There are some pictures which I return to again and again and never tire of looking at.
This one appeared in a number of editions in the Wrench series including a tinted version brought out for Christmas.
Ignore for a minute the fashions of the people, the gas lamps and the telegraph pole which dates the picture to the late 19th century and concentrate instead on the old road which twists to accommodate the natural feature of the land, the field hedges and the old brick row of cottages and we could be looking at a moment in Chorlton’s history at anytime during the first half of that century.
This road was the main route out of the green to what was then called Barlow Moor Lane. And in the distance can just be made out Lime Bank, a fairly grand house which was the home of Charles Morton.
Now Charles would regularly walk down this road to attend the rate payers meetings held in the old school on the green. In the summer of 1848 with Europe convulsed with revolutions and our own establishment fearful of another Chartist petition calling for the vote, he walked down the Row to chair a meeting demanding the return of lost ratepayer’s money.
The cottages to the left were certainly there by the 1840s and hide views of the majestic home of the Holt family. They had made their money from making engraving blocks for calico printing.
The house and grounds stretched up what is now Beech Road, along Barlow Moor Road to High Lane and back to Beech Road.Looking out from their upstairs windows over our road they would have had fine views across the fields behind these hedges to Chorlton Brook and on to the Mersey.
The land to our right behind the hedge was mainly small market gardens In the 1840s much of it was farmed by the Gratrix family whose farmhouse stood roughly at the junction of Beech Road and Beaumont Road.
It would have been a timeless scene recognised by our farmers, the regular visitors as well as the Holt's and Morton’s.
But the clue to the date is the house on the left. This one and the other three which it stands beside were built in the early 1870s. In the next four decades, the Holt family home would be demolished along with the cottages and bit by bit the land farmed by Samuel Gratrix would succumb to houses. Only Lime Bank has survived, much knocked about and now hidden behind shops and MacDonald’s.
Picture; from the collection of Philip Lloyd
Ignore for a minute the fashions of the people, the gas lamps and the telegraph pole which dates the picture to the late 19th century and concentrate instead on the old road which twists to accommodate the natural feature of the land, the field hedges and the old brick row of cottages and we could be looking at a moment in Chorlton’s history at anytime during the first half of that century.
This road was the main route out of the green to what was then called Barlow Moor Lane. And in the distance can just be made out Lime Bank, a fairly grand house which was the home of Charles Morton.
Now Charles would regularly walk down this road to attend the rate payers meetings held in the old school on the green. In the summer of 1848 with Europe convulsed with revolutions and our own establishment fearful of another Chartist petition calling for the vote, he walked down the Row to chair a meeting demanding the return of lost ratepayer’s money.
The cottages to the left were certainly there by the 1840s and hide views of the majestic home of the Holt family. They had made their money from making engraving blocks for calico printing.
The house and grounds stretched up what is now Beech Road, along Barlow Moor Road to High Lane and back to Beech Road.Looking out from their upstairs windows over our road they would have had fine views across the fields behind these hedges to Chorlton Brook and on to the Mersey.
The land to our right behind the hedge was mainly small market gardens In the 1840s much of it was farmed by the Gratrix family whose farmhouse stood roughly at the junction of Beech Road and Beaumont Road.
It would have been a timeless scene recognised by our farmers, the regular visitors as well as the Holt's and Morton’s.
But the clue to the date is the house on the left. This one and the other three which it stands beside were built in the early 1870s. In the next four decades, the Holt family home would be demolished along with the cottages and bit by bit the land farmed by Samuel Gratrix would succumb to houses. Only Lime Bank has survived, much knocked about and now hidden behind shops and MacDonald’s.
Picture; from the collection of Philip Lloyd
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