Finding clues to that other Chorlton, a stables on Barlow Moor Road

Stables and Carriage shed, Barlow Moor Road, 1958

You can still find clues to that other Chorlton.

Now I don’t mean our rural past that pretty much has gone although there are still a few of the old farmhouses along with some gravestones in the parish church yard and a reminder of ancient field boundaries.

It is that next phase in the township’s story which can still be unearthed and this is the period where the horse and carriage still offered up a means of transport for both the well off and some at least of the middling people but which would soon be made redundant by the tram and then the motor car.

The grand house on Barlow Moor Road, 1958

The stables and carriage sheds are still around.  Some have been converted into workshops and a few into homes and most are tucked away so that the casual passerby will literally pass by and miss them.

Go back just a few decades and there were more of them and they will have been pretty much as they were when new.

I still remember one at the bottom of the big house my grandparents owned in the late 1950s.

On a hot summer’s day there was still a lingering smell of hay mixed with that of dried plaster and wood.

And I think Ann’s picture which she drew in 1958 is a fine example of what I remember and which stood in the garden of her family home on Barlow Moor Road.

The house was there by the 1890s and was a double fronted property and was owned by William Falconer.

Now Mr Falconer is an interesting man.  He was born in Scotland and began work as a travelling draper, but by the turn of the last century he was describing himself as a Credit Draper and by 1911 was also running a credit company and employee others.

And this meant that he sold clothes on credit possibly at over the odds interest.  I have yet to find the company but he must have been doing well enough to live in this fine house and to undertake one journey in 1899 to the U.S.A.

New York Street, 1954

Back in the 1880s the family had lived at 59 New York Street in Chorlton on Medlock.

This was one of those roads in the space between Oxford Road and Upper Brook Street just south of Booth Street East and now under that collection of new University buildings.

Looking at the row which included no 59 it is clear just how far the Falconer’s had travelled by the time they set up on Barlow Moor Road.

They owned the house and no doubt had the carriage to go with it or at the very least the aspirations to own one.

In that respect they reflected part of the new population who had made Chorlton their home and whose middling elegance is still just there to see.

Pictures; the stables, and house in 1958, courtesy of Ann Love and 59 New York Street in 1954 by H. Milligan, m19454, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass