded an OBE for services to the community. Hear part of the interview here:

The Mother’s Union. 

The first recorded meeting of the Mother’s Union was in 1896. Sixty ladies attended the first meeting.

Whit Sunday

On Whit Sunday each year from 1897, there was a procession of witness to Mauldeth Hospital, which at one time was called the Hospital for the incurables. The Burnage Band used to lead the procession and other organisations  from the area attended. The hospital closed in 1980.

There were many other associations which we will be exploring over the coming months. Do you have memories of community groups you or your family were involved with? Do you have photographs to go with them? Please get in touch, we would love to hear from you.

Given the demand for housing after the First World War, and scarcity of suitable land in Manchester, Burnage was a prime site for redevelopment. In 1923 the City Surveyor arranged for the purchase of 78 acres from Lord Egerton of Tatton, enough for 620 houses, and Burnage was transformed forever.

The houses were subsidised by the Government and built to the high standards set out in the Government’s ‘Tudor Walters’ report, which stipulated there should be no more than 12 houses to the acre. In the ‘cottage’ style they were to have sizable gardens, allowing for maximum light and ventilation, privacy, space for growing food, and safe places for children to play. Every house would have three decent sized bedrooms and an indoor toilet.

The Burnage Estate [45] was the first of six such developments in the area between the wars:
Burnage Extension Estate (264 houses) [47], Kingsway Estate (1392 houses) [44], Ladybarn Estate (1100 houses) [50] and the Green End Estate (354 houses) [48]. In 1934, 62 extra houses were built for people moved from demolished inner-city areas [46].

Later housing acts would reduce minimum room sizes, but Manchester prided itself on maintaining its own, higher standards. Houses were separated from main roads by landscaped trees and verges, and ‘cul-de-sacs’ were used to minimise both traffic disruption and construction costs. The earliest developments in Burnage also featured separate playgrounds.

Construction was initially slow, caused by a severe shortage of labour. At one point only four bricklayers and five apprentices were employed to build 620 houses! Eventually, the Manchester Corporation used a combination of small and large private builders, and its own ‘Direct Works’ labour force, to complete the estates.

The 1930 Greenwood Act encouraged councils to demolish poor quality inner-city housing ‘slums’. A site between Avon Road and Arbor Drive, originally reserved for a library became earmarked for housing for relocating people from condemned housing in Collyhurst, West Gorton, and St. Clement’s (behind Piccadilly Station).

Years after this first wave of tenants in Burnage, groups of people moved from other areas and we don’t know so much about these stories.

We have met people living in Burnage who moved from all of these areas, but we have also met people from beyond Greater Manchester, from Ireland to Belize and Syria to Portugal and we want to celebrate all of these moving stories.

We started to gather some wonderful embroidered representations of people’s stories while producing our community quilt but we would now like to ask people for more details.

In our exhibition, we had planned to ask visitors to share their moving story or to pin on a map where they moved to Burnage from.

Now we want to ask you. Please help us to map the story of community growth in Burnage.

Tell us where you moved from.

Maybe ask your parents or grandparents about their moving story.

Did your family come from Manchester?

Did you live elsewhere in the UK?

Perhaps you or your family moved from a different country?

Please tell us your story by commenting on Facebook or Twitter, or by emailing us at contact@burnagehome.co.uk

Would it help if we told you it no longer stands?

Or that it was in the grounds of St Margaret’s Church?

The National School was built in 1858 to provide education to the poor children of Burnage. When it first opened there were significantly more girls than boys in attendance, presumably the boys were expected to continue working on the farms in the area.

By 1908, there was a greater need for schooling. Affluent families could send their children to grammar schools but otherwise the National School was the only option. Thomas Turnbull who owned land around the Burnage Hall Estate, purchased the Acacias building in 1908 and agreed a tenancy with the Manchester Education Committee to use the building as a school.

The Acacias School was opened with Headmistress Miss Harriet Day, four teaching assistants and 14 students! By the end of the first year there were 119 students but attendance was low.

This would change with the instatement of the school’s second headmistress, Miss Edith Shepherd in 1920. Miss Shephard had aspirational values, remembered as ‘strict but kind’. Acacia students became high achievers, passing entrance exams and gaining scholarships to Grammar Schools.

In 1925 the inspector’s report by S N Godfrey found – “This school is conducted in a large private house and grounds. The place has been furnished with extra comforts through the energy of the Head Teacher and her staff whilst the interest and good will of the parents are enlisted by means of various social activities. The speech and manners of the children as well as their general knowledge and outlook are well above average.”

By this point, Manchester Corporation had begun to develop the Burnage Estate and saw a need for more school spaces. The small Acacias school could not cope with the number of children moving to the area, so in addition to building Green End School (to where all students from the National School were moved) and Mauldeth Road School, steps were taken to expand at Acacias. In 1928, the Council agreed to buy the plot from Mr Turnbull and made over £13,000 worth of improvements.

When all schools were full and teaching the growing Burnage Community, Miss Shepherd’s high standards and values led to those from Green End and Mauldeth Road thinking the Acacia’s was the ‘posh’ school!

‘In 1945 I went to the Acacia’s School. I wanted to go there because it had lovely gardens and lovely flowers, and it was a very very good school. It was a very happy school, it was a small school so everybody was known to eachother and the staff.’ Carol Farrow.

Miss Shepherd retired following the Second World War and the school would undergo some changes but maintain it’s high standards and rate of Grammar School achievement. Her initial replacement was a Miss Sidebottom who sadly died within a year of starting her post. She would be succeeded by the first Headmaster, a Mr Nelson who sought to widen the curriculum with sport, music and art. He also introduced popular parents evenings and field trips.

Mr Jones took over in 1965 introducing the house system, merit points, weekend camps and school pets! Pupils remember ducks, geese, rabbits and guinea pigs!

“It was well-run. The head was a Mr Nelson and I remember quite a lot of the teachers. My memories are certainly favourable. I think they prided themselves on training people up to get into the Grammar School… it was a good school by academic and behaviour standards” Chris Drew

But what do you remember?

Did you attend Acacias?

Who was your favourite teacher?

Do you remember the animals?

Did you go to a different Burnage school?

What do you remember about that?

Something which we discovered through talking with local Burnage people was that some shops would come to you!

There was the Co-operative travelling shop, a pop van selling dandelion and burdock and sarsaparilla, a fish van, and even a knife sharpener who used his bike wheels to sharpen blades.

Shops weren’t the only thing which travelled around the community. There was also a travelling Library!

In the earliest plans from Manchester Corporation, a site for a library had been reserved between Arbor Avenue and Errwood Road.

Council correspondence highlight the financial pressures which delayed and ultimately folded the building of a library on this site.

Councillor Simon wrote of the need for a central community space on the growing Burnage Estate, while the Chief Librarian explained that funding was stretched as they focused on library sites on the Wilbrahim and Moston Estates. And the longer the site was neglected, the more it was becoming an overgrown, waterlogged public nuisance.

With the onset of the 1930s, the depression and consequent financial crises lead to the curtailment of the library building and extension programme (excepting Wythenshawe) by the Council’s Expenditure Committee in July 1931. Christened the “Manchester Axe Committee” by the Manchester Guardian, it also blocked any proposed plans for library buildings in Burnage or Moston for further five years.

The land was instead used to build houses in response to an essential programme of central Manchester ‘slum clearance’. Tenants were moved in from areas like Ardwick and Collyhurst.

The first library service in Burnage was instead provided on wheels!

In July 1931 a Travelling Library service began. The Library spent one day each week at a base on Broadhill Road. A later report from the Libraries Inspection Committee in 1947 described the Travelling Library as being, ‘Embarrassingly successful, issuing over 1000 books on its weekly visit’. An average of 129 books were issued every hour at the Burnage station in 1938, with the committee noting that even in wet weather there were long queues to use the service. In January 1936 its stay at the station was extended from 7:15 until 8:30pm.

There was still conversation about a location for a permanent library and two options were given:

1. The corner of Burnage Lane and Shawbrook Road
2. Kingsway/Mauldeth Road

The present location at the corner of Burnage Lane and Shawbrook Road was chosen in December 1933, with the following passage taken from the Manchester City News: “Residents who in the past have expressed their disappointment that Burnage does not possess a public library will be glad to hear that their needs are to be catered for in the near future. It is announced that a branch library is to be built on the piece of waste land at the corner of Burnage Lane and Shawbrook Road.”

What are your memories of book borrowing in Burnage? We’d love to hear if you visited the travelling library or how you have used the Burnage Library, Activity and Information hub over the years.

When pieced together, the map is quite a thing to behold. A fabric print of this community Lego piece will be displayed in our exhibition and will hopefully go on a tour of Burnage hotspots later this year.

Have a watch of the video here:

Do you have some Lego knocking about? Why not try to construct something yourself. You could map out your road – try looking at it on Google Maps first. Or you could design your own house of the future, what might you need?

Here are some examples from children at Westcroft Community Centre who went very hi-tech and environmental with their houses of the future!

Share your Lego creations with us on Twitter @burnagehome or on Facebook @burnagehome

A sneak peek at some of our exhibition panels, featuring wonderful images from collections at Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, University of Manchester and local Burnage people.

We plan to use this blog to share elements of the exhibition and insight into some of the wonderful research our volunteers have undertaken.

We will also be filling the Stories section of the website with fantastic objects, images and oral histories.

From Monday 13th April we are launching Monday Memories where we will share personal memories of life in Burnage. If you have a memory you would like to share, email contact@burnagehome.co.uk or direct message us on Twitter or Facebook.

We hope to be able to launch the exhibition later in the year and will be sure to keep you all in the loop!