All that is left of a little bit of Withington tracking ...... Mr Robert Sherwood and Miss Annie Lister

The smithy as was, and now in 2014

Now I had no idea how bits of Withington behind Wilmslow Road had been redeveloped so recently.

Walking back from the old White Lion past the hole in the grounds which was the Scala and across Copson Street there is now no Albert Street or Queen Street and gone too are Cooper Street Moorfield Street along with a host of small terraced properties.

I wish I could pin point when they all went but like so many redevelopments around the city they happen when you are not looking.

Which of course is where someone will quote chapter and verse and maybe I hope coming up with some pictures.

In the meantime I shall fall back on more from Andy Robertson who wandered off down Wilmslow Road and was enticed into that warren of little streets, alleys and open spaces which is all that is left.

Queen Street in 1893

Today it is called Queen Street West but in the 1890s was simply Queen Street and a decade earlier had been Victoria Street.

It consisted of small terraced properties with the odd industrial unit.

In 1911 there were 16 of these houses which were either four or five roomed properties and were home to a mix of families whose occupations included a gardener, a clerk, a boot maker and warehouseman along with a plasterer, joiner, and pattern card maker.

There was also the business of Sam West the plumber, Richard Tart bricklayer and Robert Sherwood blacksmith.

And it is the smithy which has survived as a car repair shop with “on the left a former stable building with hayloft and hoist.”*

Residents in Queen Street, 1911

I can track the cottages back to 1879 when most of the group were owned by the estate of Edward Smith with a few in the hands of a Robert Sherwood.

And it is Mr Sherwood who has drawn me in, because as well as the cottages on Queen Street he owned the smithy for which he charged an annual rental of 30 shillings and which was matched by the income from those cottages of 11 shillings each.

He had been born in 1845 in Shropshire and was a blacksmith by trade.  In the early 1870s he was in Cheetham and by 1879 in Withington.

And like all good men of property he retired with his wife Ann to St Anne’s on the Lancashire coast.

The house is still there and is a fine large semi detached property spread over three floors with cellars and within a few minute's walk of the sea.

By contrast his tenant at number 5 the Lister family continued living in their four roomed property until after 1911.

The stables in 2014

Mr Lister who had been a gardener was succeeded as tenant by his daughter Annie who took in a long term boarder when her parents died and had a succession of jobs.

She had been born in Sale in 1861 and died in 1938 in the hospital of the old Workhouse.

Like me I doubt she would have recognised the changes to this tiny bit of Withington although given the dominant presence of Mr Sherwood in her life she may not have been surprised at the survival of his smithy or the stables opposite.

Pictures; from the collection of Andy Robertson, and the detail of Oak Bank from the 1893 OS for South Lancashire, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/

*Queen Street, Enu 5 18-20, Withington Lancashire, 1881, Enu 9 46-47, Withington Lancashire, 1891, Enu 13 30-31,  Withington Lancashire, 1901 and Enu 30 380, Didsbury, South Manchester, Lancashire, 1911  and Manchester rate Books, 1879

** A walk through the History of Withington, Withington Civic Society, 2014, www.withingtoncivicsociety.org.uk