Chorlton Cricket and the search for its history

Chorlton Cricket Club has a long history but even I was not prepared for just how long.

I first came across the club when I was researching Hardy Cottages which stood on Hardy Lane and were popularly known as the block because of their shape.

The cottages were close to the cricket ground and may have been built sometime in the 1870s.  At that time Hardy Lane was much a narrow country lane which ran from Barlow Moor Road and just petered out a little past Hardy Farm.

My old friend Oliver Bailey had lent me a picture of his uncle with some of the cricket team and I always had a mind to take it further.

And  Philip one of my new face book chums put me in touch with one of the stalwarts of the club.  This was Derek who first played for the club as a junior in 1942 aged 11.

I had tracked the club back to the early 1890s where they regularly appeared in the sporting pages of the Manchester Guardian.  It never occurred to me to push the search back any earlier.

If I had I would have discovered that the club was formed in 1885 and their first home was that wonderfully named Cow Lane.

Cow Lane ran from Edge Lane up on to the Isles, but was lost in the late 19^th century after Wilbraham Road was cut in the 1860s.  The line of the lane is there and today is under Hampton Road.

It is a little difficult to locate exactly where on Cow Lane the club was. The OS map for 1888-93 shows what might be a club house just before Hampton Road bends to the west.

At that time the area was dominated by Hampton House which was set back from both Edge Lane and Cow Lane in its own grounds.

The club moved in 1901 to Hardy Lane and here it stayed.  All of which opens up a whole series of intriguing questions, from where exactly the club was on Cow Lane to why it moved.

Sadly Derek died before I could meet him but our conversations on the phone revealed a rich history of the club and the area.

Pictures; Norman Bailey circa 1919-1920, courtesy of Oliver Bailey, Hardy Lane and Hardy Cottages courtesy of Carolyn Willits, and Cow Lane from the Lloyd collection