“great enterprises a foot and new roads are being monthly added to the local directory.”*

It’s a familiar refrain and could well describe the present building boom across Chorlton, but comes from the Manchester Evening News published in 1901.

Back then this new development was aimed at the clerical and artisan end of the market.  

As the same Evening News article said, “The clerk no less than the merchant must be catered for.”  

Joe Scott built many of these smaller terraced houses around Beech Road and off Oswald Road  in the first two decades of the last century, before building some of the semis on Beaumont in the 1930s.

The Evening News also reported on the “Sandy Lane colony”, the three long new roads of Nicholas, Beresford and Newport and the “six shilling a week homes” on Hawthorne Road.  

All were modest four roomed houses, with a small front garden and back yard. 

 In that respect the township remained a very down to earth place.  There may well have been the grand houses which sat well back on Edge and High Lane but they were matched by those rows of small terraces. 

And one hundred and twenty three years later the surge to build continues.

Location; Cross Road

Picture, waiting for something to happen, former car park of the Irish Club, 2024, lamps post and trees, 2023, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

* Chorlton-cum-Hardy, from a series of articles History of the Suburbs of Manchester, Manchester Evening News, September 20th 1901