What we inherit and what we pass on ..... those two houses on Upper Chorlton Road

Now I know it is not an original observation that the homes we occupy are places that we hold in trust and that sooner or later we will pass them on to someone else.

the two properties just before the redevelopment

And it really doesn’t matter whether it is a palace or a modest semi in the suburbs.

The question is how will the property fare on our watch?

Will we have left it in a better state and what will be the stories that we contribute to its history?

I can count five houses which I have called home, along with umpteen flats and bed sits.

Of the five two have been truly family homes where I was happy and where I think we made a difference.

And of these the last is the one we still occupy today after nearly forty years, and I suppose our contribution is that we are the first of the four to own it, who have had children running through the place.

The first of the two to be completed

All of which makes me reflect on the twin stories of numbers 198 and 200 Upper Chorlton Road which I have regularly written about.*

They were built in the 1870s when a large chunk of Upper Chorlton Road was still fields, experienced mixed fortunes which by the beginning of this century had left them unloved, neglected and pretty much in danger.

But they have had a new lease of life, being converted by a developer into a series of residences for the 21st century.**

I had the opportunity to wander around them during their conversion, wore the hard hat, watched as bits of unsympathetic and unsafe alterations were swept away and finally returned as the completed flats were finished.

The development has won an award and more than that has saved two grand old properties and made them homes again.

Location Whalley Range

Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson

* At 200 & 198 Upper Chorlton Road, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/At%20200%2F198%20Upper%20Chorlton%20Road

** Armistead Properties, http://www.armisteadproperty.co.uk/

Coming out of the shadows ........ those two houses on Upper Chorlton Road

I think Mrs Emma Hyde and Mr John Windsor would applaud the way their two homes on Upper Chorlton Road have been treated.

Well over a century ago Mrs Hyde resided at 198 and her neighbour Mr Windsor at number 200.

By then their two homes were just a bit shy of being fifty years old and they will have still been grand properties dominating this stretch of the road.

Sadly time and the second half of the last century were not kind to either house.

Each had been clumsily converted into flats with little regard for the original design and then both had been neglected over the years to a point when most developers would have just knocked them down, and built one of those big boxes, packed full of flats and as remarkable as a cheap cheese sandwich.

But not so Mr Armisted, who instead set about saving the fabric of the two buildings and then converting the interior into sixteen modern apartments.

I have followed the story of numbers 198 and 200 for the last six months, during which time I have researched their history and some of the people who have made these two buildings their home and more recently have visited the houses at regular intervals.

And now they are almost finished.

I like the way that these two have been saved and made to suit the 21st century.  After all most of us will never live in a house with fifteen rooms, heated by coal fires and kept clean by an army of servants.

All of which begs the question of what should become of such grand old piles?

Pulling them down seems wrong and this way at least the building has been preserved and with it a bit of the history of Upper Chorlton Road.

Location; Upper Chorlton Road


Pictures; 198 and 200 Upper Chorlton Road, 2017 from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and from the 1960's, by Downes A H, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass,  

*Armistead Properties, http://www.armisteadproperty.co.uk/

**At 200 & 198 Upper Chorlton Road, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/At%20200%2F198%20Upper%20Chorlton%20Road

A century and a bit of your front room

Now I am fascinated by the idea of taking one house and telling its story over a century and a bit.

And it is a project which has led to three different sets of stories on the three places I have called home since 1951.*

But what has always been lacking are a good set of photographs which contrast the way we lived in the past with contemporary living.

Of course part of the explanation is that we didn’t have a camera, added to which it never occurred to us to record where we lived.

If you did it was just as a backdrop to a family snap.

The sort of photograph which showed Aunt Ethel smiling back at you on her birthday or the family gathered together after a christening.

All of which is a shame because being able to stare at the same spot separated by a hundred years intrigues me.

Take this picture of the front room of a house in Maple Avenue.  It is a typical Edwardian room filled with objects which fight for every available bit of space.

Of course at a time when many families including quite humble ones employed a servant that degree of clutter was just someone else job to dust.

Our house like many was a compromise.  My parents had opted for some new bits of furniture which were simple and clean in design but they sat beside a mix of bits which had been inherited, or bought second hand and joined the “Utility chairs” they had picked up cheap in the local market.

All of which seemed a long way from the sort of life offered on the pages of Habitat which in the fullness of time became our manual for contemporary living.

The shopping spree at the John Dalton Habitat might only have extended to a wine carafe and one of those transparent plastic frames for displaying a cook book but it was a step on the road to elegant living.

And when the transition was made from bed sit or shared flat to that first house, most of us had a notion of how it would be decorated and furnished.

All of which is an introduction to a collection of pictures which make that contrast in living styles.

I was recently shown round the development at 200/198 Upper Chorlton Road.  The properties had been built in 1872 and for their last fifty or so years had been neglected.**

Now they are being brought back with some tender care and attention to detail by Armistead Properties which offered up a few shots of the show room which makes for a nice contrast to the inside of Maple Avenue.

The rest as they say is pretty much for you to compare.

Location; Chorlton over a century and a bit

Pictures;sitting room Maple Avenue early 20th century, from the collection of Ray Jones and show flat at 200/198 Upper Chorlton Road

*Chorlton, Eltham,  Peckham, 

**At 200/198 Upper Chorlton Road,
***Armistead Properties

198 Upper Chorlton Road ......... a house reborn

Tired and in need of some care, 2016

Now there will be those who think I might just have gone over the top with the title but not so.

Number 198 and its twin were built in 1871 and time and a succession of landlords have not been kind to either property.*

Once they were grand homes built when much of the surrounding area was still fields but sometime in the 1970s they were converted into flats.

The conversions were not done well and in the process some of the original features were lost including the staircases, and the elaborate plaster mouldings.

Built in 1871

The exterior brickwork, window frames and roof had been neglected and parts of the property were damp and a home to various sorts of rot.

Added to which part of the garden had been sold off in plots and long ago had been built on.

The easiest solution would have been to call time on the two and demolish them replacing these 1870s villas with blocks of flats.

This had already happened to both the buildings opposite and to an equally fine house which had stood the other corner of Upper Chorlton Road and Wood Road.

But I am glad that Mr Armistead who bought the two chose instead to save them. It has taken a year and there is much still to do but already the first of the new flats in 198 are finished and they have been tastefully done.**

There will be sixteen flats where once two families lived.  The 1911 census records that no 200 had fifteen rooms, excluding “scullery landing, lobby, closet, and bathrooms” and no 198 had twelve rooms.

Few families today would need such a lot of rooms, and the cost of heating such properties will be expensive. But back in the 1870s there were servants to keep the place clean and an abundance of coal to keep the house warm and if there were cold spots the solution was the application of another layer of clothes.

Now I won’t be alone in remembering a time when few houses had central heating, ice formed on the inside of windows in the winter and the best weapon against draughts were carpets on the floors, heavy duty curtains at the windows and equally heavy duty curtains behind the doors.

A work in progress, 2016

But the sixteen flats of numbers 198 and 200 Upper Chorlton Road are very different, offering up elegance and comfort that the first owners of the two houses could never envisage.

That said I bet they would have embraced the new features with enthusiasm reflecting on how much more comfortable the flats are when compared to what was on offer in 1871.

There is still much work to do but already the buildings are beginning to look good again, as good perhaps as they had been in 1881 just ten years after they were built.

Coming together, 2017

And that raises that interesting question of what to do with an old building.

Many, like schools, warehouses and mills long ago ceased to be places where children were taught, things were made or in the case of our Victorian workhouses,  places where misery was distributed in uncaring heaps.

The solution in the middle decades of the last century was to tear them down, and in some cases that might still be appropriate, but for many others it is about finding a new use and then carefully restoring the old fabric while making them relevant to today.

198, exterior cleaned and beginning to look like it did in 1871

So I am glad that our two houses once again to do what they were designed for, with the added bonus that more people can share them.

Location; Manchester






Pictures; 198/200 Upper Chorlton Road, 2016-17 courtesy of Armistead Properties

*At 200/198 Upper Chorlton Road, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/At%20200%2F198%20Upper%20Chorlton%20Road

**Armistead Properties, http://www.armisteadproperty.co.uk/

No 200/198 Upper Chorlton Road ...... part 2 Dr Johnston

Now I like the way that a house begins to reveal a little bit of its history.

198 Upper Chorlton Road, 1960

In the case of 198 Upper Chorlton Road the bonus has been a slice of how we used to live which today looks as remote from us as the Penny Farthing and the telegram.

But that is to jump ahead of the story.

198 Upper Chorlton Road is the other half of two grand houses built sometime after 1871.

I know that both were family homes and belonged to comfortably well off people who employed servants, owned businesses or were rich enough to style themselves as “living on private means.”

But until recently the documentary evidence stopped at 1911 leaving a gap of a century to fill.

In time that gap will be partly filled by a trawl of the directories in Central Ref which will supply the names of the householders from 1911 till 1969.

That said I do know that for a while no 198 was home to a Doctor and for this I have Margaret Holmes to than k who remembers that “we went to Doctor Johnston’s surgery in the right hand of the pair. 

The Directory entry, 1969

The practice later moved nearer to the Seymour before buying the Ashville surgery across the road where it is now. 

I think it was his family house and he was our doctor when I was born in 1938. 

I believe we saw another doctor during the war as I think he was called up and back to him after and stayed with them ever since.

There were no appointments you just went and sat until it was your turn.”

And according to the Directory for 1969 a “Sydney Johnson M.B., B.Ch. physcn & surgn” is listed at 198 which could be our doctor or possibly his son.

The chronology will become clear with more research but for now it is that last comment of Margaret’s that there was a time when “there were no appointments [and ] you just went and sat until it was your turn.”

Nor was that all because more often not the waiting room was just a room which might still double as part of the home outside of surgery hours.

Entrance to 198, 1960

Back in the 1950s our doctor’s waiting area had been the snooker room of the house.

We sat on chairs that surrounded the room on all four sides facing the snooker table, and still on one of the walls was the scoreboard, made of polished wood with gilt lettering and two sliding buttons which could be pushed along to record the scores.

The place had a musty damp smell, and I doubt the heavy curtains were cleaned and certainly were never drawn.

In one corner was an old gas fire set in a fireplace.

The ornate marble mantelpiece and surround gave the gas fire an air of elegance which was not matched by its condition.

One of its clay upright burners was broken and the flame hissed and flickered offering only a poor amount of heat.

I can’t remember that any one spoke and the only sound was the occasional cough or sniff.

You knew it was your turn to go in when everyone else around you had arrived after you.

There was no intercom, no flashing display board and the indication that your turn had arrived was marked by the sound of the last patient leaving by the front door.

The protocol determined that you wait a few minutes before leaving the room and walking across the corridor to the doctor’s room.

Dr Mcloughlin always recognised you and after a few minutes of shuffling through the wooden draws got out your notes in their brown envelope.

Of course it might have been a bit different at 198 Upper Chorlton Road, but I rather think not.

Location Manchester

Picture; 198 Upper Chorlton Road,  198, m40864, Downes, 1960, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass,  

No 200/198 Upper Chorlton Road ...... part 1 looking for stories

Now I don’t suppose I would ever have been drawn into the story of no 200 Upper Chorlton Road if Mr Armistead had not asked me to research the house and its neighbour.*

200 and 198 Upper Chorlton Road, 1960

They are two of the grand villas set back from the road which you just know have histories but are all too easily ignored as you pass them on the bus.

Once and not that long ago there were many more of them along this stretch of Upper Chorlton Road, but the trend to smaller families, higher fuel prices and the demise of the domestic servant pretty much meant that they were no longer attractive places to live.

Some like nu 202 were demolished to make way for a modern block of flats retaining only the old name of the house as a faint reminder of what had once been there.

202 Upper Chorlton Road..... the Allied Library, 1960

The fate of many other big houses was to be converted into bedsits with little regard for the original architecture or lay out.

As someone one who spent his student years in a succession of bed sits the memories are of cold, damp properties.

At best the rooms had been re papered with wood chip and at worst a coat of bright orange or green emulsion had been applied over the original wall paper.

They were dismal dreary places, where you got to know none of your immediate neighbours.

Most were just passing through and the only record that they had stayed were those piles of junk mail and old election addresses which sat for months in a corner of the hall.

Of course once each of these properties had been a real home, and each would have had their share of stories.

So it was with no 202 which for a while had been the Allied Library and from where at its peak in March 1962 hired out 362, 000 books to small private lending libraries.

But cheap paperbacks did for the small commercial libraries and the Allied Library closed sometime in the 1960s.

Our two houses with the Lawn Tennis Ground, 1994

All of which brings me to its neighbours no 200 and 198 Upper Chorlton Road.

They were built sometime after 1871, and appear on the OS map for 1894 set in their own grounds and looked out on to a tennis ground with clear views across open countryside to Hullard Hill Farm.

Just to the north was “Manchester Football Ground.”

That said the urban sprawl down from Hulme as far as Stretford Road and Brooks Bar was in place, and the opposite side of Upper Chorlton Road was full of largish villas.

Our two houses were big.

The 1911 census records that no 200 had fifteen rooms, excluding “scullery landing, lobby, closet, and bathrooms” and no 198 had twelve rooms.

It is more than likely they would have been built with a well and there is documentary evidence that houses in Chorlton built in 1862 had internal wells.

Mains water came into Chorlton in 1864 and it is possible that around this time properties your properties could have been connected by another pipe from wither Manchester or Stretford.

Sadly the 1881 and ’91 census do not allow us to be exactly sure who was occupying the properties but by 1901 a Mrs Emma Hyde was at no 198 and a Mr John Windsor next door.

They were as you would expect comfortably well off.  Mrs Hyde described herself as as “living on own means.”  She shared the house with her four unmarried daughters and Edith Baynes who was the “cook/domestic.”

The Hyde family were still there in 1909, although sometime between 1903 and 1909 Mrs Hyde died and the householder is listed as Miss Annie Hyde who was the eldest daughter and had been born in 1861.

The entrance of 198 Upper Chorlton Road, 1960

In a way more promising might be the Windsor family who moved into no 200 sometime after the April of 1891.

He was a “merchant” and at the turn of the last century owned Windsor’s Bridgewater Union Mills with a factory in Rochdale and an office/ warehouse at 1 Canal Street in Manchester.

Sadly all we have are two photographs of the exterior of the houses taken in 1960.

There will be more and I rather hope that someone will come forward and share their pictures and perhaps even have a few of the inside of each house.

The added bonus would be a few stories of what it was like to live in no 200 and no 198.

As a historian I would be fascinated to see what there is, as would Mr Armistead who is currently developing the two properties.

All of which is a good point to stop.

You can contact me by leaving a comment on the blog.

Location; Manchester

Pictures; Allied Librarie,  202 Upper Chorlton Road, m40870 no 202, m40865 and 198, m40864, Downes A H m40870, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass,  Upper Chorlton Road, 1894, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/


*Armistead Properties, http://www.armisteadproperty.co.uk/