Tuesday 5 August 2014

Salford: New Windsor

click on coloured links for more information and on images to enlarge


1. Detail of Ordnance Survey Map (1850)
 showing the New Windsor district of Salford [15]
To enlarge: right click on image, open in new
window and click on image
2. Detail of Ordnance Survey Map (1850)
showing Windsor Bridge & Crescent


New Windsor Chapel 

Map 1 above shows the position of New Windsor Chapel, an Independent (Non-Conformist) church, which opened on 23 August 1797. [6] The Rev. Noah Blackburn of Delph preached the first sermon. The chapel had a graveyard and a Sunday School, which was built in 1843.  It was also known as Windsor Bridge Chapel.

The development of Congregationalism in the Manchester and Salford area owes much to the efforts of Rev. William Roby, minister of Cannon Street Chapel in Manchester.  It was under his influence that a member of


his congregation, John Joule, built a satellite chapel at New Windsor at his own expense.  Joule was a resident of New Windsor, which was a village in the late eighteenth century.  In establishing the New Windsor Chapel, Joule was assisted by his pious nephew (and son-in-law), Stephen Sheldon. [7]

Source: A Picture of Manchester (1826)
See also: New Manchester Guide (1815)



Pastors of New Windsor Chapel


Rev. Theodosius Theodosius 1802-1804
Rev. James Mather 1805/6-1808 [8]
Rev. George Phillips 1810-1811 [5]
Rev. John Reynolds 1812-1813
Rev. John Clunie 1813/14-1815/16 [see below]
Rev. James Pridie 1816-1829  [see below]
Rev. George Taylor 1829-1837 [10]
Rev. Alfred John Morris 1839-1842 [4]
Rev. Thomas Gardner Lee 1843-1877  [see below]
Rev. Peter Rathbone Berry 1877-1884  [see below]
Rev. William Briddon 1886-1890
Rev. T. C. London 1890-1895 [3] 
Rev. John Fielden 1896-1901


John Clunie, LL.D


Parish records indicate that The Reverend Dr. John Clunie was active at New Windsor Chapel from May 1814 until April 1834.  In 1835, he published and presented a eulogy for his friend, The Rev. Robert Morrison. [2]  Clunie, born at London 9 April 1784, died on 23 June 1858. He was the Principal of Leaf Square and Seedley Grove Academies.  He also wrote a Funeral Sermon for Rev. William Roby (1830) and other pamphlets. His nephew, John Clunie McMichael, went to Australia to carry on the Nonconformist tradition.

Rev. James Pridie


The Reverend James Pridie (1786-1873) served as the pastor of New Windsor Chapel for nearly fifteen years (circa 1814-1828), before moving to Sion Chapel, Halifax in 1929. His first recorded baptism at New Windsor was on 24 September 1814. During his tenure in Salford, he and his wife Susannah (nee Legge) had George in 1817, James in 1819, Benjamin in 1820, Sarah in 1822, William Roby in 1825 [9] and Hannah in 1827.

Rev. James Pridie
Photo credit: Malcolm Bull





The Congregational Magazine 1829 : 288



Rev. Thomas Gardner Lee


From  January 1843 until 1877, the pastor of New Windsor Chapel was the Rev. Thomas Gardner Lee. 

         The Congregational magazine NS v.7 (1843:153)



Lee was a fervent abolitionist.  However, New Windsor Chapel already had anti-slavery credentials before its association with Lee.  As early as 1831, New Windsor filed a petition in Parliament supporting abolition.  Lee was a member of the Union & Emancipation Society of Manchester, which supported the Union during the American Civil War.  He was at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester on 9 October 1863 to welcome the abolitionist cleric Henry Ward Beecher, and again at his farewell breakfast on the 24th of October.  Rev. Lee was also responsible for editing and publishing an edition of Henry 'Box' Brown's Narrative in 1851, which told the story of Brown's remarkable escape from American slavery in 1849.   Lee rejoiced at the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation  by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863, and sent a copy of the 'Salford Resolution' to him.


In 1850, as an advocate of Christian Socialism, The Rev. Lee published a prize-winning essay entitled A Plea for the English Operatives, a far-sighted essay devoted to the improvement of the working class.  He also wrote A Lecture to the Working Classes. "Why John Bull has such dear bread" (1855).  When the Manchester & Salford Equitable Co-operative was founded in 1859, Lee was appointed to its board of arbitrators.[1]
Manchester & Salford Co-op token

The following was reported in the London Express (Friday 31 August 1860.) 

TESTIMONIAL TO A CONGREGATIONAL MINISTER.-  The Rev. Thomas G. Lee, who for nearly twenty years has been the minister of New Windsor Chapel, Salford, has been presented by the members of his church and congregation with an address, expressive of their high estimation of his character and labours. The address, which was beautifully engrossed on vellum and illuminated, was accompanied by a purse of 50 sovereigns. Mr. Lee, though he has for thirty years been a zealous and industrious preacher, is perhaps better known to the general public as a talented and successful lecturer and writer on social and political reforms.

From Lancashire Poets & other Literary Sketches

The nature of the dispute mentioned in the above passage is uncertain, though it is alluded to in The Christian Witness and Church Magazine (1848:p.139-140), and reported in the following. 
London Daily News 21 Jan 1868

Lee died on 26 September 1881 at the age of 81.  He is buried in Salford.

Rev. Peter Rathbone Berry accepted the pastorate of New Windsor Chapel in 1877. He died seven years later at the age of 39, and is buried in Salford.  He died of consumption.

Several sources mistakenly state that New Windsor Chapel closed in 1836. Actually, the chapel closed for funerals and baptisms in 1836 [though a few were conducted in early 1837). This may have been a response to the passage of the Registration of Birth, Marriages and Deaths Act (1836).  The Chapel survived into the early years of the twentieth century (see below).



Windsor Institute



Windsor Institute was a Ragged School, and a constituent of the Manchester and Salford Ragged School Union. [11]  It traces its origins to the Pendleton Ragged School [12], which began in a cottage on Croft Street in 1858.  From there, it moved to Ellor Street, where John Edwin Calvert Lord, JP opened the new premises.



The Ragged School Union Quarterly Record
(July 1884)  no.35, vol. IX NS: 126-127.

Registration Form


The school building was closed in 1902, and its students were transferred to Bethesda School on Chapel Street and Peel Street School, Pendleton.  In 1907, Pendleton Ragged School acquired the premises of the 

Windsor Institute Opening Day (1907)

New Windsor Chapel, and the name 'Windsor Institute and Pendleton Ragged School' was adopted in 1914. From 1920 it was officially known as Windsor Institute, but the locals called it 'the ragged school'. The Institute was closed, and the building demolished in 1966, a casualty of the Council's 'urban redevelopment' juggernaut.



Windsor Bridge


 Windsor Bridge served a dual purpose. It spanned the Manchester Bolton and Bury Canal and the Manchester and Bolton Railway (which became part of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway as map 1 above labels it).  The first passenger trip on the canal (November 1796) was managed from the nearby Windsor Castle Inn (see map 1)[16]. In 1825, the landlord of the Windsor Castle was William Dakin.
Source: The Manchester Guide
At the Pendleton end of the bridge lay the "New Windsor Coal Wharf", more commonly referred to as "Windsor Wharf". Next to it was the 'New Windsor Weighing Machine". Eventually, it would be replaced by the largest single-platform scale in England, and capable of measuring weights up to 40 tons. [13]  The Weighing Machine Tavern (later the Windsor Bridge Tavern [now demolished] was located nearby.

 The adjacent timber yard is probably the location of George Jone's premises, the scene of a boiler explosion that killed two people in 1832.  James Massey, a prisoner in the New Bailey Prison, charged with an 
unnatural crime (homosexuality) in 1807, hanged himself, and was eventually buried near the Salford weighing machine.

The demarcation between Salford and Pendleton is marked on map 1 by a dotted line. On the ground (and shown on the map) are the location of two boundary stones, near the New Windsor Coal Wharf, on both sides of the road. The rest of the border appears to have been marked by boundary posts (examples of which may be in the Salford Museum.

Example of a boundary stone


The Grapes Inn (aka The Grapes Hotel) can be located on the far edge of map 1.  Its address was 16 Cross Lane. The landlord was John H. Canavan. His wife, Elizabeth, attended New Windsor Church for 45 years, and was renowned for her charitable works.[14] She is buried at Weaste Cemetery.

Some Residents of New Windsor



Popplewell's Buildings, located on Cross Lane, can be seen on map 1. The name may refer to the ownership of these structures by Francis Wilkinson Popplewell (1821-1889), a chartered accountant, who lived in Pendleton.

Of Interest


New Windsor Chapel Baptisms 1798-1837   :  Burials 1800-1837

Notes


[1] Records of the Manchester & Salford Equitable Co-operative ;
             Handbook (1886)
[2] See Memoirs of the life and labours of Robert Morrison D.D. for correspondence between Clunie and Morrison.
[3] Chapter 3 of Lancashire Nonconformity (1890). The Surman Index gives slightly different dates.
[4] Sept. 12, the Rev. Alfred John Morris delivered his farewell sermon, in New Windsor Chapel, Salford; from whence he is removing to Holloway Chapel, Islington: Patriot 15 Sept 1842. He also delivered a lecture on the Corn Laws (1841). He spent about four years at New Windsor.
[5] Phillips was a classics tutor at the Lancashire Independent College
[6] Two other sources confirm 1797  /  1797 ; another source, probably erroneously, has 1798.
[7] Sheldon was a grocer at Shude Hill. He married John Joule's daughter, Alice. Their daughter, Hannah, was baptised at New Windsor Chapel 3 Feb 1803.
[8] His son was Robert Cotton Mather, who was baptised at New Windsor Chapel on 23 Dec 1807 by William Roby. His daughter, Sarah, was also baptised at New Windsor Chapel by Roby on 14 Apr 1806.
[9] Baptised at New Windsor Chapel on 4 July 1825 by Rev John Clunie.
[10] He was instrumental in opening a new chapel at Charlestown, Pendleton.
[11] Records for the Pendleton Ragged School and Windsor Institute, Salford, 1912 - 1963 are in the Manchester Central Library
[12] It was later called the Pendleton Sabbath and Week Evening School.
[13] The Baptism records for Christ Church on 7 Oct 1874, show that Francis Egerton Smith was the Weighing Machine Keeper.  See also Corporation of Salford 1851-2 Expenditures.
[14] During the great cotton famine she ran a soup kitchen; in times of need she distributed soup to poor folk; she had 10 pensioners who were totally dependent on her; and she provided Christmas dinner for 20 old people every year. Elizabeth always helped at church fundraising bazaars, whether they were Church of England, Roman Catholic or non-conformist. She always helped at the Children's Hospital Annual Bazaar at the Free Trade Hall. She died in 1894.
[15] For detailed view: 1. click on image to enlarge. 2. Right click on image, and,  choose 'Open image in new tab' from the menu. 3. Click on image to enlarge.
[16] Windsor Castle Pub landlords [no. 15 New Windsor]
1818-20 J. Beeston
1821-33 William Dakin
1836 John Stone [no.8 New Windsor]
1838 William Dakin [no.8]
1850 T. Jordon [no.8]
1869 John Moffitt [no. 13]
1977 Margaret May Wilson [no.15]

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3 comments:

  1. Unknown17 April 2019 at 12:09

    when was 26 winsor bridge built

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Woden24 April 2019 at 02:04

      Hard to say. Windsor Bridge houses were unnumbered in 1850, but it was surely built before 1880.

      Delete
  2. Anonymous10 February 2023 at 16:10

    Is it possible there are no records past 1837 because the chapel felt it was not necessary to keep records after civil registration started? It seems strange to me that a church would suddenly stop doing baptisms despite the fact it is still open and at the same time as when civil registration started. Surely baptisms continued until the church shut and burials until the graveyard was full?

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