When there was only Egerton Road

This is Egerton Road sometime in the early 20th century.

We now know it as Egerton Road North and there by hangs the clue to its date.

Now I am not sure at present when Egerton Road South was cut but it was not before 1911 and judging by the look of the houses sometime after the Great War.  There will of course be people who know when it was made and all suggestions will be eagerly awaited.

So we are going back to Egerton Road.  The photograph is one from the collection which I always tend to pass over, but that is unfair to both the image and Egerton Road.  It is a fine example of a sunny summer’s day, at the post box end of Chorlton and looking at  the shadows perhaps late in the morning.

I don’t pretend to be an expert of the fashion of the period but I would date the clothes to sometime during the very early 20th century.

Like all the pictures of the period it is the total absence of cars that strike you first, followed by the almost uniform use of blinds at all the windows.  And then for me it is the balcony on the first floor at number two Egerton Road.  I have always thought that such balconies were a late 20th century thing added to town houses and flats but the Edwardians had got there first.

To which Ed Jury has added, "On the 1915 OS map of Whalley Range, Egerton Rd only had 18 dwelling on the right hand side from Wilbraham Road. At the top of the road there was a track leading to Hobson Hall Farm house. There was just farmland on the southside of Wilbraham Rd. By the 1933 map today's Egerton Rd North & South had been completed and the cricket ground had placed Hobson Hall Farm".

Picture; from the Lloyd collection circa early 20th century