Leaving your mark on that house in Chorlton …….. John Burns Storey

Now I can’t quite make my  mind up about leaving your name on a house.

The historian in me likes the idea that there is a permanent link with a previous owner, but that is shot through with a sense of the overwhelming arrogance and self pride in placing your initials on the side of a house.

It smacks of hubris and reminds me of that line “Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”*

But then perhaps I am going over the top.

Yesterday Sarah from High Lane got in touch asking if I knew whether there was a connection between her house and St John’s because “Friends and neighbours from St John’s think that our house might originally have been the priests house for the church due in part to the insignia “IHS” on the roofs apex”.

So far I haven’t made a connection, but then having trawled the 19th century I stopped at 1911, leaving another hundred years to plod through.

What I do know is that the house dates from 1871 and was built by Mr. John Burns Storey, who was from Northumberland, which may explain how Sarah’s house came to be called Bamburgh.

He was a builder and was responsible for a number of the houses on High Lane all of which were built in the early 1870s, in advance of the big housing boom which started a decade later.

Nor was he alone in beginning the transformation of the township.  

There had been urban creep up Edge Lane and along Wilbraham Road, after it had been cut in the late 1860s, as well as High Lane.

Several of the builders and speculators engaged in building  these houses for the “middling people” are known and a few were local.

But despite his interest in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Mr. Storey may not have lived here for long, because while he and his family were on High Lane in 1871 they had moved to Barton Upon Irwell ten years later, and at death in 1897 he is recorded as living in Brooklands.

And his death presents a mystery, because he left just £44 8s. 4d.  Just why his effects are so small maybe a mystery we will never solve.

So, I shall leave Mr. Storey,  his wife, Emma, and four children along with their 13 years old servant on High Lane in 1871 in what I expect were happier times.

Despite emblazoning his initials on Sarah’s house the evidence so far is that the Storey’s never inhabited the property, which I suppose could be another mystery.

There will be more to discover about John Burns Storey which I have promised Sarah I will look for along with another search for that connection with St John’s.

Next; Mary Butcher ....domestic servant from Belper, aged 13 and working for the Storey family

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Pictures; the initials of J.B.S, 2021, courtesy of Sarah Hudson Jones, and the house in 1959, A. E. Landers, m17886, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

* Ozymandias, Percy Byshhe Shelley