Merry Christmas from the Manchester History Club

Thank you for your support in 2025 - there's lots to come from me in 2026

No story from me this week — just a picture of Manchester in the snow.

The postcard shows Whitworth Park on the south side of the city, but you might not recognise it.

That’s because Whitworth Park doesn’t have a lake.

In 1947, with money for the upkeep of parks in short supply after the Second World War, the water from the lake shown in the picture was drained.

By the late 1950s, it had been filled in.

The second unusual thing about the postcard is that the snow appears to have been added by an artist in the postcard company’s photographic studio — as this original summer picture of the same scene shows.

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Thank you for your support!

I just wanted to end the year by saying a big thank you for your support.

By reading this little newsletter and subscribing you’ve really helped me to make a living from my hobby — researching and writing about the history of my home city.

The newsletter has now than 2,000 readers and was twice briefly in the top 20 fastest growing history pages on the Substack platform in 2025.

If you only read the letter in your email inbox, you can visit my full site and browse my archives here.

This year, more than 260 people have been on my Angel Meadow tour, which in October was listed in the top ten tours and activies in Manchester according to TripAdvisor’s popularity index.

Visitors have included guests from Norway, Denmark, Germany, the US and Canada. I earned a Badge of Excellence this year for the best standard of customer service from TripAdvisor’s ticketing platform Viator.

This year, I also did a talk on Friedrich Engels and Manchester for just under 300 people for the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society.

For the first half of the year, I worked as history group leader at Burnage Library and took members on trips to Manchester Art Gallery and on a boat trip along the River Irwell.

I led an eight week family history course in Cadishead for the brilliant Hamilton Davies Trust, including taking the group on a tour of the archives at Manchester Central Library.

And I also did talks for Manchester Geographical Society, Family Tree Magazine and Burnage Trefoil Guild.

On the family history front, I became a member of the US Association of Professional Genealogists this year.

I have helped more than a dozen people with their family history research in Britain, France, the US and Australia. Here’s a link to my professional genealogy site if you want to find out more.

As part of this I helped a French family trace solve a 100-year-old mystery of what happened to their British soldier ancestor who disappeared from the village where he found love behind the frontlines at the end of the First World War.

I also traced a British prisoner of war through Tunisia, Italy, Germany and Austria during the Second World War using his personnel records I obtained from the National Archives and investigated the drowning off a Victorian coastguard off the Irish coast.

So once again, thank you! If you don’t yet subscribe, please do consider it — it really genuinely helps me to keep the newsletter going. You can also make a one off donation to help me buy books for my research using the button below.

And if you want to join me on my Angel Meadow tour, I’ve just announced some new dates for 2026. It’d make an unusual Christmas gift for the history buff in your life.

👉🏻Check out this link to book tickets.

I’ll also soon be announcing a new tour soon that will start in the spring so watch this space.

Have a lovely Mancunian Christmas and New Year!