Not near me ...... coming soon the story of a sewage works here in Chorlton

Hard to imagine a sewage works on the meadows or for that matter the need for one here on the banks of the Mersey. But from the 1870s onwards it became clear that the traditional way of dealing with our sewage could no longer work. Sometime in the mid 19th century the ditch running down from High Lane to the Row* had become so polluted that it had been covered with stone flags and by the 1880s some of our wells were contaminated. Later still the Alexandra Park Sewer which joined Chorlton Brook just south of Mauldeth Road was according to the Manchester Courier so full of refuse that it is said “the stream ran through Chorlton and faecal matter was often seen”†
All of which meant that we were in line for a sewage works. The story of its construction, the opposition and its final closures will be featured during the New Year
*the Row was renamed Beech Road
†The Manchester Courier October 1907, qouted in Ashworth, Geoffrey, The Lost Rivers of Manchester, Willow Publishing, 1987 p48