Walking back to 1848

Well if the sun shines tomorrow evening I will be pleased.  The last time I did the walk in the company of the Civic Society the sun shone and the 40 or so of us who wandered down Beech Road trying to recreate a similar evening in 1848 had a pleasant enough time.

Now I know that trying to talk you back a hundred and sixty years is an odd thing to do but I hope it will be fun.

So in that true style of someone who loves publicity here is a flavour of what the Row would have been like.

At the corner of Beech Road and Barlow Moor Road to the right was Beech Cottage home to the Holts who owned a fair bit of the area around St John’s Street behind  Deansgate plus the estate here in the township.  An estate which stretched from the corner of Beech Road along Barlow Moor Road and down to Hardy Lane almost as far as Cross Road. And that was not all.  Turn and face Barlow Moor Road and all that you can see from the shops to Sandy Lane and a chunk of Chorlton Park was theirs too.

By total contrast was the home of Sarah Sutton at the corner of what is now Beech Road and Wilton Road.   It was a wattle and daub cottage, had been built in the early 19th century and was not demolished until the 1890s.
And of course there is much more. Meet us at the corner of Beech Road and Barlow Moor Road at 7.30 Wednesday June 13th.

Pictures; detail from a Beech Road 1908, m17645, Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, Sutton’s Cottage from the Wesleyan Souvenir Handbook, 1907, courtesy of Philip Lloyd