Working the fields of Chorlton

We have very few working pictures of when we were still a rural community.

And so it is always exciting when one turns up and I get permission to write about it.

This one is in the collection of Carolyn Willitts who has kindly allowed me to use it.

There is no date but looking at the clothes of the chap on the left it might date from the early years of the last century. Now I am researching the machinery in the picture and this might fix the date. We shall see.

One of the men is a relative of Carolyn’s and he worked on Red Gate Farm which was close to the site of the library. There had been a farm here from the 1780s* and I guess much earlier.

By the 1840s the tenant farmer was William Whitelegg who farmed 68 acres of land which stretched out on either side of Manchester Road.

 It was mix of meadow, arable and pasture with an orchard.

He grew wheat and oats, along with potatoes, swedes, turnips, and mangle wurzuls, and raspberries and currants.**

But back to the picture. It is almost impossible to locate but it is just possible that it was between Ryebank Road and Longford Brook. Maps from the 1840s show a line of trees stretching out from Edge Lane.

 By the early years of the 20th century some of these beyond Ryebank Road were still standing and even today there are a few left roughly in the same place. So these may be the line which appear the photograph.

For me it is the detail that is fascinating. The man to the left holds one of those ceramic jars which might have been full of anything from water to beer and even cider. 

And there is no reason to suppose it wasn’t cider. Chorlton had plenty of orchards and there is anecdotal evidence of old cider presses turning up in the township. Most of the apples would have destined for the markets of Manchester but some at least would have been retained for home use.

It is one of only five pictures I have come across of men working the fields here in Chorlton and takes us back to a time now almost out of living memory. And it is all the more remarkable because we know one of the people in the picture.

Location; Chorlton

Picture; working the land, date unknown from the collection of Carolyn Willitts


*Yates map of 1786 shows the farm

** From an advert for the sale of the farm contents of Red Gate Farm, Manchester Examiner & Times, November 3rd 1855, Issue 711, British Library of newspapers

Looking down on Eltham in the late 1960s

The aerial photograph has got to be one of those powerful ways of capturing a scene.

So here we are flying over Eltham sometime in the late 1960s or early 70s.

Over to our left just below the centre of the image is the parish church and behind it on Well Hall Road and the High Street is Burtons now a fast food restaurant.

Travel up the High Street and on the right at the junction with Passey Place is the old ABC cinema.

Now I could go on but rather think the fun of the picture is about leaving it up to you to wander over the view identifying the landmarks.

Location; Eltham, London

Picture; from Looking At Eltham, Eltham Society, 1970, supplied by the Kentish Times

Lost and forgotten streets of Salford nu 13 ............ the one they condemned in 1910

Now I am back with Barn Street which for a long time I couldn’t  find which is not surprising given that it was one of those tiny streets north of St Stephen’s church hemmed in by Rosamond Street to the west and Mottram’s brewery.

Barn Street, 1849

Added to which its inhabitants would not rate highly on any of those lists of the well do and influential of Salford.

In 1901 their occupations ranged over a variety of the unskilled and semi skilled occupations, including labourers, textile workers, a carter and a charwoman.

My own interest is simply that my friend Val’s mother was born there in 1904 and so as you do I went looking for it.

In total there were eleven houses, which were a mix of 4 and 2 roomed properties.

Val’s mother was born at number 14 which was one of the six which consisted of 4 rooms.

The remaining five were made up of just two rooms and in to these were crammed eighteen people when the enumerator called in the March of 1901 to compile the census.*

Barn Street, 1901

And it will be some of these that that the council had declared as unfit for human habitation nine years later.

The slight puzzle is that on both the 1849 and 1894 maps all the properties consisted of back to back houses which seems to preclude a set of four roomed ones.

But the eastern side backed onto another row which faced a closed court and it is just possible that at some time after 1894 these were knocked through to make larger properties.

There is no doubt that this enclosed court must have been a dire place to live.  It was entered by a narrow entry which ran alongside the wall of the brewery from Thomas Street and in the way of these things didn’t even warrant a name on any of the maps and certainly isn’t in the directories.

But the census returns offer up two possibilities one of which is Brewery Yard and the other Simpson’s Passage, and given the access to our court it might well have been Simpson’s Passage.

Barn Street, 1894

In 1901 the return lists just five properties which might be the ones on the eastern side leaving the ones opposite to have been converted from two into four rooms becoming ourproperties on Barn Street.

All a bit mystifying.

So I shall leave Barn Street with a reference to Mr and Mrs MacDonald who in the April of 1901 were living at number 14 Barn Street with their three children and a lodger in the four rooms.  Mr McDonald was a carter working for a building form and the lodger was an Albert Fernely of Salford who described himself as a “stocker of a stationary boiler."**

Now that boiler may or may not have belonged to Mottram’s Brewery but a search for Mr Mottram and his brewery seems the next port of call.

Location; Salford.

Pictures; Barn Street, 1849, from the OS for Manchester & Salford, 1842-49 and in 1894 from the OS for South Lancashire, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

*Simpson’s Passage, Enu 20 29-30, Greengate, Salford, Lancashire 1901

**Barn Street, Enu 20 11-12, Greengate, Salford, Lancashire 1901

Discovering Turn Moss Road …… that one with a little history

Turn Moss Road is the one that runs off Edge Lane and down onto Turn Moss.

Turn Moss Road, 2023

It’s a road that you could easily miss or just give a nod to on your way from Chorlton into Stretford.

That said it has some nice-looking properties and is marked by that giant sign which welcomes you to Trafford, with a smaller one announcing that you are about to enter Stretford which regularly attracts spray can enthusiasts and the odd individual unloading a ranger of stickers.

I doubt I would ever taken the road further if Ruth hadn’t posted “Do you know anything about Turn Moss Road? 

I live in one of the black and white ones, built around 1992. I’d love to know more about what was there before. I think there was a large house and grounds on Edge Lane that was demolished”.

She was responding to a story I had written on walking into Stretford in 1847.

Turn Moss Road, 1892

And her question intrigued me, because with the sun cracking the paving stones and a possible high of 31° predicted for today, I am not going anywhere.

The road shows up on all the old maps going back into the early 19th century and for most of its existence it was just a a lane leading to Turn Moss Farm.

There are pictures of the farm, and it also appears on the OS maps for the 1840s and 1880s and in the census returns as well as various books on the history of Stretford.

John Bailey in his book Old Stretford published in 1878 wrote that “Turf moss or Turn Moss in the low lying meadows or ees, is mentioned in one of the Mosley Wills in 1612".

It was and is likely to have always been a lonely house and is yet surrounded by embankments to protect it from the floods. 

In 1771, when the estate was on sale it contained "93 Lancashire acres”,  but by the mid 20th century its size had shrunk so that when Samuel Massey in his book A History of Stretford, 1976 reported that

“Turn Moss Farm. Formerly Turfe Moss Farm. The fields, few in number, surrounded the far. The farm was approached from Edge Lane and from Hawthorn Road. The cellars of the farm house were subject to flooding. The occupiers were dependant for water on a shallow well and rainwater tank.” 

Turn Moss from the Briscat with Turn Moss in the distance, 1950

But what has really brought the old farm back is one of Allan Brown’s stories, who remembers working there as a boy in the 1940s. 

He was one of the many young people who were encouraged to help out working on farms during the Second World War.

This was the period of “Dig for Victory” with food in short supply parks gardens and even the tops of air raid shelters were used to cultivate crops.

So, Allan did his bit walking from his home near the green down the old road, now more commonly known as Hawthorn Lane to the farm and a stint of voluntary war work.

I never asked Allan if he ever used Turn Moss Road but I suppose he will have done, and back then it was just a lane with the current development dating from the 1990s.

Westonby, Edge Lane, 1914

Go back into the late 19th century and maps show that the only buildings along the Stretford side of the road was a green house and outhouse which may have the stables for the large house now long gone which stood on Edge Lane.  

That house promises to be an interesting research project and in time may match Westonby that place still remembered as the Twilight Sleep Home for painless child birth.*

It still stands to the east of our road and is somewhere I am minded to return to.

And that is about it for now..

Picture; Turn Moss Road, 2023, courtesy of Google Maps, Turn Moss Road, 1892, from the OS mapd of Lancashire, 1892-94, Turn Moss,1950 from what was known as the Briscat which was a three acre piece of pasture which back in the 1840s had been part of the land George Whitelegg rented from the Egerton’s, W. Jackson from the Lloyd collection, Westonby and Edge Lane, 1914, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, m17757 courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass.

*Westonby, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search?q=westonby

Looking at Eagle House in Eltham High Street sometime in 1874

Eagle House, 1909

Eltham has got to be lucky that so many of its fine houses built in the 18th and early 19th centuries have survived.

Of course as is ever the way the more humble dwellings of the families of agricultural labourers, tradesmen and craftsmen have long since been cleared away.

Many were unfit and will have had their time long before the last century was turned, but it is a shame.

And more so because few historians ever ventured to record what was still in their midst.  In the case of Eltham, the historian R.R.C Gregory makes references to to them and includes photographs of a few which in 1909 was all there was left.

Eagle House, 1874

Now before someone accuses me of wallowing in romantic tosh, no amount of nostalgia can hide the fact that many rural properties along with their counterparts in the cities were badly built, ill maintained and too small for the numbers who were forced to live in them.

Parliamentary reports commented on how the traditional wattle and daub cottages were damp, cold, were a prey to all sorts of vermin and lacked decent sanitation.

So I don’t think we should mourn their passing only wish more local historians had done their best to record them in detail.

Mr Gregory makes a passing reference to Jubilee Cottages and those in Ram Alley and Sun Yard and we know that those in Sun Yard were condemned as unfit at the beginning of the 20th century, but that is about it.

I suppose in their defence our historians took these properties for granted and could see little point in writing about them.

So time I think to draw on another fine house in Eltham.  This is Eagle House which still exists today at the end of the High Street and is now the Presbytery of Christ Church.

Eagle House, 1909

It dates from the 18th century but is in fact two buildings which can be best seen from the rear.

“The house to  the east is redbrick and is 18th century while the house to the west is yellow brick and is early 19th century, at which time the front was unified.”*

And in its time it was a big place, with sixteen rooms and an extensive formal gardens at the rear.

With his usual eye to detail Mr Gregory recorded that

“This is the house which faces Victoria-road and was the residence of the late Mr J A Scrutton.

At the end of the 18th century it was the residence of the Whomes family.  It was subsequently occupied by Mr. H.Latham, Mr. H. Baines, Mrs Lambert, Mr. G J Goschen (afterwards Lord Goshen, recently deceased),  Mrs Walrond, Mr, C Hampshire and Mr. C W Bourne.

Lord Goshen date unknown

The father of the late Lord Goshen Mr J Goshen- lived in the house that stands between Ivy House and the Roman Catholic  Church.  Here the future Lord Goshen spent his childhood.  It was afterwards the residence of Mr Knightly, who kept there a private school for young gentleman.”**

Now both Mr Baines and Mr Goshen rented land in the area around Roper Street and their stories are slowly emerging but more of them later, except to say that Lord Goshen was a Liberal politican who served in the governments of Gladstone.

The house of his youth is still standing and is the St Mary Centre at 180 Eltham High Street which dates from at least 1837.

All of which we shall return to along with Mr Baines, Mr Goshen and others who lived at Eagle House.
*Spurgeon, Darrell, Discover Eltham, 2nd edition, 2000
**Gregory, R.R.C., The Story of Royal Eltham, 1909
Pictures; Eagle House from The story of Royal Eltham, R.R.C. Gregory, 1909 and published on The story of Royal Eltham, by Roy Ayers, http://www.gregory.elthamhistory.org.uk/bookpages/i001.htm detail showing Eagle House and grounds from the OS map for Kent, 1858-74, and Lord Goshen from Wikipedia Commons, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Goschen,_1st_Viscount_Goschen

A farm on the green

No matter how many times I look at this picture it always has the power to draw me back in.

The date is uncertain but my old friend Tony Walker suggested sometime in the 1860s but I cannot be sure.

The bowler hats worn by two of the men began appearing in the 1850s so a date just a little later might fix the photograph.

What I do know is that it cannot be any older than the mid 1880s because the familiar lychgate at the entrance to the parish church is missing.

 Now this was erected to celebrate  Queen Victoria's golden jubilee so we are dealing with a scene from sometime in the decades after the mid century.

It is Higginbotham’s farm yard. The family had lived on the green and farmed out towards the Mersey since the 1840s and were still there in the 1960s. It takes me directly back to the period of Chorlton’s history that I am most interested in and has featured in my book.

Here are those usual objects associated with a busy farm and like any working place not as tidy as perhaps it should have been.

To the left is the farm cottage with its distinctive rear porch. To the right the barn which in the early years of the 19th century was one of the sites where the Methodists held their services before building their chapel on the Row.*

Later still it became the work shop for the Walker Brothers who ran a building firm from the site.

There was for many years a stone inscription in the barn recording its part in the history of Methodism in the township but sadly it has been lost.

My second picture dates from the 1970s when the Walker’s still had the yard.

Pictures; Higginbotham’s farm circa 1860 from the collection of Marjorie Holmes, & the same spot circa 1979 from the collection of Tony Walker.


*The Row was later renamed Beech Road

Ancient Lives with Mary Beard ..... Being Greek

Now, this is one I will listening to.

It's Ancient Lives with  Mary Beard, Being Greek.*

I am a great fan of Mary Beard, have her books, listened to her on the Romans on the wireless and always follow her TV programmes.

"From Marvel movies to presidential elections their powerful influence endures on our stories, philosophies and politics, but what it was it like to be an Ancient Greek? Scattered clues need to be gathered until they form a living, breathing human, witness to the cultural powerhouse that was Ancient Greece.

In Being Greek, Mary Beard, Britain’s best-selling historian of the ancient world, rebuilds the lives of six people, from a priestess to a murderer. 

Her investigations reveal the limits of female independence and take us deep into the marriage of an Athenian power couple. 

Themes of faith, politics and justice reveal the foundations of Greek society, but it’s the thoughts, feelings and lifestyles of individual Greeks she’s really interested in. Gods and legendary heroes are easy to come by, but Mary looks behind the temples and beyond the classic myths, filling in her stories with the relatable detail of Greek life, uncovering what they ate, how they decorated their homes and raised their children.

Mary visits the sites that help cast fresh light on past lives- the grave of a powerful woman in prehistoric Mycenae, an exquisite temple clutching the slopes of the Acropolis and the dusty plains of Marathon. Experts in Greece and the UK help Mary interpret the clues, along with film director Martin Scorsese who’s fascinated by the story of a gangster of the ancient world who pulled powerful strings to escape imperial justice.

In the first episode we meet Euphiletos, on trial for the murder of his wife's lover. Can he convince the jury that this is a crime of passion, not a calculated act of mob violence?

Producer: Alasdair Cross

Researcher: Anna Charalambou

Expert Contributors: Rosanna Omitowoju, Cambridge University and Rebecca Sweetman, Director of the British School at Athens

Actors: Robert Wilfort as Euphiletos and Laura Dos Santos as the old woman

Translations by Mary Beard

Special thanks to Elizavet Sioumpara and the Hellenic Ministry of Culture".

Leaving me just to fall back on one of my favourite historian of children's books, Looking at Ancient History by R J Unstead

Location; BBC Radio 4

Picture; cover of Looking at Ancient History, R J Unstead, 1959

*Ancient Lives with Mary Beard Being Greek, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002xzjn

** R J Unstead, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/R.J.Unstead