Down at Whalley Range Cricket Club this Sunday with a Fun day and a bit of history

The Fun Day on Sunday

Now this Sunday I have decided to accept a family challenge and walk over to the Fun Day at Whalley Range Cricket Club.

It’s the annual Kingsbrook Residents’ Association Fun Day which starts at 2 and goes on till 5 with all the attractions of a traditional summer’s “do.”

All of which we will enjoy but the challenge is to recreate the walk as it would have been done by Mary Moore who lived on Chorlton Green worked at Dog House Farm and came to an untimely end in 1838 by “person or person unknown."

I have often speculated on the route but reckon it would have taken her up Beech Road and along to what is now Sandy Lane and then by degree following the lanes past Moss Cottages.

Our Ben and Josh favour the route past Hough End Hall and out over Hough End Clough while Saul and Luca reckon this would just be madness.

Walking a route in 1838

Either way it would have been a stiff walk which in winter on one of those early morning jaunts would have been with just the light of the moon to guide you.

I have yet to decide which to chose, but I suppose it would be fitting to walk by Hough End Hall given that Peter Topping and I will be at Fun Day with our new book on Hough End Hall the Story, but to say more would be to slip into a bout of outrageous self promotion.**

So I shall just leave it at that, add a link

to the book and wait to explain which route I finally settled on.

Back then it would have been open land some of which was farmed by the Chorlton family from Dog House Farm.

And as late as the 1890s it was still pretty much still farm land.

All gone now of course but armed with my OS map  for the period and the stories of Mr Mee who farmed at Dark Lane Farm and others who worked and lived along the way I think I can recreate that walk.



Pictures; the Fund Day poster, map showing my route in 1838, from the OS map of Lancashire,1841-53 courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/

* Annual Kingsbrook Residents’ Association Fun Day, Whalley Range Cricket Club, Sunday July 12th from 2-5

** Hough End Hall .......... the book.......... on sale, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/hough-end-hall-book-on-sale.html