Tracking the history of Beaumont Road

Now if you want to dig deep into the history of a place deeds are a pretty neat start.

Of course there are a few draw backs.

First you have to own the house and secondly are prepared to be baffled by the language which can be both dense and at times incomprehensible but that said they are a history lesson all on their own.

Reading our own is to get the story of the house from when it was built to all the owners who have ever owned it with the added bonus of discovering who owned the land before it became a building plot.

And if you are very lucky you will also get a heap of legal details about some of the owners.

So in pursuit of the Holt family who owned Beech House at the top of Beech Road I came across the family’s property profile around Castlefield from the 18th century through to the 1900s.

And now I know a little bit more about Beaumont Road.

It was after a casual conversation with Andy who lives there that he kindly offered up his deeds and there was the date 1924, which was a tad earlier than I had thought and helps with the story of how this bit of Chorlton was developed.

In 1915 when Joe and Mary Ann Scott moved into their new home on Beech Road they had a pretty much uninterrupted view from their back bedroom down to the Ville, the Brook and the Mersey beyond.

Now Joe had built many of the houses in the small roads off Beech Road.

These were two up two downs and offered for rent in the years before the Great War, and by the early 1920s he had moved into the bigger properties which were advertised with garages as an option and fully supplied with electricity.

And some at least on Beaumont were built by Joe and 1924 seems about right.

In time I will go looking in the directories to fix the names of the early residents and plot how quickly the first occupants stayed before moving on.

Nor did the changes stop in the 1920s.  In the last decade Joe's lock up workshop at the back of his house was demolished and replaced by the tall brick slab.

Andy added "I know there are different dates for the houses built on the opposite side, these were built in three phases from the other end to your end back. You can tell by the different style and size of the three types,"

All of which is good history and advances the story of this bit of Chorlton.and that just leaves me to thank Andy and see what more deeds come out of the shadows.

Additional research by Andy Lever

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Picture; Beaumont Road, 1975, A Dawson, m17644, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass and in 1975 from the collection of Lois Elsden