An occasional series on the recreational ground on Beech Road, which I have known with affection for over 40 years.
It is a place we have lived opposite since 1976, the place our kids have played on, and depending on whether you call it the Rec or Beech Road Park, the place that marks you out as someone with Chorlton history.
Once it was part of Row Acre, a field which stretched from Cross Road, down to Acres Road and was farmed by a group of tenant farmers and market gardeners in strips, echoing the medieval system of farming practised in certain parts of the country.
In the late 1890s it was gifted to the people of Chorlton-cum-Hardy by the Egerton estate, and remains a popular place to take the kids, sit on the benches or kick a ball.
Our lads played football there, exhausting different groups of friends in the course of long summer days, and still go out on Christmas Day for a kick about which has become part of our family Christmas.
And for many, the test of how long you have lived in Chorlton falls simply on whether you call it the Rec or the Beech Road Park.
So that is it, with a thank you to the chap who parked his bike by the tree and afforded the photo opportunity.
Location; The Rec
Picture; the bike and the tree, 2019, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and the Rec circa 1930s from the Lloyd Collection
It is a place we have lived opposite since 1976, the place our kids have played on, and depending on whether you call it the Rec or Beech Road Park, the place that marks you out as someone with Chorlton history.
In the late 1890s it was gifted to the people of Chorlton-cum-Hardy by the Egerton estate, and remains a popular place to take the kids, sit on the benches or kick a ball.
So that is it, with a thank you to the chap who parked his bike by the tree and afforded the photo opportunity.
Location; The Rec
Picture; the bike and the tree, 2019, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and the Rec circa 1930s from the Lloyd Collection
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