To flood or not? ……. stories from an older Chorlton

One of the great delights of living in Chorlton has to be the Meadows or to give them their own name …… Chorlton Eees.

The Meadows , 2018

The Meadows has its own Facebook site, Friends group and is listed on the city councils’ digest of parks and open spaces, which incidentally adds that the feature of the area is “woodlands”.

Now that inclusion of woodlands runs counter to my idea of meadows, which according to my Wikipedia is an area "of one or more plant communities dominated by herbaceous species. water and/or shallow ground water (generally at depths of less than one meter, or three feet). Woody vegetation, like trees or shrubs, may be found in meadows but is not dominant".*

Farming the Meadows, 1950s

To which Mr. Wikipedia goes on to define an ees as “an archaic English term for a piece of land liable to flood, or water meadow”.**

So, there you have it, and our Meadows historically conform to that.  

They are part of the flood plain of the Mersey and both the historical sources and old maps and photographs record that the densely packed woodland we now know was absence until recently.

I had always thought that they were meadowland used for growing spring grass and taking advantage of the abundance of water, because meadow farming requires careful flooding, draining and reflooding a patch of land using irrigation channels.

It is a precise way of farming, and the farmer must pay careful attention to the cycle.

The Meadows, 1950s

I first came across it in my copy of The Book of the Farm by Henry Stephens.***

It was written in 1844 and ran to countless editions. It was the manual for anyone wanting to be a farmer. Everything is here from what crops to plant and when to how to make a well, as well as sound advice on hiring labourers, the construction of a water meadow, and the best location for the milk house and cheese room. 

I learned which materials were best for building a farm house and how much I could expect to pay for materials, as well as the most up to date scientific information on planting wurzels.

The Meadows, circa 1900s

It was a practical book and so “the cost of digging a well in clay, eight feet in diameter and sixteen deep and building a ring three feet in diameter with dry rubble masonry is only L5 [£5] exclusive of carriage and the cost of pumps.”***

And it was the chapter on water meadows that convinced me along with the tithe schedule for 1845 which listed much of the land on the flood plain as meadow.

And I said so in my book on “The Story of Chorlton-cum-Hardy”.****

But now I am revising that interpretation after a long conversation with my botanist chum Dave Bishop who been associated with our meadows ever since it came under the umbrella of the Mersey Valley.

Dave cites some pretty convincing evidence that our meadows were a specialist variation and used the regular flooding of the Mersey to facilitate the farming.

Cows on the Meadows, 2008

Added to which it offers up a continuity because as along as I can remember cows were quartered on the meadows, a practice which lasted until relatively recently and this was an aspect of the management flood meadows. 

It may seem a nerdy distinction to some but makes perfect sense and opens a wealth of further investigation.

And of course a valued contribution from Dave.

Location; the Meadows

Pictures; of the Meadows, 2018 from the collection of Andrew Simpson, Dave Bishop 2008 and from the Lloyd Collection, circa 1900, and 1950s

*Meadow, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meadow

**Ees, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ees_(place_name)

*** The Book of the Farm by Henry Stephens, 1844

****“The Story of Chorlton-cum-Hardy” Andrew Stephens, 2012