Remembering Park Brow Farm on St Werburgh Road as it was

You have to go looking for pictures of working farms in Chorlton.

I have two in the collection from the 1880s showing Higgnbotham’s farm on the green, a couple more of Ivy Farm on Beech Road and a few of when Hough End Hall was still producing food which just leaves five or six of Park Brow  from the middle decades of the last century.

Nor is there much in the way of written descriptions.

I can think of one short account of Ivy Farm matched by a mix of anecdotes about collecting milk and working on the land at Turn Moss with some detailed stories about Park Brow from Oliver Bailey whose family ran it during the 20th century.

So I was more than a bit happy when my friend Ann sent me a collection of models of Park Brow made by her husband.

“They were” she wrote “  made many years ago,  and may not be accurate, as he used it for his layout, but most of it is as he remembers it from 40 years ago when he walked past it every day on his way to work.”

All of which I think is a tad modest of Howard.  If you compare them with collection of photographs from the 1930s and 40s along with and Oliver’s description of the farm and the present buildings the models are a pretty close reconstruction.

And that is pretty much all I am going to say for now, but reserve the right to come back with lots more at a later date.

Location Park Brow Farm, Chorlton-cum-Hardy




Pictures; models of Park Brow, circa 1974, courtesy of Howard Love