Those very old cottages on Grange Lane ……..in Didsbury

I rather think that Grange Lane in Didsbury is one of those very old thoroughfares, which the romantic in me would like to think is “half as old as time”.

Grange Lane, 1854

It is there on the 1845 tithe map and is hinted at on older maps running back from 1819 into the 18th century.

All of which offered up a possible date for those two cottages on the lane which go under the names, Beech Cottage and Moor Cottage.

I became interested in them last week when someone asked me what I knew of their history, and very quickly got submerged in the research.  

They appear on that tithe map, are listed in the rate books, and the occupants can be identified on each of the census returns from 1841 through to 1911, with a further reference on the 1939 Register.

But what I should have done before picking over their stories in the dusty archive, was to have turned to the Didsbury historian, Ivor R. Million.

And there on pages 64 and 65 of his A History of Didsbury is a detailed account which offers up a date of 1701 when the owner Zechaeus Bancroft died and they passed into the possession of a family called Fildes. 

“In 1793 Thomas Fildes sold the property to James Ward, the village schoolmaster, who lived there till his death in 1822, .. when his son, James Ward … sold it to Mrs. Francis Barlow of Wilmslow.  It was probably James Ward who demolished the existing cottages  and built new ones with a barn and shippon attached.  These buildings can still be seen.

The main cottage, known as Moor Cottage is the home of Miss Joyce Owen.  Around the chimney stocks can be seen protruding bricks which show that originally the roof was of thatch.

The cottages which are now numbered 2, 4, and 6 Grange Lane were also the property of the Fildes family.  They were in the ownership of that family as early as 1752and as late 1845.  In all probability they were among the premises which the family inherited from Zechaeus Bancroft”.*

Now Mrs. Barlow and the Fildes family appear on a number of historical documents stretching from 1849 through to 1939, and I guess with more digging there will be more.  Mrs. Barlow is recorded in the Rate Books for 1849, and the Filde family in 1875.  

The Fildes are also there on the 1871 census as occupying the three cottages, and I know from the Rate Books, that Ann Fildes owned one of the cottages, James Fildes another and John Fildes the third.  Interestingly the estimated annual rental value varied on the three, with John’s assessed at £10, Ann’s at £7 and James’s cottage at £5.

Grange Lane, 2020

Six years later each had recorded their occupations with James and John describing themselves as  gardeners, and Ann as a launderess.

But there are some puzzles which have yet to be sorted, and one of those is that in 1871 the census record shows that only two of the cottages were occupied.

That said members of the family were still occupying one of the cottages as late as 1939.  This was number 6 which was occupied by Eliza, Maude and James, who were the children of James Fildes and were born between 1873, and 1887, all were single, and listed their occupations as “tailorees,, unpaid domestic duties, and gardener (incapacitated)”

And that for now is it. 

Leaving me just to say I will go looking for more information including why Beech Cottage was designated as a Grade II listed building in 1952.

Location; Didsbury

Pictures; Grange Lane, 1854, from the OS map of Lancashire,  courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/ and Grange Lane, 2020, from the collection of Andrew Simpson 

*Million, Ivor R., A History of Didsbury, 1969, pages 64-65