Down on the Rec today with the story that never

Now I wonder what’s going on down at the Rec today

I took the picture but haven’t had time to ask the chaps who are working  there.

I rather think it might be something to do with the Egerton Sewer.*

Now I remember major work done on this sewer sometime in the mid 1980s which involved a huge hole on Beech Road and an equally big one on the Rec in the north east corner.

It dates from the late 1860s and was built at the same time as Wilbraham.

I first came across the sewer when this picture postcard came into the collection.  It dates around 1890 and was taken directly in front of the old parish church.

To the right is the Bowling Green Hotel which was demolished in 1908 for the present building.

According to the caption, “the circular opening, bottom right is the out fall of Wilbraham Egerton’s sewer since extended and covered by a bank and not the arch of the bridge which was later rebuilt.”

One of the only historic references comes in one of the articles written by Thomas Ellwood in a series of articles published in the South Manchester Gazette between 1885 and 66.

The sewer he wrote “runs along the road to within a short distance of the railway bridge at Chorlton station, and then passes through the fields to Barlow Moor Lane, adjoining Lane Edge, crossing High Lane, Cross Road, and Beech Road, thence through various gardens, finally emptying itself into the Chorlton Brook at a point about 200 yards below the bridge which crosses the stream leading to Jackson's boat.”*

All of which just leaves me to walk across, have that conversation and update the story.

Picture; of the Egerton outfall circa 1890 donated by Mrs May Boardman to from the Lloyd collection and the Rec in 2105 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Looking towards our village sometime in the summer of 1890, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2013_03_01_archive.html

**Ellwood, T.L., Chapter 6, South Manchester Gazette,