Watching tram no 404 on Wilbraham Road in 1913

It’s another tram picture which given the general interest in trams is fair enough but there is more.

We are on Wilbraham Road looking towards Chorlton from Withington Road around about 1913 or 1914.

It is spring and judging by the shadows sometime in the late morning.
Wilbraham Road had been cut roughly fifty years earlier but the trees are a more recent addition and judging by the size of the ones currently along the road did not survive beyond the middle years of the that century.

Just two years earlier there were no houses at all along this stretch of Wilbraham Road and the casual pedestrian would have had to wait till he arrived at St Werburgh’s Road before encountering the church on the right and the homes of the Smith, Barlow and Widdowson households directly opposite.

Now what I find interesting is the way that each family had stamped their own individuality on their homes with names.   So running up along the south side of Wilbraham Road from St Werburgh’s Road there is Stalheim, Southdown, Carlton, Stormarm, and Penmoyle, while continuing up towards Chorlton after Chandos Road South there was Brierfield, Bronx, Wesnley and Glenmayne.

But as our tram clanked its way up towards Chorlton its passengers would have been able to look out on open land with just a few big houses to interrupt the view.

For me it is also the detail which pulls you in.  There to the left are one of those hand carts which perhaps had been used to deliver building materials, while to our right is a lone cyclist on what is otherwise an empty road save for tram 404 in all its tall stately grandeur heading towards Chorlton.

Picture; from the Lloyd collection