This is another one of those pictures which just looks like you know where it is, or perhaps not. It was sent in the summer of 1906 but may have been taken a little earlier.
It is Barlow Moor Road and the road on the left is Cranbourne. Away in the distance is the parade of shops which start on the corner of Needham Avenue.
Now pictures can hold secrets and when I first looked at this one I wondered what was behind the wall and iron railings beside the two children. It turns out that in 1906 it was nothing more remarkable than the gardens of the houses which fronted Oak and Chestnut Avenue and which are still there today.
If there is a story to tell it is that parade of shops which were no more than 13 years old when the postcard was sent. They were built on the grounds belonging to a house called Oakley which earlier had been known as Oak Bank. In 1893 the grounds stretched along Barlow Moor Road, almost to Wilbraham Road and backed on to the gardens of what is now Corkland Road.
But this was a poor shadow of what they had once been. Fifty years earlier the grounds were bordered by the Rough Leech Gutter which runs under Wilbraham and Corkland Roads and extended to what is now Needham Avenue and beyond this all the way up to Sandy Lane were fields which belonged to the family.
Oak Bank House is a particular favourite of mine and was owned in the early 19th century by the Morton’s and later the Cope’s. But more about both of them later.
Picture; Barlow Moor Road circa 1906 from the Lloyd collection
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