In the Chorltonville estate in the April of 1911

Chorltonville from the air 

It is always good when you call on other people’s research to tell a story so today I want to publish a snap shot of Chorltonville in 1911.

It “is an estate of 262 houses, located in the suburb of Chorlton in south Manchester. 

It was built in 1910-1911 as part of the garden village movement, and was originally intended as affordable rental housing for skilled artisans. 

Today the estate is almost entirely owner-occupied, with most roads, footpaths and green areas owned by a Board of Trustees on behalf of all house owners. 

An Owners' Committee has a brief to manage the day-to-day maintenance of Chorltonville.”*

It is a place I often write about and I am indebted to Isabel Wright who has given me permission to reproduce a snapshot of the place shortly after the estate was opened.  The original was published in the April edition of the Chorltonville Newsletter**

South Drive 1913

“At the time of the 1911 Census some eighty houses in the Ville were occupied comprising most of South Drive, one side of East Meade, The Thorns, and one side of South Gate. 

Presumably the rest of the estate was still being built. For me, the information contained in the census made fascinating reading about the first families to live here. 

Unsurprisingly a good proportion of residents were involved in the textile trade, including cotton goods merchants and shippers, a calico designer and a hat manufacturer. There were a number of commercial travellers, wine and spirit merchants, an actor, an architect, an essence expert, engineers, etc.

Places of birth were widely spread throughout the UK, but also some residents were born as far afield as New York, New Zealand, Sweden and one of the visitors on the day of the census was born in Russia. Only about half of the residents were from Manchester/Lancashire.

South Drive and the tradesman calls, 1913

Twenty seven of the homes had live in domestic servants mostly single young women in their late teens or early twenties. 

One residence had a live in domestic and gardener, and another a live in nurse. 

Many of these servants were not from the Manchester/Lancashire area, but had been born elsewhere in the country or Ireland, Sweden or the USA.

With thanks to Elizabeth Whiteley for transcribing the census information and creating a database. 

This makes the ville fairly typical of what had been going on in Chorlton since the property boom of the 1880s which saw the population of the township increase rapidly as the new professional and clerical classes were drawn into the area.

The attractions were fairly obvious given that we were close to the city centre and yet within minutes of the countryside.

The basis for this development had been laid with the coming of mains water in the 1860s followed by an effective sewage treatment plant in the 1870s and the railway in the 1880s.

And in 1904 we had voted to join the city which promised cheaper utilities’, a further extension of the tram network to include Chorlton and Withington and our own library.

Already the Lloyd and Egerton estates had seen the potential to sell off small parcels of land accepting an agreement from the developer to pay an annual chief rent instead of a lump sum.

This had the advantage that the landowners had a perpetual source of income which brought in more than if the land remained in agricultural use.

As the Manchester Evening News pointed out in 1901 a field earning as little as 50s an acre as farm land could command up to £30 an acre when offered for building.

The site of the estate in 1907

The arrangement had the added advantage that it freed up the developers capital to be used on building the houses, which once built and sold resulted in the transfer of the chief rent to the home owner.

Most of this new development occurred in what became known as “new Chorlton” in what had been Martledge, but the still relatively rural area to the east of the village and south of the brook was a perfect spot to build the Chorltonville estate.

It was situtated on the edge of the flood plain with open land to the east, south and west but was still only a short walk from the railway station and after 1913 even closer to the new tram network*.
http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/a-new-tram-service-for-chorlton-at.html

But that is a story others have written about and which has been featured in a number of publications including the Chorltonville centenary booklet.

Pictures; of Chorltonville from the Lloyd collection and detail of the site of estate from the OS map, 1907

* from Welcome to Chorltonville, http://www.chorltonville.org/index.htm