One hundred years of one house in Chorlton part 26 on Beech Road sometime around 1949

The continuing story of the house Joe and Mary Ann Scott lived in for over 50 years and the families that have lived here since.*

Joe and Mary Ann were married in 1910 and moved here in 1920 and in all the stories I have posted about them and this house I have never tried to see Chorlton through their eyes.

Now I know I will never know what they thought of the place or what they made of the changes in the half century they lived in this house, but it occurred to me that it should be possible to collect enough pictures of Beech Road to begin to get a sense of what they knew.

Some will be ones you have already seen, others will be fresh out of the collection but what they all have in common is that they were taken during the time they lived here and would be scenes they knew and took for granted.

They are not in any particular order which I know is not how a historian should behave, but just snap shots of moments in time.

And so to the first which was taken on a warm sunny summer’s day sometime in the early afternoon.  I don’t have an exact date but it must be not long after the end of the last world war and judging from the presence of the Morris Minor it must be after 1948.

The railings around the Rec had been taken down for scrap during the war and had not been replaced.

It is one of those interesting little bits of history that has fascinated me ever since I learned that in the drive to make weapons and bits for tanks and aircraft all manner of metal railings saucepans and pots were collected and melted down.

To this day I have wondered whether the metal content was really that useful or whether it was just one of those propaganda ploys to make people feel a part of the war effort.

Either way the effects were all too plain and while some of the old hedges were still in place for most of its three sides the Rec was open to all comers.

It had also lost its formal beds and borders and from where we are standing looks just to be a grassed field.

And this is a good spot to get a clear view up Beech Road.  To our right just beyond the lamp post are the old farm buildings of the Renshaw/Bailey family who have worked the land from this site since 1765.  But by the time Joe and Mary passed along here on that summer’s day it’s time as a working farm were gone.  The barn had been converted into a shop and part of the yard into garages.

Beyond that is the row that Joe and Mary Ann lived in just hidden behind the hedges of the farm yard.

Our six houses can be seen as the road takes another of its twists and there behind them is the cherry tree that they planted.

It lasted into the beginning of this century but sadly by then it needed to come down.  But in the same way that the great and good replace the old we have replanted a cherry tree, in the same spot and of the same type of cherry.

Now I know that all photographs capture a moment in time but there is something a little special about this one.  For a start it does not feature in other collections and there will be few who now remember Beech Road like this.

But also it is another reminder of Chorlton’s rural past because standing at the point where the picture was taken you can see the way the road twists and turns taking in ancient obstacles now long gone.   Beyond our house the road takes a slightly different direction to accommodate an old Beech tree.  And if you look down towards the green it is possible to see as it curves this way and that.

On a personal level it does draw me closer to the Scott’s which I know sounds romantic tosh but there it is.  Away in the distance is our house, it was once theirs and now it’s ours and like all good historians I like that idea of continuity.  They had been there for over fifty years, we have achieved nearly 40.  They were the first occupants and we are the fourth and the first to have had children here.  Indeed my youngest was born upstairs in the big front bedroom.

Which brings me back to the beginning and thoughts of Joes and Mary Ann.

* http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20story%20of%20a%20house

Pictures; the home of Joe and Mary Ann in 1974, from the collection of Andrew Simpson and Beech Road from the Lloyd collection