A pub ... a farm.... and that walk through Chorlton-cum-Hardy in 1881

Now I grant you this isn’t the zippiest of titles, but it does the business.

We are standing at the junction of Barlow Moor Road and Wilbraham Road, looking up towards Martledge and the year is 1881.

Wilbraham Road was still relatively new having only been cut a decade and a bit before, but had already begun to attract some wealthy residents who settled along the stretch from Edge Lane towards Barlow Moor Road.

And that fulfilled the expectations of the Egerton estate who in the 1850s had considered a route which would run from Stretford through to Fallowfield, creating a new highway which could better connect Chorlton-cum-Hardy to Wilmslow Road and in turn open up the township to new developments as well as the possibility of more trade.

There had been a series of alternatives , all of which favoured a route to the north of the one built, but all seemed to have been abandoned possibly because the land was dotted with small water courses and ponds which had given the area the name of the Isles.

As it was the route chosen sliced through Manchester Road which ran away from the village and up to West Point and which by degree passed through Martledge which was one of the three hamlets which made up Chorlton-cum-Hardy.

Today, on a wet grey day when the rain clouds touch the tops of the houses, the best way to get a sense of the area is street google, which offers up a map, a satellite view and of course pictures of the properties along the way.

But I have the 1881 map, commissioned by the Withington Board of Health which is both very detailed and very attractive.

And because I can I have chosen to look at the bit which today is a mix of residential and commercial properties, including that car park.

I won't insult any one by commentating on the details that map reveals or a then and now commentary, anyone interested can do that for themselves.

What does fascinate me are the houses along that bit of Manchester Road which vanished under the car park and the long greenhouse behind the old Royal Oak which stood to the north of the present pub and had been dispensing beer and cheer from the early decades of the last century.

The present pub stands on the site of Renshaws Buildings which were a collection of ten back to back cottages which were constructed sometime before 1832.

Leaving me just to wander up Barlow Moor Road to where it joined Manchester Road and stand by the guidepost.  

And here the map throws up one of those tiny bits of history I like.  Back then the post faced a tree lined field, which today is the Co-op Undertakes, and was from 1920 a cinema, which in turn replaced a grand house called Sedge Lynn.  

This was the home of Aron Booth who in the summer and winter of 1882 took a series of photographs of Martledge of which only four have survived.

The Booth’s were one of those new families with money behind them and business interests in the city who had made their home here just as the housing boom of the 1880s was about to take off.

A housing boom which in a few short decades would not only engulf Martledge in rows of houses and shops but ensure that the name of the hamlet was forgotten, so that when people talked about the area they preferred to call it the new town or new Chorlton to distinguish it from the older community which lived around the village.

But what the map shows is that Sedge Lynn was built sometime between the beginning of 1881 and the April of that year, because the house is not there on the mapbut the family show up on the census return which was completed in April.

Leaving me just to trawl the Rate Books to confirm that date.

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Picture; Martledge, 1881,  from the map of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, 1881, Withington Board of Health, courtesy of Trafford Local Studies Centre Sedge Lynn and the view across the Isles towards Longford Hall  in 1882 courtesy of Miss Booth, from the Lloyd Collection