Old houses and forgotten stories, four houses on Wilbraham Road in 1911

Gable Nook today

Now I have passed this place loads of times and never given it a seconds thought.

I know that today it is a nursery but would be hard pressed to remember when the business started up.

It  is still a pretty impressive building and its business potential was not lost on Mr Alfred Mumford M.D., M.R.C.S.A., L.S.A, Surgeon who was here from the beginning of the 20th century and turned part of this 12 roomed property in to  a doctor’s surgery.

After all the house which was known as Gable Nook, commanded a prominent position on the corner of what was a busy road, facing as the railway station.

These were developments mirrored opposite where an equally fine row of late Victorian houses running from Albany down to Keppel Road lost their elegant front gardens and became shops.

Gable Nook extreme left circa 1900

And round about the time that Mr Mumford was converting Gable nook into a surgery, Dovedale or number 5 had become a hosiery shop and number 7 the post office, leaving only number 3 with its equally fine name of Mayfield as a private residence.  But not even Mayfield could buck the trend, and a year later two shops had been added to its front which in turn was replicated at number 5.

Many of the original occupants were professionals; a few owned their own businesses and a lot more worked in the offices and big shops of Manchester.  They were attracted here by a train service which could whisk them into the heart of the city in under 15 minutes and the fields, farms and open country which for many was even closer.

from the Slater's Manchester, Salford and Suburban Directory 1911

So along with a surgeon and his family at number 1 the remaining three were the home at various times to a retired cotton merchant, a widow “living on her own means”, Edward Ireland who had  a number of photographic studios in Manchester, and a doctor, dentist and a oil trader.

And the size of the houses reflected the inhabitants.  Number 1 had twelve rooms, 3 and 5 eight rooms and number 7 9 rooms.

Each had cellars, a decent front garden and a longer one at the back stretching down across what is now the sorting office and yard.

But like other stretches of property in this new part of Chorlton they were soon developed with the addition of shop fronts and perhaps with an eye to even greater profits the owners sub divided the shops.

Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson and the Lloyd collection