It dates from sometime between 1902 and 1910 and all of these houses on the west side of Barlow Moor Road have long gone. They were the homes of the new managerial class who were choosing to settle in a pleasant suburb still on the edge of the countryside yet within easy reach of the city centre. So here was a canal superintendant a manager, a journalist and a professor of music.
The houses were of a moderate size ranging from seven to nine rooms. Only one has survived which is the one on the corner of Barlow Moor Road and Wilbraham Road. Perhaps the fact that this one had become a bank by the early 1920s saved it from demolition in the 1960s.
I cannot be sure but I rather think this may be the one marked on the postcard which was the home of the Ferneley family in 1911. Thomas Moses and his son were professors of music while a second son was a buyer. It was the biggest of the five having nine rooms and looked out on both roads. Even now some of the grandeur of the place can be discerned from looking at the bank from Wilbraham Road. Ignore the stone frontage, the big ground floor windows and the entrance and concentrate instead on the upper levels. Now imagine those bays repeated down to the ground either side of a large front door.
None of the pictures do justice to what it must have looked like. Back in the 1880s it had the grand title of Sunwick and stood in its own grounds which included much of what is now the precinct.
During the next 40 years the surrounding area changed rapidly, with shops encroaching on the Wilbraham Road side and the development of the east side of Barlow Moor Road, leaving all three pictures a thing of the past.
Picture; Manchester Road circa 1902-10, Wilbraham Road circa 1895 from the Lloyd collection, & the junction of Barlow Moor Road and Wilbraham Road early 1920s from the collection of Rita Bishop
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