Now someone will be able to place just where this picture was taken, although the passage of almost 90 years might be a challenge.
The photograph was one of six, marketed by the Rapid Art Photography Company, sometime in the 1930s.
By which time Chorlton Golf course had seen off a plan in 1914 by Manchester Corporation to appropriate part of the course for a new super park for south Manchester.*
Naturally the 450 members of the club opposed the scheme, but there was a recognition that the park would “benefit the entire southern side of the city [and] do more for that part of Manchester than Heaton Park does for the northside.”*
In addition, the Corporation had proposed “a town planning scheme which means at least wide roads, better houses, gardens and tree planting” and offered up the possibility of following other big city parks with “playing fields for football and cricket and a lake for boating”.
And not for the last time looked to improving the road link between Manchester and Cheshire with a major road using “the track known as Hardy Lane and then over the Mersey by Jackson’s Bridge”.
To which some pointed to the total impracticability of the park and highway on what was a flood plain.
But I rather think what did for the park scheme in 1914 was the outbreak of war just five months after the plan was first floated.
Location-Chorlton-cum-Hardy
Picture; Chorlton Golf Club, circa 1930s, courtesy of Jennie Brooks
* Barlow Hall, a court case and the promise of a park for Chorlton and Didsbury on the banks of the Mersey; https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2019/11/barlow-hall-court-case-and-promise-of.html
*The Proposed new Park for Manchester, the Manchester Guardian, April 11, 1914
By which time Chorlton Golf course had seen off a plan in 1914 by Manchester Corporation to appropriate part of the course for a new super park for south Manchester.*
Naturally the 450 members of the club opposed the scheme, but there was a recognition that the park would “benefit the entire southern side of the city [and] do more for that part of Manchester than Heaton Park does for the northside.”*
In addition, the Corporation had proposed “a town planning scheme which means at least wide roads, better houses, gardens and tree planting” and offered up the possibility of following other big city parks with “playing fields for football and cricket and a lake for boating”.
To which some pointed to the total impracticability of the park and highway on what was a flood plain.
But I rather think what did for the park scheme in 1914 was the outbreak of war just five months after the plan was first floated.
Location-Chorlton-cum-Hardy
Picture; Chorlton Golf Club, circa 1930s, courtesy of Jennie Brooks
* Barlow Hall, a court case and the promise of a park for Chorlton and Didsbury on the banks of the Mersey; https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2019/11/barlow-hall-court-case-and-promise-of.html
*The Proposed new Park for Manchester, the Manchester Guardian, April 11, 1914
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