Author: David Morris

It was a double bill for some as, yesterday, the first Locality workshop session with Arts & Crafts Awakening and Greater Manchester Building Preservation Trust was followed imediately by the first committee meeting of the new Edgar Wood Society (pic above). However, Geoffrey, Christine, Maureen and the gang put on a great buffet so we managed to keep going from 5pm through to 9.30.

It was a busy day at the Arts & Crafts Church with an afternoon consultation about Tonge Hall in the Ladies Room and another group cleaning and organising the Lecture Room for the evening’s event.

Beginning at 5pm, Locality had a great session lined up for us, helping us think through both the recent past and the future. First, we looked back at how Middleton Heritage and Edgar Wood had evolved over the last ten years and then peered forward with ideas for the future. We brain-stormed some exciting new uses for Long Street School. We are building up our timeline and its milestones at each meeting.

It was good to have Greater Manchester Building Preservation Trust with us. If you are interested in Middleton’s heritage or Edgar Wood, you are welcome to join us. Our next meeting is 5-7pm next Thursday, 4th December.

Please note that the third session is no longer Tuesday 9th but Thursday 11th.

However, the session ran over so as the Edgar Wood Society committee members arrived they mingled with the Locality meeting. There was a good sense of common purpose and fun.

Like these meetings, the aims of Arts and Crafts Awakening and the Edgar Wood Society overlap and an early part of the Edgar Wood Society committee meeting discussed this as people tried to get their minds around how things evolve in the future. The committee also discussed the winter lecture programme, the new Society web site (thanks Lee!) and developing a Middleton and Edgar Wood narrative, based on recent research.

One the research front, we agreed to invite members and non-members to join the Edgar Wood Research Project so that in 2015, the Heritage Initiative’s ‘Year of Edgar Wood’, we will be able to use everyone’s research activities for maximum effect.

The Middleton Heritage Film Group and the Edgar Wood Society have joined forces to research a new film to follow Enlightenment Middleton, tentatively called Romantic Middleton and the Modern Era.  We are studying a group of Middleton Art Workers, initially associated with Edgar Wood, who then developed their own careers but are now largely lost in the mists of time.

James Smithies (of 9 Cheapside) and his son, Herbert, and Tom Wellens (of Back James St., Middleton) were metal workers and furniture makers.  They eventually moved their workshop to Wilmslow. James made various pieces for the Parish Church, including the Robert Catterall plaque (illustrated). Here is a superb Arts and Crafts cabinet made by them.

There also was James Lenagan, a wood carver and furniture maker, who taught at Middleton Technical Classes and worked with Edgar Wood and a J. T Tetlow, who had five exhibits at the Manchester Arts & Crafts Exhibition of 1891.

If you have any information on these people or any others, please let us know by emailing middletonheritage@gmail.com

Thanks!

It’s Autumn again!  That means Christine and Geoffrey clear all the leaves in the valley gutters and other places of the school hall and church. This way they don’t clog up over winter and allow rain water to soak the walls and building. There are a lot of jobs like this. Volunteers are needed! If you would like to help us, please let us know by emailing artsandcraftsawakening@gmail.com

The Arts & Crafts academic, Stuart Evans, visited the Long Street Methodist Church and School on Friday. Travelling up from the east of England, he was given a tour of the buildings  by David, followed by lunch with  at the Boar’s Head P.H. with Geoffrey and Christine.  Stuart is also meeting Nick over the weekend to discuss the importance of Middleton’s Edgar Wood and Arts & Crafts heritage. Stuart is completing a book on the Century Guild of artists and craftspeople who were influential in the Manchester area at the end of the nineteenth century. He is an expert on Edgar Wood and, Wood’s colleague, J. Henry Sellers.

The go ahead has been given for turning the Lecture Room at the Arts & Crafts Church into a  venue for the groups which make up Middleton Heritage.  The first stage is to clear out and clean the room and Nick volunteered to organise this. We will then introduce chairs, a kitchenette, for cups of tea and coffee, and a large screen for speakers and films. Next year, there are plans for the Lecture Room to be fully restored through a conservation grant from the Edgar Wood and Middleton Heritage Initiative. The room, which was originally designed as a lecture room, will be made available for meetings, talks and functions in 2015/16.

Tonge Hall and Hopwood Hall have been added to the national Heritage at Risk Register, as well as Long Street Church.  Click to read the MEN report

Three major buildings at risk for one medium sized town… it’s a bit much.

A new social enterprise may be formed to help save Edgar Wood’s Arts & Crafts Church at Long Street.

Christine Grime, Lee Wolf, Nick Baker and David Morris, two Middletonians and two ‘Wood-ies’ from further afield, have temporarily called it Arts & Crafts Awakening while they consult local people and visitors on the best way forward.

For years many have been almost ‘asleep’ to how special Edgar Wood’s buildings make Middleton. Arts & Crafts Awakening refers to Middletonians now ‘waking up’ to their wonderful Arts & Crafts heritage, not least to secure the future of Long Street Methodist Church and School, the finest in England.

What does the future hold for this Arts & Craft Church? If you have more time, let us know what you think by completing this short survey .