A church on Barlow Moor Road and a missing hall in Greenfield

Now I fully accept that I am being a tad lazy.  

Were I not I would have fully researched this postcard using the catalogue number from the Wrench Series but sometimes there are too many research projects and anyway in this case I shall just let the date slide by.

It is instantly recognizable as the Macfadyn Church on Barlow Moor Road. Today only the hall remains.  The church was demolished in the 1970s.

It was one of the many churches built in the township as the population grew in the final decades of the 19th century and like those on High Lane and Wilbraham Road did not quite last a century before declining congregations  made amalgamations, rationalizations and eventual demolition the fate of many church groups in Chorlton.

“The Chorlton cum Hardy Congregational church started its life in the Masonic Hall in September 1879 under the joint control of the Chorlton Road and Stretford churches. In June 1881 Chorlton Road, under Rev. J. A. Macfadyen, M.A., D.D., assumed full responsibility. 

A school-chapel was opened for worship in September 1883 and forty seven members enrolled at the new church in December. 

Its first pastor, Rev. Robert Mitchell, was appointed in June 1885. With the death of Dr. Macfadyen, in 1889, the church's connection with Chorlton Rd. came to an end, but in October 1890 a fund was started to build a new church in memory of Dr. Macfadyen, - the Macfadyen Memorial Church, whose opening service was on 25 October 1894.

In October 1972 with the union of the Presbyterian and Congregational churches it became known as Macfadyen United Reformed Church. In October 1975 Macfadyen United Reformed Church and McLaren Baptist Church decided to worship and work together as Chorlton Central Church.”*

All of which puts our picture at some time after 1894 and more exactly after 1903 by which time Holland Road** had been cut and the houses built.

So it is another of those scenes that is now history and one that pretty much has gone from living memory.

But that is not quite the end.  The card was sent by Lena in the summer of 1913 to a Miss Taylor of Stock Lane Stalybridge from Grasscroft Hall, Greenfield.  Nothing odd about that except of course that both Greenfield and Stalybridge are both  well away from Chorlton and so raises an interesting possibility that postcards of the township were being sold in Oldham where the card had been sent from. Or it may be that Lena had either visited or came from Chorlton.

I did try finding Grasscroft Hall but the local historian had no knowledge of such a place. Miss Taylor did however prove to a worthwhile search for there she was at Stocks Lane.  In fact two of them.  A Miss Emily Taylor aged 47 and her niece Edith Alice aged 29.

Now that is a long way from the Macfadyn Church on Barlow Moor Road.

*The National Archives, http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/a2a/records.aspx?cat=127-m186&cid=0#0

**now Zetland Road

Picture; from the Lloyd collection