A Glimpse of the Mersey Valley 50 Years Ago - The Conclusion to Hilda Broady's Journal

This is the undated Conclusion to Mrs Broady's Journal:

When I began the study of my plot I was very apprehensive and rather worried as to procedure, but as the weeks went by, the work became more and more fascinating (and also more time consuming). From what appeared to be a rather dull patch of ground in March, developed a plot of far greater interest than I had ever anticipated, and which produced many specimens of plant and insect life.

Many of the herbs appeared to have a very short season, which may be accounted for by the exceptionally dry weather of 1959. During August, September, and the beginning of October there were numerous fires on the plot. Within four weeks of the first fire, grass and rosebay willow herb had appeared through the scorched ground. Within nine weeks of this fire, 75% of the area affected was covered by grass, rosebay willow herb and bramble.

Some of the grasses, as will be seen from the specimens, grew to an exceptional height of about six feet, and by July it was very difficult to walk about parts of the plot owing to the height of the grass, which hid bramble shoots which were very prolific.

Rosebay willow herb was dominant in the summer months, and some plants reached a height of four feet.

The leaves of the Sycamore trees had suffered considerable damage by aphis, and many were affected by rust.

Between March and November, the only time water was seen in the stream was in late July – probably because the mud had hardened so much that the rain took longer to soak through – and from this time, water was not seen again until November.
Although I only completed a fraction of the work which I should have liked to complete, valuable experience has been gained on which to base future work which I hope I may be able to undertake with schoolchildren.

So that's the final section of Hilda Broady's journal for 1959. As I reported back in the Spring I think that her plot still exists, within the boundaries of Chorlton Golf Course, and is probably looking better now than it was in 1959. I'm still not sure exactly who Hilda Broady was and whether or not she carried on her study of her plot, and of Natural History in general, in subsequent years. If anyone has any more information it would be gratefully received.

In addition, if anyone fancies doing a similar study somewhere locally The Friends of Chorlton Meadows would be very interested in it and would try to help in any way we can. The more we know about local biodiversity, the more chance we have of saving it for future generations. - Ed.

Posted by Dave Bishop, November 2009

Noticeboard

Some of you may have noticed that the Chorlton Ees and Ivy Green Nature Reserve is now equipped with a brand new noticeboard. If you haven't yet seen it, it's sited at the entrance to the Brookburn Road car park.

The front of the board gives some general information about the reserve and the rear of the board (viewable from the adjacent path) gives some information about our Friends group. Here you can find out how to join the group, if you're not already a member, and details of upcoming volunteers' days. We also hope to add information and photographs of interesting wildlife that might be encountered on the reserve at particular times of year.

Manchester City Council supplied us with a grant to purchase the board with and the Mersey Valley Countryside Warden Service installed it; we are grateful to both of these organisations for their support. The front of the board was designed by Rachel Costigan and Alex Krause, formerly of MVCWS. Rachel and Alex have both now moved on to other posts but we would also like to thank them for their input.

Finally, much thanks must go to John Agar (FoCM Treasurer) who went to a great deal of trouble to make this happen.

Dave Bishop, November 2009

A Glimpse of the Mersey Valley 50 Years Ago - Hilda Broady's Journal

8th November, 1959

The leaves were falling fast from the trees, but some still remain on the side of the Sycamore which was affected by fire. On the first plot that was burnt, about 75% is now covered with grass, bramble and willow herb.
There is now about two inches of water in the stream. The plot is beginning to look “messy” as the plants are finishing fruiting.

This is the last dated entry in Hilda Broady's Journal - Ed.

Posted by Dave Bishop, 8th November 2009

FoCM member features on BBC’s Autumnwatch

Friends of Chorlton Meadows volunteer and committee member, Rachael Maskill featured on the BBC’s Autumnwatch programme last month.

Rachael met with Autumnwatch presenter Martin Hughes-Games to discuss bat surveying for the Bat Conservation Trust, which seeks to identify important habitats and gather data on populations. As a volunteer for South Lancashire Bat Group, Rachael is involved with obtaining data for the Greater Manchester area.

To view the Autumnwatch episode and find out more about the the Bat Conservation Trust’s survey, visit:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00n8scx/Autumnwatch_2009_Episode_2/

Book Review

‘Call Back Yesterday: Northenden Remembered’ by Winifred A. Garner, pub. Neil Richardson, 2nd Edition 2002 (ISBN: 1-85216-147-7), 67pp, £5.75

I found this book in a newsagent’s shop, in Northenden, a few weeks ago. It’s a volume in Neil Richardson’s extensive series on local history. It was first published in 1986 and re-published in 2002. I confess that I bought it for the illustrations, but on reading the text I found it very interesting and affecting.

It is an autobiographical account of a young girl growing up in the Mersey Valley village of Northenden, between the First and Second World Wars. Winifred A. Garner née Payne was born in 1910 and died in 1992. In her book she outlines the lives of her parents and grandparents and then describes her childhood, teenage years and early twenties. The account ends with the birth of her daughter in 1935, two years after she and her new husband had moved into a (then) new house in Baguley. In a sense this is recent history – but it’s already a time that is rapidly passing out of living memory.

The first section of her book describes social relationships which would be inconceivable today. Winifred’s maternal grandfather secured himself a position as coachman-handyman with a well-off Northenden family. One of the daughters of the well-off family married a rich Manchester businessman. When the businessman’s family moved to Marple they took Winifred’s grandfather’s family with them and provided them with a cottage. Winifred’s mother, Deborah, worked as a ‘between-maid’ for the rich family and they paid her medical bills when she fell ill and advanced her education by allowing her to read all the books in their house. Later Deborah secured herself another position, with another well-off family, and this relationship seems to have been equally paternalistic.
Of course, paternalism was probably not always as idyllic as the above account suggests. In fact, at one point Deborah found herself working for a “very bad-tempered lady” – and soon left that employment. In addition, for every working class family who secured themselves a position with rich paternalists, there must have been hundreds who didn’t. But I believe that, when reading accounts such as this, one should be careful not to criticise the past by the standards of the present. By the time that Winifred came of working age these paternalistic relationships had largely broken down, and rather than go into service like her mother, she worked for a number of commercial enterprises in Manchester and Northenden.

Winifred seems to have had a very happy childhood and obviously grew up in the bosom of a very loving family. Both her father and uncle saw service in the First World War – but both returned safely. Winifred recalled spending a weekend sitting outside the Post Office waiting for her father to alight from a bus. Unfortunately, he actually returned on the following Monday afternoon, while she was at school.

Winifred tells us that in her childhood most children were expected to run errands for their parents and other adults. She seems to have relished this aspect of her life – and, if nothing else, it was probably very good for her socialisation. Writing about these errands gives Winifred the opportunity to describe various Northenden shopkeepers and tradesmen and their various wares, services, foibles and eccentricities.

Northenden, like most communities, seems to have had its fair share of eccentrics. One of these was old Tim Bardsley who would sit outside his terraced house in Church Road and wave his walking stick at passing (errand running) children and shout, “I’ll have you!” Winifred imagines him chuckling to himself at the memory of the children’s “scared faces and scurrying legs”. Another was the village constable, PC Scragg, who invited himself to a family party and left with his helmet on back to front!

Through the media of local folklore and events Winifred was also aware of a darker side to life. Eight years before her birth a seventy year old butler shot and killed his ex-employer and was himself shot dead by a policeman. By the time of Winifred’s childhood this murder had attained a prominent place in local legend. Another gruesome murder occurred in the 1920s.A 14 year old lad was abducted from Manchester and stabbed to death in a local wood. She also tells us that people often drowned in the highly polluted* river Mersey: children playing, rowing accidents and suicides. Bodies tended to be recovered from the Cheshire side of the river because the authorities on that side paid more for recovery than those on the Lancashire side!

Winifred witnessed the transformation of Northenden from a rather pretty, rural village to a Manchester suburb and in reading her book we witness her own transformation from a country girl to a rather fashionable young woman who obviously revelled in all the cultural delights that a big city, like Manchester in the 1920s, had to offer.

Sadly, time has not been too kind to Northenden. The major changes began in the late 1920s/early1930s when the neighbouring Wythenshawe estate was purchased from the Simon family by Manchester Corporation and developed into the vast housing estate that we know today (a transformation which Winifred and her family benefited from, of course). Because Winifred’s book ends in 1935 we learn nothing of subsequent changes: the rather brutalist town planning of the latter half of the 20th century, the motorway building which has left Northenden an island surrounded by roads and the river, and the laissez-faire developments of the last couple of decades which have relentlessly filled in many of its remaining open spaces. Still, in a few spots (Ford Lane, Boat Lane, St. Wilfrid’s Church and churchyard) we can still catch a glimpse of the village that Winifred knew and loved.

This is a delightful book, written in straightforward and eloquent prose; highly recommended to anyone with an interest in social history, local history or the Mersey Valley.
You can obtain a copy of this book by sending a SAE to Neil Richardson, 88 Ringley Road, Stoneclough, Radcliffe M26 1ET. I also note that you can buy all of Neil Richardson’s books via the Manchester and Lancashire Family History Society website (http://www.mlfhs.org.uk/).

Dave Bishop, October 2009

* Earlier this year, on a walk from Northenden to Didsbury, I was amazed to see huge shoals of small fish (gudgeon?) in the river all the way from the Tatton Arms to Simon’s Bridge. Obviously the river is much, much less polluted now than it was in Winifred’s day. This has to be a very definite improvement!

Michaelmas Daisies

Last week I went for one of my regular rambles. I headed along the river bank towards Urmston, then into Urmston itself for lunch. Because of the lateness of the season it wasn’t a particularly exciting walk, from a botanical point of view, but it was relaxing and peaceful and the weather was good.

I walked home again by following a rather obscure path along the northern edge of the old Stretford tip. There is a dense tangle of willow scrub in this area and the path is very muddy underfoot. About half way along the path I suddenly came upon sheaves of a tall plant with reddish stems and small, whitish daisy flowers. I recognised this plant as a Michaelmas Daisy (Aster sp.). After consulting my Field Guide (ref. 1) I decided that it was Narrow-leaved Michaelmas Daisy (Aster lanceolatus). This is just one of at least six Michaelmas Daisy species and hybrids which are naturalised aliens in the UK, but are originally native to North America. In that continent A. lanceolatus grows in: “Moist soil in New Brunswick to W. Ontario and Montana, S. to New Jersey, Virginia, Kentucky, Louisiana and Missouri (ref. 2).”

There are around 250 species in the genus Aster, many of them North American. We only have two native species in Britain: Sea Aster (A. tripolium) which is, as the common name suggests, a seaside plant, and Goldilocks Aster (A. linosyris) which is a very rare plant of limestone cliffs of western England and Wales.

Two other of the naturalised North American plants that I have found in the Mersey Valley are: Confused Michaelmas Daisy (A. novi-belgii) and Common Michaelmas Daisy (Aster x salignus - which is the hybrid between A. novi-belgii and A. lanceolatus). The name “Confused Michaelmas Daisy” always makes me laugh – but it should be noted that North American botanists tend to use the more dignified name, “New York Aster” (“novi-belgii” = “new Belgium” - which was an early name for New York). I state, with seeming confidence, that I have found these taxa but they can be difficult to identify and can form complex hybrid swarms – so I don’t actually feel 100% confident in my identifications.

Another American species that is naturalised in Britain, but which I haven’t found in the Mersey Valley yet, is Hairy Michaelmas Daisy (A. novae-angliae). Again, North American botanists use a more dignified name, “New England Aster” – which is, of course, merely the English translation of the scientific name. The following passage from the American gardener, Hal Bruce serves to demonstrate the impact that Asters, and related plants, make in the autumn landscapes of eastern North America (ref. 3):

“Until I took a trip by auto to Toledo, Ohio, in late September, I thought I lived in New England Aster country, but on the coast I have never seen the species in the abundance with which it grows from Pittsburgh west. Meadows, banks, roadsides wet and dry along the Pennsylvania and Ohio turnpikes, were bright, whole fields as purple and gold as Byron’s Assyrian hosts with this aster and various goldenrods.”

Aster novi-belgii was introduced into Britain in 1710 (ref. 4). The name ‘Michaelmas Daisy’ refers to the fact that the plant is in flower on the Feast of St. Michael (29th September). It is thought that this name was probably coined after 1752 following the change to the Gregorian calendar. I am guessing that the other Aster species were probably introduced somewhat later.
Cottage gardeners loved to grow A. novi-belgii with Chrysanthemums (ref. 5) but as every serious gardener knows Michaelmas Daisies (at least the ‘old-fashioned’ kinds) can be invasive and prone to mildew – so many must have been thrown out over the years.

A. novi-belgii and other Michaelmas Daisies are now well established on waste ground, roadsides and railway embankments everywhere, along with their American relatives, the Golden-rods (Solidago spp.).

Interestingly, they are rarely condemned as being invasive aliens - but that’s probably because they flower late in the season, when not much else is in flower, and they also represent an excellent late source of nectar for butterflies and other insects. I’ve often wondered if Michaelmas Daisies and Golden-rods have, in some sense, ‘slotted back’ into similar niches to those that they once occupied (not man-made ones, of course). Perhaps before the last Ice Age we had more species of Aster and Solidago in these islands but they failed to return before the North Sea/English Channel opened up ... but that’s just speculation at present.

Dave Bishop, October 2009

References:

1. ‘Wild Flowers of Britain & Ireland’ by Marjorie Blamey, Richard Fitter and Alastair Fitter, A & C Black, 2003.

2. ‘The Gardener’s Guide to Growing Asters’ by Paul Picton, David & Charles, 1999.

3. ‘How To Grow Wildflowers And Wild Shrubs And Trees In Your Garden’ by Hal Bruce, Alfred A. Knopf, 1976.

4. ‘The Origins of Garden Plants’ by John Fisher, Constable, 1982.

5. ‘The Cottage Garden: Margery Fish At Lambrook Manor’ by Susan Chivers and Suzanne Woloszynska, John Murray, 1990.

Harlequin Ladybirds by Polly McEldowney

The word 'Harlequin' sounds innocuous enough, conjuring up images of a diamond-clad theatrical clown. But the Wikipedia entry reveals the character may have been originally based on a more sinister figure from medieval French passion plays. 'Hellequin, a black-faced emissary of the devil, is said to have roamed the countryside with a group of demons chasing the damned souls of evil people to Hell. The physical appearance of Hellequin offers an explanation for the traditional colours of Harlequin's mask (red and black).'

A slightly less frightening new visitor to Chorlton is the Harlequin ladybird, but it is not without negative connotations of its own. Harmonia axyridis is a new species to the UK, having arrived in the South of England in 2004 and rapidly spread across the country. I have seen it in Manchester for the first time this autumn, and it is quite possible you have too, as it has made a rather dramatic entrance. It is much bigger than most of the other 25 species of ladybird native to the UK, and is rarely seen alone, sometimes aggregating in groups of thousands or even tens of thousands. There have been scenes around Chorlton recently that are reminiscent of the summer of 1976, when unusually hot weather led to an explosion in the population of the 7 spot ladybird, Adalia 7-punctata. A brief stroll round my back garden has just revealed a cluster of 30 on a green surface. The harlequin ladybird's success arises partly from having a longer breeding season than other ladybirds, such as the 7 spot which has only one generation a year. But the harlequin will continue to breed as long as it is warm enough and there is food available, having two or more generations a year. I've spotted harlequin larvae in my garden this week, and it's nearly the end of October. Most other ladybirds will have sought out places to hibernate by now. Another huge advantage is that it is more of a generalist feeder than other ladybirds, which tend to stick to aphids as a food source. The harlequin is a highly effective aphid predator but can also broaden its diet when aphids are scarce, eating the eggs and larvae of other species, including butterflies and other ladybirds. It will even suck the juice from soft fruit.

So, outcompeted and outnumbered, our hitherto common species of native ladybird could be in big trouble. Is there anything we can do? The best thing for now is probably just to monitor sightings on the UK harlequin ladybird survey website. Identification isn't straightforward as there are over 100 colour patterns of the harlequin ladybird. They can have black spots on a red background, or red spots on a black background. The main giveaways are the size (6- 8mm) and the fact that they're wandering round in October. Another common characteristic is an M-shaped mark on the pronotum (the back of the head). Be careful when getting close to them though; they have a defence mechanism where they exude a toxic chemical, 'reflex blood', which can be quite painful to humans. This creature is best admired from a distance!

Polly McEldowney, October 2009

I learned that Polly had an interest in this subject last week and asked her if she would consider contributing an article to the blog. She tells me that she "finally cracked" when she found a Harlequin Ladybird in her hairbrush! - Ed.