Now every house has a story ….. the challenge is discovering what lies behind the front door.
And that is what brought me to the Wycombe Hotel.
It is picture which has sat in the collection for nearly a decade, and it has always been a photograph I passed over.
There is no date, no location listed on the back, and no clue as to an owner, and so I always thought its story was lost.
But not so, because on a grey wet day with the rain coming down like stair rods, I thought I would have one last go.
The house looks vaguely familiar and if pushed I would say we were somewhere on Wilbraham Road, close to the old Conservative Club.
A search of the trade and street directories revealed no Wycombe Hotel, but in the 1911 directory there was a Wycombe House which was indeed on Wilbraham Road beside the Con Club
It was the home of Mr. and Mrs. Barnes, their four children and Mary Jane Williams, who was employed as a domestic servant.
Mr. Barnes described himself a “Merchant” and is listed in the same 1911 directory as the “Managing Directory of James Barnes Ltd.”
He died in 1921, leaving an estate worth £52,253, which went to his four children.
But more interesting in a sense than the will, is that he died in Llandudno, that gentle Welsh seaside resort which was the last resting place for many elderly and comfortably well-off ex pats from across the border.
Now, I don’t yet know when he left Chorlton, but by 1917 the house had become an auxiliary Red Cross Hospital.
I had known about the two big hospitals in the Sunday Schools of the Methodist Church on Manchester Road, and the Baptist Church on Edge Lane but Wycombe had passed me by.
But it was a common enough practice for families to offer up their homes for use by the Red Cross, and at the end of the war not all returned to residential use.
So perhaps sometime after 1918, the house became a hotel, and only much later reverted to domestic use.
All of which means I will have to go down to Central Ref and wander over the directories for the years after the Great War looking for a hotel.
That said one always must be careful, because while researching the family I came across the military records of a young man who I took to be one of the sons of Mr. Barnes and with mounting excitement I trawled the documents only to discover it was not he.
Location: Chorlton;
Pictures; Wycombe Hotel, date unknown from the Lloyd Collection, and Wycombe House, 2016 from the collection of Andrew Simpson
 |
| Wycombe Hotel, date unknown |
It is picture which has sat in the collection for nearly a decade, and it has always been a photograph I passed over.
There is no date, no location listed on the back, and no clue as to an owner, and so I always thought its story was lost.
But not so, because on a grey wet day with the rain coming down like stair rods, I thought I would have one last go.
The house looks vaguely familiar and if pushed I would say we were somewhere on Wilbraham Road, close to the old Conservative Club.
 |
| Wycombe House, 2016 |
It was the home of Mr. and Mrs. Barnes, their four children and Mary Jane Williams, who was employed as a domestic servant.
Mr. Barnes described himself a “Merchant” and is listed in the same 1911 directory as the “Managing Directory of James Barnes Ltd.”
He died in 1921, leaving an estate worth £52,253, which went to his four children.
But more interesting in a sense than the will, is that he died in Llandudno, that gentle Welsh seaside resort which was the last resting place for many elderly and comfortably well-off ex pats from across the border.
Now, I don’t yet know when he left Chorlton, but by 1917 the house had become an auxiliary Red Cross Hospital.
I had known about the two big hospitals in the Sunday Schools of the Methodist Church on Manchester Road, and the Baptist Church on Edge Lane but Wycombe had passed me by.
 |
| A gate post, 2016 |
So perhaps sometime after 1918, the house became a hotel, and only much later reverted to domestic use.
All of which means I will have to go down to Central Ref and wander over the directories for the years after the Great War looking for a hotel.
That said one always must be careful, because while researching the family I came across the military records of a young man who I took to be one of the sons of Mr. Barnes and with mounting excitement I trawled the documents only to discover it was not he.
Such are the twisty, turny, paths of research. Still I rather think we have some of Wycombe’s story, and intime thre will be more.
Location: Chorlton;
Pictures; Wycombe Hotel, date unknown from the Lloyd Collection, and Wycombe House, 2016 from the collection of Andrew Simpson
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