At the bus stop thinking of Beech Cottage in 1847

It was one of those warm sunny October days and I was by the bus station on Barlow Moor Road and not for the first time I began thinking of the Holt family and in particular James Holt and his grand house which stood a little to the west of the bus stand.

In its time Beech Cottage was one of the grandest houses in the township.  Not that the term cottage does justice to the Holt’s home which was a huge building with an impressive frontage of tall windows and high chimneys.  It was set in its own grounds amounting to an acre and was surrounded by high walls.

The estate stretched from the corner of the Beech Road along Barlow Moor Lane to Lane End and then down High Lane, before cutting across the fields to the Beech Road.  Tall lines of trees skirted the gardens and hid the family from gaze of the uninvited.

And where I was standing by the bus stop terminus would have been just inside their walled garden which included a fair number of trees flower beds and well laid out paths along with greenhouses and a lodge house at the entrance, roughly where the police station stands.

James Holt had made his money from calico printing and the family continued in business well into the century.  They had an extensive property portfolio in the city which at one point included most of the houses on the southern side of St John’s Street along with more humble dwellings in the neighbouring streets and two public houses.

Here in Chorlton, James Holt owned 17 of acres making him one of the largest landowners after the Egerton’s and the Lloyd's.  Some of this land which was rented out to tenant farmers mostly stretched out from Barlow Moor Lane along the Brook towards Hough End.  Closer to home was land with rented cottages.

He had moved to Chorlton sometime in the early 1830s and the family continued to occupy the place until 1908 when the property was demolished and the land sold off.

Now I have written about the Holt's and the house before on the blog* and in another of the outrageous pieces of self publicity there is a lot more about both in the book.











Pictures; Beech House once called Beech Cottage, 1907, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council m17645, 11 John Street, home of the Holt family from the late 18th century, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, Beech Cottage in 1841, detail from the OS map of Lancashire, courtesy of Digital Archives, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/

* http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20Holt%20family