Thursday 24th September 2026 Club Meeting – Speaker, Neil Sheldon with a presentation entitled ‘The Roaring Twenties’.
Neil began by acknowledging that this period we came to know as ‘The Roaring Twenties’ was characterised by the rapid evolution of Jazz in the United States concurrent with great advancements in the quality of sound recordings. It was an era when the price of a motor car fell by 70% and there was a great feeling of ‘Well Being’.
This talk was a real testament to Neil’s own interest in the history of Jazz or ‘Jass’ as it was originally known. To represent each year of the decade, Neil played a jazz recording featuring 10 or so prominent bands of the genre and as the music played Neil placed on the screen some of the notable events that happened during each year. At first we saw images of the London Cenotaph unveiling and then followed such events as the establishment of the UK Communist Party, The end of Spanish Flu, The establishment of the Marie Stopes Clinic, The discovery of Insulin, The creation of The Irish Free State, The BBC was licensed to broadcast, Adolf Hitler emerges in Germany together with the Nazi Party, Lenin died, Imperial Airways starts at Croydon Airport and in the USA Route 66 was created . There was a General Strike in the UK, and the Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford on Avon burnt down but on the positive side Winnie the Poo was first published. In 1926 Louis Armstrong appears as a new star of the jazz circuits and was at the top of the jazz music genre until his death in 1971. Later in the decade the first traffic lights appeared in the UK, we got the first transatlantic phone calls and above the waves Charles Lindbergh made the first non-stop flight from New York to Paris. In the UK we got Harry Ramsden’s Fish & Chip shops while in America ‘Bird’s Eye’ were selling frozen food but New York Stock Markets crashed and the great Depression began.
Throughout the ‘Roaring Twenties’ changed was very evident where initially the jazz music scene was dominated by musicians who were white, as was American society itself, the majority of jazz improvisations were developed by black musicians. Another significant advance in the period highlighted by Neil was the development of sound recording and which included the development of the electronic microphone.
Thursday 10th September 2026 – Club Meeting – Speaker, Dr. Peter Scott, who will give a talk entitled ‘The Building of The Manchester Ship Canal.’
Peter began his PowerPoint presentation by showing us a lovely painting of the Manchester Liners boat ‘Manchester Regiment’ along with a utility tow tug and the Ship Canal company’s ‘Daniel Adamson’ hospitality ship created from a former stern-control tug. With this image he also posed the question “Why did Manchester need a canal?”. He showed some old film of Manchester as a cold, dismal and foggy place with not attractiveness whatsoever. He showed a map of the 36 mile length of the route and it showed so many other places that could benefit but, in a major way, the City of Manchester and its satellite towns with their industry and cotton mills stood to benefit immensely. Due to the Northern elements of the industrial revolution Manchester its environs had become known collectively as ‘Cottonopolis’ with its exports going all over the world. The main negative aspect was the rivalry between Manchester and Liverpool where the latter was imposing punitive taxes and tariffs on goods sent to Manchester via the Liverpool port infrastructure. There was already a shallow draught water course using the Mersey and Irwell rivers and this was upgraded after the passing of the UK government’s Mersey & Irwell Rivers Act in 1721. This waterway could only be used by shallow draught craft called ‘Flats’ and barges but not large sea-going freight carriers.
Things changed in 1882 when Daniel Adamson, a prominent Manchester businessman, led a movement to bring ocean going ships all the way up to Manchester. Originally from County Durham, Adamson had made his fortune as a Boiler maker and lived at a house in Didsbury called ‘The Towers’ which still exists today. He became the first chairman of The Manchester Ship Canal Company until his death in 1890 and was succeeded in that role by Wilbraham Egerton, the 1st Earl Egerton of Tatton Park in Knutsford. The route would follow the Irwell/Mersey Rivers and an Act of Parliament giving the go-ahead was eventually passed in its third iteration during 1885. Work commenced in 1887 and took a total of seven years. The first ship sailed up to Manchester in 1894 and the canal was officially opened by Queen Victoria in 1895. In that time frame, over a 100 workers were killed and the eventual final cost rose to £14,347,891.
The infrastructure of the canal also included 225 miles of railway track and along its length several ferry boats worked to carry local residents across the canal where no bridge or lock crossings were available. The canal had 4 deep water docks in the City of Salford and 1 dock at Pomona in the City of Manchester.
The ‘Golden Years’ of the Manchester Ship Canal were the 1950s with trade regeneration after WW2 but the structure of global sea transport changed gradually after that with very large container ships becoming the norm and these were too large to travel through the canal.
Thursday 3rd September 2026 – Walk – Mottram St Andrew
The Group ventured into the Mottram St. Andrew area which is a really nice area of lovely pasture fields and small woods. The route being very adequately signposted by Cheshire East unlike the current overgrown and obscured road signs we are all experiencing. The route took the group up to the National Trust site of ‘Hare Hill’ and through many fields full of sheep. On the return leg of the walk, the group were joined by Allan Whitehead who had walked the opposite route in order to join the main party.
At the end, the group were joined by Walks Supremo, Jim Flett, for a nice lunch at the Bull’s Head Inn.