Tuesday 4 October 2022

A new history of Chorlton in just 20 objects no 8 ......... a photograph and the story of a family

Now I am looking at a picture of Miss Connie Lomax.  


Miss Lomax, circa 1920s
I think it will have been taken sometime in the 1920s and given to Miss Annie Elizabeth Roberts who worked at Hough End Hall from 1911 through to the 1930s.

Miss Lomax was born in 1899 and her family lived at Hough End Hall when it was still a farmhouse.

In its day the farm had consisted of over 240 acres stretching east into Withington and before the mid 18th century had belonged to the Mosley family.

The hall was built in 1596 but for a big chunk of its history it was a farmhouse.

The Lomax family were the last tenant farmers to live in the Hall and with the death of Mrs Lomax in 1940 the tenancy briefly passed to the Bailey family who subsequently bought it and sold it on to developers.

The photograph was passed to me by Stuart Bolton who is the great grandson of Miss Annie Roberts and according to Stuart the handwriting on the picture belongs to his grandmother who makes a very personal link between the Hall and a direct descendant of someone who worked there.

The last of the Lomax daughters died a few years ago and while there are some family members in Canada I rather think there are none left over here.

Miss Roberts, circa 1920s
Very recently a set of pictures of the Lomax’s in the first part of the 20th century came to light and now also we have some of Miss Roberts, all of which offers us a new chapter in the story of the hall and also of someone who worked there.

Originally Stuart thought his great grandmother was there from the 1910s but the census return for 1911 shows a Nellie Redmond and two other servants so we can put her time at Hough End to sometime after April of that year.

All of which is a start.

Location; Hough End Hall



Pictures; Miss Connie Lomax and Miss Annie Elizabeth Roberts, both circa 1920s courtesy of Stuart Bolton

No comments:

Post a Comment