Now I am back with gateposts and the stories they have to reveal.
Andy Roberston recorded this one on College Road earlier this month.
Today it leads to Beech Hurst Close which is a small bit of development but was once the entrance to Beech Hurst, a grand looking property set in a tree lined garden with substantial outhouses.
It is a building I knew nothing about but I suspect I must have passed it countless times as I walked along College Road.
I don’t know when it was demolished or for that matter when it was built.
It was there by 1894 bounded by the Independent College to one side and surrounded by cricket grounds that ran down to Burford Road and up Withington Road.
And in 1911 it was the home of the Beaty family.
Mr David Beaty described himself as a “Clothier and Merchant.” He was married to Kate who had been born in Yorkshire in 1860 and they had four children of whom three were still living with them in 1911.
The family employed four servants one of whom Annie Birch was a “sick nurse” which invites all sort of speculation on who she was looking after.
If I have got this right they had moved into Beech Hurst sometime between the January and the April of 1911.
Two decades earlier their home had been set in a secluded and pleasant spot for not only had they been able to look out on the College and those cricket grounds but directly opposite were another collection of fine mansions set back in their own tree lined gardens with names like Whalley Villa, Hazel Green, Sunnyside, Liguria House and the Cedars.
But by the time the Beaty’s had taken up residence some of those fine properties were either vacant or demolished and by 1933 all had gone replaced by small semi detached properties.
Added to this development were now similar houses on the east side of Beech Hurst and almost directly opposite there was the “Sunnyside clothing works.”
Perhaps by then the Beatty’s had left their 13 roomed home. There is a record of a David Beaty dying in 1925 in Bucklow, Cheshire and a Kate Beaty who died Bucklow, thirteen years later.
That said they would have been familiar with Doenberg just a little further along College Road.*
It is a place I have written about already on a number of occasions, and Andy included it in his collection of photographs.
It too has a fascinating past made more so because since the stories were posted a number of people have come forward with bits to add to its history, including Jim Warner, who wrote that
“this was my great grandparents home, my grandparents being Wilhelmina Doris Rohleder and Dr. James Leather of Bolton.”
So there you have it, never pass an old gate posts without clocking its history.
Pictures; of Beech Hurst Close, and Doenberg, September 2014, from the collection of Andy Robertson, and Beech Hurst in 1894 from the OS for South Lancashire, 1894, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/
*Doenberg, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Doenberg
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| Beech Hurst Close, September 2014 |
Today it leads to Beech Hurst Close which is a small bit of development but was once the entrance to Beech Hurst, a grand looking property set in a tree lined garden with substantial outhouses.
It is a building I knew nothing about but I suspect I must have passed it countless times as I walked along College Road.
I don’t know when it was demolished or for that matter when it was built.
 |
| The gate post |
It was there by 1894 bounded by the Independent College to one side and surrounded by cricket grounds that ran down to Burford Road and up Withington Road.
And in 1911 it was the home of the Beaty family.
The family employed four servants one of whom Annie Birch was a “sick nurse” which invites all sort of speculation on who she was looking after.
 |
| Beech Hurst in 1894 |
Two decades earlier their home had been set in a secluded and pleasant spot for not only had they been able to look out on the College and those cricket grounds but directly opposite were another collection of fine mansions set back in their own tree lined gardens with names like Whalley Villa, Hazel Green, Sunnyside, Liguria House and the Cedars.
Perhaps by then the Beatty’s had left their 13 roomed home. There is a record of a David Beaty dying in 1925 in Bucklow, Cheshire and a Kate Beaty who died Bucklow, thirteen years later.
 |
| Doenberg today |
It is a place I have written about already on a number of occasions, and Andy included it in his collection of photographs.
It too has a fascinating past made more so because since the stories were posted a number of people have come forward with bits to add to its history, including Jim Warner, who wrote that
“this was my great grandparents home, my grandparents being Wilhelmina Doris Rohleder and Dr. James Leather of Bolton.”
So there you have it, never pass an old gate posts without clocking its history.
Pictures; of Beech Hurst Close, and Doenberg, September 2014, from the collection of Andy Robertson, and Beech Hurst in 1894 from the OS for South Lancashire, 1894, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/
*Doenberg, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Doenberg
I remember Beech Hurst house. As children we played in the grounds that had graves. To the back there was a old stable filled with a wealth of property including a car and a white dome wooden builfing with a moving roof
ReplyDeleteThere was a fire in the 1980s and the building demolished.