Claude Road and a clue to the vanished Beech House

The date on this postcard of Claude Road is 1915 but the scene must be earlier.

On the surface it seems an unremarkable image.

It would look to be a morning perhaps in the holidays and the peace is disturbed only by the children playing close to Beech Road and the appearance of the delivery man who has attracted the woman on the right who I guess has come out of her house to catch him.

It is not unlike the same scene today with of course the absence of parked cars and passing traffic. But what does make it remarkable and dates the photograph to sometime in the first decade of the 20th century is the wall and gateway at the bottom of Claude Road where it joins Beech Road.

They are part of Beech House which had stood in its own extensive grounds since at least the 1830s.

Three generations of the Holt family had lived there but the last had died in 1906, and by 1908 the house was empty and the estate was awaiting sale. By sheer chance a postcard showing the lodge has survived. 

The message records a pleasant afternoon spent in the grounds and the speculation that it was soon to disappear. “Edith and I had tea on the lawn of the big house which you see the lodge in the picture. It will soon be sold and then will probably be divided into small plots.”

By the following year part of the garden which ran the length of Barlow Moor Road as far as High Lane had been bought by Manchester Corporation who felled the trees demolished the wall and built the tram terminus on the land. 

The remaining land was developed with the cinema and a row of shops and the garage of Mr Shaw.

But we can be even more precise about the date of our photograph. Claude Road and its neighbouring Reynard had been built by 1907 and the estate wall demolished in 1909.

So that little detail of wall anchors our photograph and provides a view of Beech Road that has gone forever.

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Manchester

Picture, from the Lloyd collection circa 1907-09

Postcards reveal all

When I was asked recently to suggest one of my favourite ways of finding out about the past I chose a post card. 

True, census information, wills, diaries and old maps are invaluable for tracking down an ancestor, but the postcard offers not only an image but can give context to where a family member lived. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries most cities and towns could boast a series of postcards illustrating places of interest. Along with the town hall a church and an old ruin, there might be popular street scenes and the odd empty field.

Some photographers made the effort to snap all the houses in a particular street with the hope that the inhabitants would buy a picture of where they lived. Now this is not so daft, given that few people owned a camera but might still want to show off their home to distant friends and relatives.

This was also a time of frequent letter collections and deliveries, so it was possible to post a card in the morning to arrange to meet somewhere in the afternoon. In the absence of mobile phones this remained a pretty neat way of keeping in touch.

During this period there might have been a whole series of postcards of a place which were then repeated just a few years later, allowing the modern historian to follow the changes made to buildings and the landscape. And providing the card was posted there will be a date to fix the moment in time.

But above all what I enjoy are the comments on the back. Some are simple and terse while others hint at darker and more interesting lives. Often the author is keen to mark where they live and at other times give out clues to the neighbourhood. One postcard from the late 19th century suggests they meet at Bank Corner in Chorlton, echoing the modern usage of the Four Banks as a name for the junction of Barlow Moor and Wilbraham Roads. Another written in the summer of 1908 records a visit to the gardens of the late John Holt who lived in a fine house and grounds at the top of Beech Road.

“I had afternoon tea on the lawn of the big house of which you can see the lodge in the picture. It will soon be sold and then will be divided into small plots.”

Sadly this was what happened. The Corporation bought some of the land to build the tram terminus and the rest eventually became the houses on Beech Road and Malton Avenue and the parade of shops among Barlow Moor Road to High Lane.

In other pictures the photographer attracted an audience of children who followed him and appear in most of the pictures. My own favourite is of the churchyard where a mixture of young people including some from the Pasley Laundry have gathered in their lunch break to be captured by the image.

Picture from the collection of Philip Lloyd

Chorlton Row

There are some pictures which I return to again and again and never tire of looking at.

This one appeared in a number of editions in the Wrench series including a tinted version brought out for Christmas.

Ignore for a minute the fashions of the people, the gas lamps and the telegraph pole which dates the picture to the late 19th century and concentrate instead on the old road which twists to accommodate the natural feature of the land, the field hedges and the old brick row of cottages and we could be looking at a moment in Chorlton’s history at anytime during the first half of that century.

This road was the main route out of the green to what was then called Barlow Moor Lane. And in the distance can just be made out Lime Bank, a fairly grand house which was the home of Charles Morton.

Now Charles would regularly walk down this road to attend the rate payers meetings held in the old school on the green. In the summer of 1848 with Europe convulsed with revolutions and our own establishment fearful of another Chartist petition calling for the vote, he walked down the Row to chair a meeting demanding the return of lost ratepayer’s money.

The cottages to the left were certainly there by the 1840s and hide views of the majestic home of the Holt family. They had made their money from making engraving blocks for calico printing.

The house and grounds stretched up what is now Beech Road, along Barlow Moor Road to High Lane and back to Beech Road.Looking out from their upstairs windows over our road they would have had fine views across the fields behind these hedges to Chorlton Brook and on to the Mersey.

The land to our right behind the hedge was mainly small market gardens In the 1840s much of it was farmed by the Gratrix family whose farmhouse stood roughly at the junction of Beech Road and Beaumont Road.
It would have been a timeless scene recognised by our farmers, the regular visitors as well as the Holt's and Morton’s.

But the clue to the date is the house on the left. This one and the other three which it stands beside were built in the early 1870s. In the next four decades, the Holt family home would be demolished along with the cottages and bit by bit the land farmed by Samuel Gratrix would succumb to houses. Only Lime Bank has survived, much knocked about and now hidden behind shops and MacDonald’s.

Picture; from the collection of Philip Lloyd

What a difference a street makes ... contrasts in wealth and poverty

Today we are on a journey.  It is a short one in terms of distance just the space between two streets, but in almost every other sense it is a huge one.  

I want to walk from Span Court to St John Street and I have chosen 1851 as our point in time.  Spam Court was a collection of six back to back houses in a partially enclosed court off Artillery Street which runs from Byrom Street to Longworth Street behind Deansgate and I have written about them already.

They were one up one down with a cellar and did not rate an entry in the street directories which is not unsurprising given that those who lived here were on very modest means and some on the very margins of poverty.

In 1851 in those six houses lived a total of thirty-three people who made their living from the bottom end of the economic pile including six power loom weavers, a cooper, dress maker as well as an errand boy, a hawker and a pauper. More over in all but one of the six there were two families, one of which may have lived in the cellar or in one of the two rooms.  These were small houses, and the rooms may have been no more than 3.5 m square.

There would have been little in the way of furniture and the only natural light came from single windows that looked out on the narrow court.  They were not the worst of accommodation that the city had to offer and were perhaps slightly better than what could be found in the countryside but they were pretty basic.  Even in 1965 when the properties had been enlarged by extending back into the houses behind to make four rooms, living here would not have been my choice.

And as if to underline just how basic they were their yard was overlooked by the fine homes of St John’s Street, and it is to that place we shall go next.  Here in very grand houses lived accountants, a silk manufacturer and a retired calico engraver and printer.

The latter was John Holt whose father had made his wealth from making the engraving blocks used for calico printing and had eventually retired to a large estate in Chorlton.   John Holt would follow him sometime soon after 1851 but the family retained their interest in the area.*

Their home was the finest.  It is the only double fronted one on the street and had a huge and impressive bay window at the rear which extended over two floors.  Even today when the property has been turned into consulting rooms something of the style, comfort and good living is apparent. John and Sarah Holt lived here with their four children mother in law and two servants spread out over three floors.

But that fine bay window would have allowed them to gaze out on plenty more mean and basic cottages, for behind them were three small courts all with their own back to back properties which ran out on to Camp Street.

If the Holt’s however found this a little disconcerting they could console themselves with the thought that they owned all 24 of them.

In the midst of wealth there was indeed poverty but it was a profitable poverty for some.

Pictures; Span Court, J. Ryder, 1965 m00211, Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council,  detail from the 1842-44 OS map of Manchester & Salford, Digital Archives, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/ photographs of 11 St John Street from the collection of Andrew Simpson


*Camp Street, Holt Place, James Place, Longworth Street, Severn Street, Byrom Street, Great John Street, Gillow Street, Lower Byrom Street, Charles Street, Peel Street and City Road

In the midst of great wealth ....Span Court and St John's Street

I have been drawn back to Span Court.

It was a collection of six back to back houses in a partially enclosed court off Artillery Street which runs from Byrom Street to Longworth Street behind Deansgate.

They were one up one down with a cellar and did not rate an entry in the street directories which is not unsurprising given that those who lived here were on very modest means and some on the very margins of poverty.

In 1851 in those six houses lived a total of thirty-three people who made their living from the bottom end of the economic pile including six power loom weavers, a cooper, dress maker as well as an errand boy, a hawker and a pauper.

It is very easy to become blasé at the conditions in Span Court, after all historical empathy only goes so far, but this was living at the precarious end.  I rather think that Ann Cass aged 73 who described herself as a pauper had never had an easy life, and now she and her two daughters in their 30s were reliant on their combined wages as power loom weavers and what they got from Annie Harrison, their 38 year old lodger who was a band box maker.



Nor were they alone in taking in lodgers other families in the court were also doing the same and in most cases having to find space in what was at best two rooms and may even have been less, because the majority of  our houses were sublet.  Of the six, five had two families living in them as clearly defined and separate households.  Now these properties did have cellars and there were plenty of people living in the cellars of houses across the city according to the 1851 census.  But usually the enumerator recorded those who lived in the cellars.   But in this case no such records were made, ** which rather suggests that families and their lodgers were living in just one of the two rooms in each of the houses.

And in the case of John and Catherine Pussy it meant finding space for their five children ranging in ages from 20 down to three as well as their 19 year old lodger in what I guess was one room given that the house was shared with another family of four.

Span Court has gone but Artillery Street is still there and you have to walk it to get some idea of how narrow the street was and then try to picture the 83 people who lived mainly in the three courts off it or the 96 who lived on Longworth Street which ran from Artillery Street to St John Street.  The whole census patch amounts to ten streets and their small courts, most not much wider than Artillery Street and bounded by Deansgate and Byrom Street in which crowded a total of 497 people.

But it would be wrong to run away with the idea that this was just a collection of humble streets housing the least well off.  True the majority as the graph below shows  made their living from unskilled or factory work but there were also artisans, shop keepers small businessmen. And almost acting as an island of wealth was St John Street, then as now a place of fine late 18th and early 19th century houses whose residents included accountants, a silk manufacturer and a retired calico engraver and printer.

And it is this last “calico engraver” who I want to finish with as a contrast to Span Court.  James Holt had set up the family business sometime at the beginning of the 19th century had bought and maybe built his double fronted property on St John Street and in the fullness of time retired to Chorlton, leaving his son to run the business and retain in the family home in the heart of Manchester off Deansgate.  This was John Holt who would later in the 1850s move himself to our township.

But the family never gave up their interest in the area surrounding their town home and so by 1912 they owned seven of the fine houses on St John Street as well as shops cottages and a beer shop on the surrounding streets as well as land and the fine estate of Beech House in Chorlton.*

We have rather come to be conditioned by the rich living in gated communities set apart from the less well off and our wealthy families were no different.  Samuel Brooks had established his own estate which would be developed for the well off on the edge of Chorlton, and in the late 1830s Victoria Park Company was set up to “erect a number of dwelling houses of respectable appearance and condition, with gardens and pleasure grounds attached, with proper rules and regulations against damage an nuisances.”**

But the residents of the houses on the north side of St John’s Street backed on to Span Court while the Holt’s own fine house was not only beside a timber yard but its rear windows overlooked a coal yard and the densely packed court of Holt’s Place which consisted of ten small back to back properties.

So Span Court and the poor were never that far from the rich of St John’s Street which I suppose is an interesting take on that much quoted phrase, “the poor are always with us.”

Pictures;Span Court, J.Ryder, 1965, m00212, Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, detail from 1842-44 OS map of Manchester & Salford, Digital Archives, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/, other pictures from the collection of Andrew Simpson


*Camp Street, Holt Place, James Place, Longworth Street, Severn Street, Byrom Street, Great John Street, Gillow Street, Lower Byrom Street, Charles Street, Peel Street and City Road

** A Short Account of the Victoria Park Manchester, Manchester Corporation, 1937

At the bus stop thinking of Beech Cottage in 1847

It was one of those warm sunny October days and I was by the bus station on Barlow Moor Road and not for the first time I began thinking of the Holt family and in particular James Holt and his grand house which stood a little to the west of the bus stand.

In its time Beech Cottage was one of the grandest houses in the township.  Not that the term cottage does justice to the Holt’s home which was a huge building with an impressive frontage of tall windows and high chimneys.  It was set in its own grounds amounting to an acre and was surrounded by high walls.

The estate stretched from the corner of the Beech Road along Barlow Moor Lane to Lane End and then down High Lane, before cutting across the fields to the Beech Road.  Tall lines of trees skirted the gardens and hid the family from gaze of the uninvited.

And where I was standing by the bus stop terminus would have been just inside their walled garden which included a fair number of trees flower beds and well laid out paths along with greenhouses and a lodge house at the entrance, roughly where the police station stands.

James Holt had made his money from calico printing and the family continued in business well into the century.  They had an extensive property portfolio in the city which at one point included most of the houses on the southern side of St John’s Street along with more humble dwellings in the neighbouring streets and two public houses.

Here in Chorlton, James Holt owned 17 of acres making him one of the largest landowners after the Egerton’s and the Lloyd's.  Some of this land which was rented out to tenant farmers mostly stretched out from Barlow Moor Lane along the Brook towards Hough End.  Closer to home was land with rented cottages.

He had moved to Chorlton sometime in the early 1830s and the family continued to occupy the place until 1908 when the property was demolished and the land sold off.

Now I have written about the Holt's and the house before on the blog* and in another of the outrageous pieces of self publicity there is a lot more about both in the book.











Pictures; Beech House once called Beech Cottage, 1907, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council m17645, 11 John Street, home of the Holt family from the late 18th century, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, Beech Cottage in 1841, detail from the OS map of Lancashire, courtesy of Digital Archives, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/

* http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20Holt%20family