The house, a field and the stories of Mr. Nathan Slater and Henry Hawkins ……… 175 years of Didsbury’s past

Now, you just never know where a story will go, and I was not prepared for the twisty turny tale that started with a request for information on a big house on the corner of Lapwing Lane and Wilmslow Road.

The house of Mr. & Mrs Hawkins, 2019

Today it consists of six apartments, but for most of its existence it would have been home to one of the more comfortably well-off families of Didsbury.

It was built in 1896 and was owned and ocuppied by Henry Herbert Hawkins who was still there in 1911.  

He listed himself as an export brewer and in 1894-5 had offices in no 5 Cross Street which is just along from Market Street towards Albert Square. 

He was born in 1852, and married Florence Elizabeth Foster in the Methodist Wesleyan Chapel on Stockport Road.  They had two children and employed three servants.

They were clearly on the way up because in the late 1880s and early 90s they were in Chorlton in a semi on Barlow Moor Road and later still in Victoria Park.

Their new home had ten rooms and was situated at spot which had still been fields in the early 1890s commanding uninterrupted views south to Parkfield Road and on down past the railway line to the tennis courts and North Street.

The fields of Mr. Slater opposite Fog Lane

And it was the field that interested me, because in 1845 this had belonged to a Nathan Slater who also owned land across Didsbury.

He is a shadowy figure, who only appears in the rate books for Didsbury in the 1840s, but there is a Nathan Slater resident in Manchester in Booth Street in 1841 who is listed in the census return and several directories, who reappears as a merchant in Withington in 1852.

Back in 1841 he owns the Crown Inn on Booth Street and here the mystery deepens, because the property is occupied by fourteen people, one of whom is Mr. Slater, and what might be his mother, and twelve others of whom one is an Isaac Thorniley who nine year later is himself listed as the landlord of the pub.

The Crown Inn, 1851 facing Booth Street

The building is large and so could accommodate all fourteen, but on the maps of the period it is situated on the corner of Fountain Street and Nicholas Street, directly opposite Booth Street.

So, it is a tad confusing, which leads me back to that field and Mr. Slater, who might have inherited the land or given that he styled himself a “wine spirit merchant” he may have decided to diversify during the 1840s.

There are no records in the rate books that he owned the land before 1845, but that might just be one of the records that have been lost.

But I will still go on looking for him and just where he lived in Withington and trawl the documents for more on the family that came to live in the house which was built on his land.

Location; Didsbury

Pictures; Mr.& Mrs. Hawkings house, 2019, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and the field belonging to Mr. Slater in 1845, from the OS map for Lancashire, 1854, and Booth Street, Nicolas Street and Fountain Street, 1851, from Adshead's map of Manchester, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/