Meetings 2023 - 2024
Frank Pleszak
We all knew that there were coal mines in this area during the heyday of the Industrial Revolution but they closed long ago, before the First World War. Or did they? Not according to Frank Pleszak who gave us the history of a mine on Ludworth Moor which was worked from 1927 until 1983 under various ownership. Not only that, but he brought with him Rod Thackray, the very last miner.
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Geoffrey Scargill
So what has Edward Elgar got to do with Marple and its history? The answer would seem to be, quite a lot, as the talk by Geoffrey Scargill attracted 82 members and visitors. Yes, we are primarily interested in our local history but from the earliest days of the Society, we have wanted to examine this within the wider context of regional and national history. Elgar was an important figure of his time and his life and career could tell us much about the society of late Victorian and Edwardian England. And so it proved with Geoffrey’s incisive talk examining “The Real Enigma” of Edward Elgar.
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Ted Doan
The Plaza has always been much more than a cinema. It has offered style and glamour as well as a variety of entertainment to many generations of young Stopfordians. As such it needed a showman to tell its story and, with Ted Doan, that is exactly what we got. Ted regaled us for an hour with stories and anecdotes about the history of the Plaza, intertwined with his own career, all without a ubiquitous PowerPoint presentation and with not a note in sight. However, as Ted reminded us several times, “Never let the truth get in the way of a good story”, so this report should be read with that in mind.
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Neil Mullineux
The title of the talk was “A virtual walk up Longhurst Lane” but it started with a description of local townships in the eighteenth century. Not just Ludworth and Mellor but the dozen or so in the manor of Glossop and a similar number around Hayfield. It then moved on to turnpikes in the Manchester area with particular concentration on the Chapel-en-le-Frith to Enterclough Bridge turnpike of 1791 where Neil was greatly excited at having found the precise location of Enterclough Bridge.
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Read more: January 2024: A virtual stroll along Longhurst Lane
Claire Moores
Our speaker, Claire Moores, was first introduced to the subject of chimneys in her day job with the Fire Service. It wasn’t all about child labour. She started by describing the evolution of the chimney from the simple hole in the roof in the twelfth century which gave vent to smoke coming from a fire in the middle of a space. At first they were built of stone like the rest of the house but the weight of multiple stone chimneys on a roof became too great so the builders began to use brick. By the 1600s most houses would be built around a central stack, large enough to support four chimneys and these became more and more ornate. However, the imposition of a hearth tax in 1666 proved a significant damper to this desire for more chimneys.
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Anthony Burton
In November’s talk Anthony Burton tried to show us that there is more to Mellor’s history than Samuel Oldknow and more to Marple than John Bradshaw. Admittedly John Bradshaw was given a mention but Anthony was much more interested in Henry, John’s brother, because he stayed in Marple and left a diary which tells us a lot about the everyday life in the Marple of the mid seventeenth century. He then went on to show the links that we still have with that period - surnames of people living then whose descendants are still in the area and gravestones which tell a similar tale. However, the most tangible links are the houses, both large and small, that survive from that era. Anthony showed pictures of many of these and briefly explained how they fitted into the society of that time.
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Bob Cannell and Les Green
“How to increase productivity.” This is one of the pressing economic questions of our current age but it was also a pressing question in 1900 when the Shropshire Union Canal and Railway Company (SUC&R) commissioned a tug boat from the Tranmere Bay Development Co. It was delivered three years later in 1903 and it was designed to tow up to ten barges from Ellesmere Port to Liverpool. We were expecting Sheila Leonard to tell us about the history of this boat and the story of its restoration but in the event Bob Cannell and Les Green came. We thought at first it was confirmation of the old adage that it takes two men to do the work of one woman but it turned out that Bob and Les had always intended to come to Marple. Indeed they had practiced giving this talk on almost two hundred occasions before they felt confident enough to make a presentation to Marple Local History Society.
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Read more: October 2023: 'Restoration of the Danny Steam Boat'
"From the Ice Age to the Present Day". A talk that swept from Bede to the Beatles. An evening’s journey through the dramatic events that have shaped the north, from invasions and battles to the industrial revolution. On the way detours to witchcraft, slavery, northern women, poets and even sheep, a resounding start of the new season for MHLS.
By the end of the evenings enrolment, the number of members who had paid online and on the evening, numbered 135.
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