Settling a few old mysteries and uncovering a few new ones ……. Chorlton-cum-Hardy in 1881

Now, it is a simple observation that what you once thought you knew about a place or a past event can be turned on its head.

And that is pretty much what has happened today with the acquisition of a map from 1881.

My friend Richard came across it in the archives of Trafford Local Studies Centre, and it looks to be unique, in that there isn’t a copy at Central Ref.

Added to which it is a beautifully produced map in colour, and is more detailed than the OS map made a decade later.

Richard thinks it was made for the Withington Board of Health which had become responsible for Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Burnage, Didsbury and Withington, and replaced a system of governance which stretched back to the Middle Ages.

The detail in the map allows me to confirm what I had thought about some of the buildings in the township and offers new clues about some others.

So, in the case of the Renshaws Buildings which stood on the site of the Royal Oak I had long thought that they were back to back cottages which had been built before 1830.

The census returns and other maps suggested this was so, but the 1881 map offers up the evidence that there were indeed ten back to back cottages which also fits with the few photographs that we have.

And the map also clarified what I thought about a set of cottages on the corner of what is now Beech Road and Wilton Road, and back in 1881 bordered a small orchard which was part of Row Acre. 

One of these was Sutton’s Cottage, for which we have a photograph dating from 1892.

The earlier maps suggest that there was more than one cottage, and again the 1881 map confirms this, which for me is quite exciting, because we know that the Sutton family had lived in the end cottage from at least 1851.*  

We know he was an agricultural labourer, and we know how much rent the Sutton’s paid along with the size of the family.

And using even older maps it is possible to date the cottages back into the late and possibly even the mid 18th century. 

They were wattle and daub constructions and by 1881, there were only 50  left in the township, which was not a bad thing.

Most were wattle and daub cottages made by filling in the space between a wooden frame with walls made of woven branches covered with a mix of mud, and straw.

Such houses were easy to build and equally easy to maintain, but there could be disadvantages to living in them.  The porous nature of walls meant they were damp and crumbling clay meant endless repairs.

According to a later Parliamentary report, “Many of them have not been lined with lath and plaster inside and so are fearfully cold in winter.  

The walls may not be an inch in thickness and where the lathes are decayed the fingers may be easily pushed through.  

The roof is of thatch, which if kept in good repair forms a good covering, warm in winter and cool in summer, though doubtless in many instances served as harbour for vermin, for dirt, for the condensed exhalations from the bodies of the occupants of the bedrooms....”  *

Floors made of brick or stone were laid directly on the ground and were almost invariably damp, and in the worst cases reeked with moisture.  Once the brick was broken, the floor became uneven and the bare earth exposed.  

This might be compounded where the cottage floor was below the ground outside or the floor level was uneven which caused problems of drainage.  

Even the proudest wife and mother must have been reconciled to damp and dirt which were the result of such floors.

The only heating would come from the open fire or stove which might have been combined with a cooking range.

On damp days when the coal or wood was wet the smell would permeate every room in the house.

During the winter months the unheated bedrooms were particularly unpleasant places.  On the coldest nights ice would form on the inside of windows.

And that is it for now, but I will be returning to our 1881 map

Pictures; 1881 map of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Withington Board of Health, courtesy of Trafford Local Studies Centre, Sutton’s Cottage circa 1892, photograph from the Wesleyan Souvenir Handbook of 1895, and interior of a Chorlton farm cottage, 1930s, from the collection of Philip Lloyd

* Sarah Sutton, a life lived out on the Row, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2019/04/sarah-sutton-life-lived-out-on-row.html

**British Parliamentary Papers 1893-4 XXXV V,1, page 103 quoted from Gauldie Enid Country Homes p532  The Victorian Countryside edited by Mingay C. E Vol 1 Routedge & Kegan Paul 1981 ISBN 0-7100 1009734 5