It was a house on Edge Lane which has preoccupied me ever since I first came across it almost a year ago.
And the clue my well be this 1914 photograph of Edge Lane from the Stretford boundary.
Westonby was a large Edwardian house built in 1903 on the edge of the Township.
It boasted “three well lighted entertaining rooms, billiard-room, spacious hall, five bedrooms, box room, bathroom and separate w c, lavatory and w con ground floor, excellent kitchen, usual conveniences and large garden” and “was cellared throughout.” It was set back in its own grounds had views across the fields to the Mersey “and was convent to Stretford trams and trains.”**
It was perhaps the last of its type. They were expensive to run and only worked well if there were servants on hand. They had names like Westonby, Sunwick and Ebor House.
The biggest, which were those along Edge Lane and High Lane have long since gone, some of the smaller ones suffered the indignity of being converted into bed sits and a few into offices or commercial properties.
But as often as not the space where the grand building stood surrounded by it landscaped gardens are now filled with modern blocks of flats.
Most of these old elegant houses managed a century. Not so Westonby. It lasted just under twenty years.
By 1922 it was a private nursing home advertising itself as the Twilight Sleep Home for painless child birth*** and perhaps by the late 40s it had gone.
Its story is a fascinating one which unfolded in a series of chance discoveries and now I have finally found a picture of the house which I am pretty certain is the right one and in the process has eliminated the only other image of the property.
And like all good detective stories there was an element of luck, because our picture had sat in the digital collection of Manchester Libraries without me noticing it despite regularly trawling the site for pictures of Edge Lane.
Opposite were two grand semi detached properties whose stone wall stretches away from the picture.
The sheer size of Westonby is clear from the photograph and matches the foot print from the OS maps for 1907 and 1932/35 as well as the Guardian advert and is why it would have been suitable as a nursing home.
Like all good stories I suspect there is still more, but that will involve searching more directories and later OS maps and is for another time.
Pictures; of Westonby and Edge Lane, 1914, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, m17757 and the OS map of 1907.
*http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Westonby
**the Manchester Guardian, May 20th 1905
Ebor House was where Peter Haworth, a leather merchant, lived in the 1870s with his wife Sarah and family.
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