The Grade II-listed Monks Hall Museum on Wellington Road in Eccles is still standing, though, only barely.
This story from July 1965 tells of a donation to the famed museum of a steam train nameplate – Tyrwhitt – which was named for a former Admiral of the Fleet and had clocked up over 1.5 million miles in its time.
The Tyrwhitt was built in Derby in 1934 and was from the Jubilee class.
Mr Millward, the Divisional Manager for British Rail’s Manchester Branch handed the nameplate to the Mayor of Eccles, Kenneth Edwards, and the Town Clerk, Norman Mitchell.
Among those invited to Monks Hall for the celebration was train driver Mr Moore, the Deputy Foreman at Patricroft train sheds, who had spent 48 years in the railway service, coming to Patricroft in 1923.
The steam railway sheds opened on 1 January 1885 on Hampden Road in Patricroft
The shed was designed to accomodate eight railway lines and a total of 32 steam locomotives. Expansion and development soon followed an by 1905 a new shed opened with 10 sets of railway tracks. The two together would hold 120 mixed steam engines.
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Mr Millward then gave a speech which, on reflection, was quite prophetic.
He said that he was delighted to be handing over the nameplate to the safe keeping of the people of Eccles, adding that whilst there might not always be a Patricroft train sheds there would always be plenty of employment for local railwaymen.
He added that while diesel locomotives did not require so many depots but they would still need people to drive them and they might well continue to start from Eccles and that this was something that hadn’t been sorted out yet.
Sadly this was not to materialise for Patricroft train sheds closed in June 1968, and for all you train spotters out there the last engine to leave the sheds was ‘Black 5’ No 45156 Ayrshire Yeomanry.
Alderman Williams said that the placing of the railway relic was a means of attracting many visitors to the museum, many visitors who would be educated by seeing other exhibitions which were being staged there.
He then added that he hoped that there would always be a train depot in Patricroft, although as railwaymen they must accept transisition, especially if that transisition meant improved hours and conditions.
Well as we all know the Partricroft train sheds have long gone and there is no depot there either.
Carrying on with this glum theme, we have no Monks Hall museum either after it closed its doors for the last time in the late 1980s.
On a happier note I am glad to report that the nameplate from the Tyrwhitt is in the safe hands of Salford Museum and Art Gallery and is under lock and key in the vast storage cellars which hold 100,000 pieces of Salford history in the bowels of the Museum on the Crescent.
