Category: Edgar Wood Society

Celebrated architectural photographer, Andy Marshall, is offering his support for our church roof repair bid to the Church Care Roof Repair Fund. Andy invited me over to discuss the project and how he can help (and to admire his cat).

A former roofer, Andy enthused about the church roof. It is the finest Victorian vernacular stone roof in the North-West of England and probably the last of any substantial size as the nation moved to standardized Welsh slate and tile. Graduated stone roofs, like at the church, use diminishing courses. Constructing them involves great skill and they are highly efficient in the use of stone – ever smaller pieces, which otherwise would be thrown away, are gradually introduced towards the ridge of the roof.

We also discussed how Long Street Church and School encompassed ten years of Edgar Wood’s architectural development and how the last part to be built, the 1902 abstract cubic sculpture over the gateway, announced his shift to modernism. We compared it to contemporary work in Vienna, like architect Josef Hoffmann’s 1902 square relief over an entrance at the 14th Vienna Secession Exhibition . It is just one of the many stylistic connections between Wood and the Secession architects.

Andy will support us with a social media campaign and lend us a specialised time-lapse camera to record the roof repair.

David M.

It was a great tidy-up on Saturday, where volunteers from the Edgar Wood Society had a major sort out and tidy up, filling a skip and two van loads of rubbish for disposal and metal items for recycling. Thanks to all involved.

We had another double bill yesterday, 15th January, when at 5pm Arts & Crafts Awakening and Locality got together to work through the draft business plan for the Arts & Crafts Church. We and Greater Manchester Building Preservation Trust are presenting it to the Edgar Wood Townscape Heritage Initiative Board on 20th January. Over the last few weeks we’ve made great strides in finding new uses, as well as putting together a restoration scheme, also with the Trust.

At 7.30pm, it was the turn of the Edgar Wood Society committee (some pictured) which ‘set to’ with a raft of ideas for 2015 from purchasing an H. D. Chorlton watercolour to the planning of this year’s events, research and practical support for the Arts & Crafts Church. Watch this space!

Thursday evening could not have gone better for organisers Emma and Nick of the Edgar Wood and Middleton THI team. Not only did forty to fifty people visit the candle-lit church but one of those visitors was Middleton’s MP, Liz McInnes.

Liz came to express her support for the THI project and conserving Middleton’s heritage.  It was a great boost for everyone. She was given a tour of the buildings before joining visitors at Ye Olde Boar’s Head for a concert of Christmas music by Middleton Band.

There was complementary seasonal food and drink as well as an exhibition about the heritage grants for the Edgar Wood buildings of the conservation area.

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.

Today Friday 7th November Christine had a birthday party putting the garden to bed for the winter. The moss was raked out of the grass – mainly moss and not much grass! The bushes and lavender hedge was trimmed, the several bags of spoil were removed to the waste disposal plant.

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.