Magnificent Manchester

An interesting Manchester pub

Saying goodbye to the friendly staff at the Barnsley Central Premier Inn, they insisted we take two of their pillows with them.  I'd mentioned that we were staying at a Holiday Inn Express next, and although their food was good, their pillows were lousy!  So now we are sleeping in comfort!

Clydey Pops and me - a Palmer connection

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A vibrant place - playing pan-pipes

t was a short drive from Barnsley to Manchester on the M62 but we stopped near Batley to catch up with our Facebook friend Claire whom I'd already met but John hadn't.  She has a great sense of humour and is very well-read as well as being very interested in family history.  We have a cousin in common, living in Kent but are not related ourselves.  We simply "clicked" on GenesReunited and Facebook, despite our age gap.

We'd been warned by the Yorkshire people that "it always rains in Manchester".  But it didn't!  In fact we had perfect weather, even warm at night.

A quirky sign

Manchester is a vibrant city, the second biggest after London I'm told.  It has a mixture of old buildings and new.  The many 19th century buildings are grand, Manchester having been a very rich place at the time, the centre of the industrial revolution with many people moving north to work in the cotton factories and in trade.  Many came from Scotland and Ireland too.

Margaret & Chris in earnest conversation

Our main reason for visiting Manchester was to meet Chris Moxon (no relation), the recently retired but now hard-working membership secretary of The Moxon Society.  Chris worked in theatre management in London for a number of decades, but was glad to leave and come north.

A magnificent building from the 19th century - Town Hall

After spending an hour or so looking around Manchester on our own on Thursday, Chris met us at the hotel the following morning and had planned a flexible itinerary for us.  We started at the Town Hall and were able to view the murals outlining the history of Manchester upstairs.  We then went to see the Albert Memorial - thereby hangs a tale.

Manchester's Albert Memorial

The various family groups descended from Joshua Middleton Moxon had all heard the story about Joshua working on the Albert Memorial, and naturally assumed that it was the large one in Kensington Palace Gardens in London, where Joshua and Louisa had married in 1865.

Did Joshua Moxon work on this in 1861?

However, we were most surprised when we heard that Manchester also had a Prince Albert Memorial. You see, Joshua Moxon was listed in the 1861 census as lodging in Manchester and working there as a stone mason.  The statue of Albert was give to the people of Manchester by the Mayor of 1861-62 and the plinth (base) which was also ornately carved was completed in 1865.  The family folklore was that Joshua had broken the nose off the prince and had merely stuck it back on, was found out and strongly encouraged to migrate (as he did in 1867).  We may never know the truth.  It was certainly a surprise to us that it may have been Manchester rather than London.  More newspaper searching coming up methinks.

After we went back to the hotel, Chris went to the Manchester City Archives and tried to find out something about the Memorial, but no luck.  Thanks for trying Chris.

We then went to the People's History Museum which is located at the Pump House on Bridge Street.  The Museum tells the story of the history of democracy in Britain, and grew out of collections of the Trade Union, Labour and Co-operative Society.  We could have spent hours and hours there, it was so interesting.

Philip and Chris

But we had a full day planned, since Chris and his partner Philip had invited us to dinner and the theatre that evening.  Philip is the building and events manager at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester, and generously provided us with tickets to a very enjoyable play called The Last Days of Troy by Simon Armitage, better known as a poet. The actors were very good and the so was the writing - understandable from a poet.

My dinner at the Royal Exchange Theatre

Chris Moxon and John

One of the actors was Lily Cole, a super-model and well-known for her activism, who is just starting out as an actor.  There were far better actors in this play, but she wasn't half bad as Helen of Troy.  

There is a review of the play at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-reviews/10833731/The-Last-Days-of-Troy-Manchester-Royal-Exchange-review-Lily-Cole-keeps-you-fascinated.html

The play finished at 10.30pm, hours past our bedtime and I was a bit worried about walking back to the hotel at that time on a Friday night.  But Chris walked back with us.  We were so pleased to meet him after all the time spent emailing backwards and forwards about Society membership issues and the 50 or so Moxon family trees the Society is trying to get right.

The next morning, it was off to Banbury via lunch at Stratford upon Avon, where we were due to meet Chris Moxon's "big" sister who is also actively involved in the Society.