On the old road in 1950

This week it is more of the old road,* which snaked from Hardy Lane down past the Brook, round by the parish church and out past the green and across Turn Moss to Stretford.

I have chosen a picture taken in 1950 from what was known as the Briscat.  It was a three acre piece of pasture which back in the 1840s had been part of the land George Whitelegg rented from the Egerton’s.

I don’t suppose that it had changed much in 11o years and the buildings in the distance belong to Turn Moss Farm which had been there from the 18th century.

It is sadly a bit different today.  The farm buildings have gone and the land is a mix of playing fields and woodland.  But you can still walk along the lane and get to the spot where W. Jackson took the photograph.

The houses on Hawthorne Lane run out by the stumps and from here on you could be walking the old road back in the past.  There just beyond the stumps on your right was Sally’s Hole and immediately opposite was meadow land known as the Marsh, and a little further on, on the same side was the Briscat.  Back in the 1840s all of this would have been pasture of meadowland with few trees.  All of which makes this 1950 picture such a valuable record of the continuity of farming which has been lost

* http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20Old%20Road

Picture; W. Jackson from the Lloyd collection