Joe Scott built the house in 1911 and it was the first house the 23 year old builder lived in with his wife Mary Ann. It was part of a terrace of six and to mark it out as the home of the man who built it Joe gave it bay windows at the back, the only one of the six. His father and brothers were also in the building trade and it may be that they helped build it. His father Henry was a lath renderer or plasterer and I guess it would have been possible for him to have helped out here.
The Scott family are part of the history of the township. Henry had moved from London sometime in the 1870s, just as the housing boom had begun and he continued working into the twentieth century. Both of his sons became builders in their own right and Scott houses abound across the township.
There was also William Rochell from Yorkshire and later still Frederick Walker who also built homes for people. Just as the township attracted new people to live here it brought in the men who were going to build it.
By 1901 the brickworks had opened on Longford Road providing the material for lots of elegant villas and not so elegant terraces of brick houses which stretched out towards Martlege and back along new roads to the village.
In a few short years Scott, Rochelle and others were transforming the township, so much so that the Manchester Evening News commented that there was “great enterprises a foot and new roads are being monthly added to the local directory.”
Much of this new development was aimed at the clerical and artisan end of the market. As the same Evening News article said, “The clerk no less than the merchant must be catered for.” Many of these smaller terraced houses around Beech Road were Scott houses.
There was also the “Sandy Lane colony”, the three long new roads of Nicholas, Beresford and Newport and the “six shilling a week homes” on Hawthorne Road. All were modest four roomed houses, with a small front garden and back yard. In that respect the township remained a very down to earth place. There may well have been the grand houses which sat well back on Edge and High Lane but they were matched by those rows of small terraces.
Most of Scott’s houses were these smaller, modest houses in what was the old Chorlton. They were basic two up two downs with a kitchen tagged on and an outside lavatory and were built for rent. Later he began building semi detached houses on the remaining farmland off Beech Road and the green.
Picture;43-51 Beech Road, built by Joe Scott, Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Councilm17663, taken in November 1958 by R.E. Stanley
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