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Brother Geo. Beatson Blair of Whalley Range, and cousin Lt. Col. Alf Ernest Le Rossignol of London to be executors and general trustees.

Confirms agreement of self and Geo. B. Blair with Robt. Barbour and Brother Ltd., 1 Jan. 1909, when Company purchased goodwill and assets of Robt. Barbour and Bro., and part of purchase money was left as a loan to the Company. Loan to be repaid within five years.

Oil paintings and watercolours, some by Turner, bequeathed to Manchester City Art Gallery.

His share in Whalley House to brothers Geo. B. and Alex. Campbell Blair.

Shares in Robt. Barbour and Brother Ltd. and pecuniary legacies to various relatives.

Pecuniary legacies to various servants.
£1,000 to the Elders and Deacons of Grosvenor Squ. Presbyterian church, Manchester, to be invested for the upkeep of the church.

£500 to same to be invested for the use of Booth St. Mission at St. Andrew's Hall, Booth St.

£300 to same for The Barbour Bequest Poor Fund, and £100 for The Grosvenor Squ. Presbyterian Church Mission Poor Fund.

Other bequests to Presbyterian charities.
£2000 to Manchester Royal Infirmary, £1000 to St. Mary's Hospitals, Manchester, £1000 to the Ancoats Hospital and Ardwick and Ancoats Dispensary, £1000 to the Boys' and Girls' Refuges and Homes and Childrens' Aid Soc., Strangeways, £500 to Y.M.C.A., Manchester, £500 to Manchester City Mission, and £500 to the Burns Scott Memorial Fund.

Residue of real and personal estate to Geo. Beatson Blair and Rev. Alex. MacKinnon, as Charity Trustees, to invest in a charity to relieve the distress of poor persons, particularly aged poor, in Manchester and Salford.

J.T. Blair died 19 Feb. 1917.
Will proved 7 Aug. 1917
Estate of £155, 537.

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MY WHALLEY RANGE

I don't remember exactly when we moved to 28 Wellington Road, Whalley Range, Manchester.  I guess it was around 1964. 

 My Dad was a policeman with the Manchester City Police Force and 28 and 26 Wellington Road were police houses. 

 They were two small semi's in a road of large houses. The road was full of pot holes that were never repaired the whole time we lived there.

We had only just moved in when we were told that a man had been stabbed to death at the gate of the house next door! 

The garden at the back of the houses was a field with no dividing wall.  Next door lived another policeman, Jack O'Neil, his wife Maryl, their daughter, Karen and their Boxer dog, Dresser.

Karen and I collected Sindy dolls and  their accessories and played for hours with them.

Our favourite group was the Monkees and we were both in love with Davy Jones.

I was the eldest of four children, Me, born in 1958, Simon in 1959, Joanne in 1963 and Amanda came along in 1966. 

 Mum was working for Manchester Social Services and during the three years we lived there, lots of children came and went. 

 I remember Sylvia and Yvonne Wilkinson the most because they stayed with us for over two years and became part of our family

We all used to walk to school, up College Road on our own to Manley Park Junior School. 

Mrs Duke, Mrs Bullock and Mr Lloyd, the headmaster are the only ones I can remember. 

Also Mr Bradley the caretaker because  Terry Hayes and I used to sometimes stay behind school to help him..  Although I can't remember exactly what it was we did and was only reminded of this when I linked up with Terry through Friends Reunited. 

Mr Lloyd was a tall bald headed man who always wore a dark tweed suit. 

He was a stickler for rules and some of the things he taught me I still do today. 

 Clean fingernails - he would make us all hold out our hands for inspection. We must never hold a book by the spine, just flat on our hand. 

Knives were never put in the mouth and one had to hold it on the top never underneath like a spoon. 

And when we had finished they had to go together on the plate..  I remember him wandering up and down the dining room making sure we were all eating correctly.

After school on a Wednesday was the Treasure Hunters Club.  I really used to enjoy this, but somehow cannot remember now what it was we used to do!!

At the back of the school there were lots of very big Rhododendron bushes and I enjoyed being allowed out among them, usually for school photographs. 

At playtime the teacher would blow a whistle and all the children had to stop and stand still, another whistle meant we were to join our class lines.

Playtime really was that and we used to play an assortment of games in the yard.  Skipping was popular with the girls, a large skipping rope, a line of girls and songs that meant we could all have our turn. 

 I used to enjoy French Skipping too.  Lots of elastic bands put together so that they could go round the legs of the two girls at either end and one could skip in the middle by jumping on and off the bands and drawing them together, in, out, on and together.   It got harder with each cycle as the bands started on the ankles and moved up to the knees and then to the thighs. There were lots of skipping songs.

Another game was to put a tennis ball in a stocking and with your back to the wall and all your limbs spread to bounce the ball between each of your legs, arms and either side of your head while singing a song.  Or two-a-balls against a wall.

There were other energetic games that had us running around the yard chasing each other.  

The children I remember from my school are: Marilyn and Rudy Gibb, Terry Hayes, Hughie Brock, Carolyn Davies, John Burke, Margaret Jackson, Shawn, Pauline Smith, Dorothy Taylor, Paul Houston, and Michelle Rose. 

I thought I remembered more than that, but I suppose it was a long time ago!! 

Marilyn and Rudy used to go to Crimsworth pre school. 

Rudy used to kick me under table when the teacher wasn't looking! 

Marilyn was double jointed and could bend over backwards and grab her ankles. 

Pauline Smith was a natural leader and always had a gang of girls round her to do her bidding, I was very fond of Pauline. 

 Years later we met up in secondary school and she always said she wanted to be a nurse.  

On Withington Road, was The Bon Bon, our local sweetshop, Simon and I used to run gleefully with our shilling (12 pennies) spends and buy 12 Spanish which were Basset's hard liquorice sticks. 

Sometimes we would put them in  a glass of water and stirred the sticks in it until the water became murky and we would then drink our Spanish juice. 

Next door to that was a grocer's shop, possibly called Murphys, I recall shopping for my mother and an old lady came out of the shop and fell over. 

 I helped her to her feet and she told me I was very kind.

There were three or four other shops after that, but I don't recall what they were.  Further down the road was Brooks's Bar.

 It was a special place, a place where people used to meet and it was the bus terminus too. 

 Our dentist, Mr Mintz  had a practice in a old house and we regularly and had fillings with no needles! 

Then the Imperial picture house and happy memories of Saturday afternoon matinee shows also come to mind..  Cowboy films where the kids used to cheer for the goodys and boo the baddies. 

 I also remember going to watch Thunderbirds and Hud, the baddy, getting his foot caught between two metal bars which slowly began to crush it.  That image disturbed me for a long time.

Alexander Park was at the bottom of the road and we went to play on the swings or wandered around the lake or stared in awe at the big green houses where the large exotic plants grew. 

On a Sunday like other families, we would took a picnic and spread our blankets on the grass enjoying the sun and long afternoons. 

Once a year the CCC would come. That stood for Children's Christian Crusade.  They would erect large white tents and all the local children would go and we would play games outside and then go into the tents to sing.

If Your Happy and You Know It, Clap Your Hands, was one of the songs and when ever I hear it today it reminds me of those days.

My Mum would take me shopping along Alexander Road. 

Each side of the road were full of shops and we used to go in everyone!  Occasionally we went further a field and shopped down Longsight  and to the market on Dickenson Road. 

Saturday afternoon Mum and I went to town and into Lewis's, Dad would stay at home and make the tea, always salad with tinned fruit afterwards, Doctor Who on the television.

Across the road from us in one of the big houses which was converted to flats, lived Simon's friend John Hawkins.

I recall that he used to use the F word a lot.  We had never heard of it till then and he seemed so daring. 

He had curly strawberry blonde hair and lived with 'Edna' and his Mum Carol used to come back sometimes, I don't know what their arrangement was. 

Carol, to me was a typical 60's girl.  Peaked cap, mini skirt and boots.  She used to drive a Triumph Herald soft top and would take us a ride in it.

It was wonderful being able to feel the wind in our faces as we drove.  She had a Turkish boyfriend at one stage and he would bring us biscuits. 

For years we knew them as Turkish biscuits and only later realised they were actually fig biscuits!

Joanne had a friend called Debbie who also lived in the same house.  She had a brother called Peter.  I remember him being 'big' and used to frighten us. 

 He probably was just taller than us.  He used to like whacking us with the side of his hand.  I went on the bus for the first time without my Mum and Dad with him and John and Simon. 

I don't know where we were going but I remember watching him pay three pence to the conductor for our fare.

Up at the end of the road on the corner a big house that belonged to Moira. The large back garden was dug out in runs, they were to be the foundations for a building that was never built. 

It was a great place to play as we ran up and down those ruts.  In the basement flat lived Jacqueline, a little girl with jet black hair and enormous eyes. 

She lived with her mother and was perhaps slightly younger than Joanne, my sister.  Her Mum used to give her Buttercup syrup on a desert spoon and if I was there I'd have some too..

Next door to Moira was a house that was run down.  We would go and play in the basement and above lived a man who said he was a real cowboy. 

 I made myself a little house in the basement and was so proud of it until the owner came and ordered me out!

The Kelly family lived near Moira's house, there was Francis, the youngest and his sisters Bernadette and Josephine and they had an older brother called Kieran. 

Bernadette and Josephine used to go horse riding and I would accompany them over to a stables in Unsworth near Bury.  It was my first introduction to horses and I taught myself to ride through trial and error.

We had a dog called Ricky, a black and white terrier that we bought from Bob Grove's Pet Shop in Tib Street, Manchester.  A magical place that we visited a lot.  He always had puppies and kittens in his window and in the side window he had tortoises.  Bob, a small bald man with cross eyes and always greeted us when we came in.  Dad's beat was round there and he often called in for a cup of tea.  

I chose Ricky my self and in Wellington Road he became King of the neighbourhood.

We would let him out when ever he asked and he would roam the area as if he owned it.  Outside the kitchen of Moira's house there was a mound of earth. 

Ricky would position himself  on top of it and bark until he got her attention.  She would open the window and throw him scraps.  She was very fond of Ricky.

One day, Simon and I came out of our drive on our bicycles and Ricky was waiting for us. 

He barked and then ran forward, he came back to us barked again and ran on.  He seemed to want us to follow him, so we did and he led us to the top of our road. 

 There was nothing to see except Moira, and a man and his van.  We were just about to go back when Moira called to us.

 She told us that the man with her had knocked over Sally.  Sally was our young collier puppy who never went out on her own. 

So we raced back home and found Sally under the dining table, she was unhurt but trembling. We didn't know she had even escaped.

The final thing I remember about my days in Whalley Range was walking to church along Withington Road to the congregation church at the bottom and passing the donkey field on the right. 

I've been back and the Donkey field is now school playing fields and the church is now an Asian church hardly resembling what it once was.