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| Martledge in 1847 |
Yesterday we passed Clough Farm and Oak Bank and have crossed the Rough Leech Gutter.
At this point the modern traveller will cross the junction of Barlow Moor and Wilbraham Roads.
Officially this point is known as Chorlton Cross, a name bestowed by the city planners and not one which is widely used. Place names tend to grow out of people’s experiences and survive long after the reason for the name has been forgotten. So it is with this junction. For perhaps three generations it was known as Kemp’s Corner, taking its name from Kemps the Chemist.
Harry Kemp was a local politician and his chemist stood on the west corner of Barlow Moor Road where it joins Wilbraham Road from the beginning of the twentieth century. The clock above the chemist made it a local landmark and as such was a recognised meeting point. Today the same spot is often referred to as the four banks, which given the fact that there is one on each corner makes sense.
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| Renshaws Buildings |
Ahead of us there was a sprawl of properties including farm houses cottages and a pub and ending at Red GatesFarm where the library now stands.
Dominating this stretch was the tall block of Renshaw’s Buildings.
These were built by John Renshaw some time before 1832 and like Grantham’s and Brownhill’s Buildings they were an exercise in speculative building.
But unlike the other two it was designed with an impressive gable end which fronted Barlow Moor Lane and was taller than the surrounding properties.
It ran at right angles to the road and access for most of the individual properties was by way of a path. The building was demolished in the 1920s to make way for the new Royal Oak which still stands on the site. But the path is still there on the eastern side of pub, and it retains the stone pavement and road sets.
Maps show that there were twelve single units which suggest they may have been built as one up one down properties and this seems to be confirmed by the large numbers of families who lived there in the mid century.
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| The Royal Oak |
It was a detached, two storied building and it had a commanding position. Not only was it on the route to and from the city but it was the only pub here about.
To the north was Red Gates Farm and surrounding the pub were a cluster of cottages including
Renshaws or New Buildings. In all it served a little community of about 100 people. It’s only competition coming from Mrs Leech’s beer house.
In those spring days in the late 1840s and early ‘50s it would have been a busy place. The first real Sunday visitors of the year would have taken advantage of the improved weather, and joined the locals who along with the gossip of the day may have swapped tips on gardening with William Wise the gardener while his wife Hannah who ran the pub dispensed the beer to her customers.
During the rest of the week there would have been a steady trade from farm workers passing on their way between the fields. And those who lived in the township returning from the city may have added to the gathering.
One such was Thomas Leigh. His mistake was to stop off on his way home from the markets in Manchester and spend the night drinking with a John Battersby who then stole two sovereigns [£2] from Leigh while he slept.
Like so much of the township the natural geography of the land has been lost. Water courses like the Rough Leech Gutter have been culverted, ponds drained and slight rises hidden by buildings. This is particularly true as we move further north. And the first clue to all this is the road itself. Old roads twist and turn following ancient field boundaries and natural obstacles.
Manchester Road snakes its way from the village to enter Martledge where the shopping precinct stands and for a short distance ceases to exist. The break was occasioned by the creation of the precinct car park, not that this has stopped people using the route to come out on Nicolas Road which itself runs in to the continuation of Manchester Road at the junction with Selbourne Road.
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| Part of the Isles, 1847 |
And the rest where it crosses the modern Wilbraham Road before disappearing into the car park and reappearing at Nicolas Road was known as Chorlton Lane.
This was the site of the finger posts and for a while the area was also known as Martledge Green.
But these seem to be local names for a section of the road which was also called Stretford Road.
Had we not turned west at Ash Tree, we could have continued north towards Oswald Fields. This today is the start of Oswald Road and in 1847 it would have taken us past Martha Helsby’s garden on our right and through the 4 acres she rented from the Lloyd Estate before the track came out beside the Longford Brook.
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| The Isles, 1882 |
Here is the site of Isles, where little streams fed ponds which had once been marl pits. Marl was used to enrich the soil and has been dug here from the 16th century if not before.
Later still the clay was used for bricks and a little further west of Oswald Road were the Brick Kiln Pits which had already been excavated and filled with water by 1847. Even later this was where the brick company made the bricks for the villas and terraces of the township.
Today St John’s School stands on part of the old brick fields while the occasional brick still turns up on and near the football pitch.
Adapted from THE STORY OF CHORLTON-CUM-HARDY, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/A%20new%20book%20for%20Chorlton
Pictures; map of Barlow Moor Lane, courtesy of Digital Archives, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/ drawing of Renshasws Buildings © Barri Sparshot, and the Royal Oak and the Isles from the Lloyd Collection
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