The lost Chorlton Bowling Green ..... Joseph Miller and the Lloyd Terrace ........Whitelow Road gives up its secrets ……….

It was a chance conversation outside the Horse Jockey.

Lloyd Street, 1854 marked in red

I was talking about the history of the pub when l was drawn into a conversation about Whitelow Road.

To be exact the question ran What do l know about Whitelow Road?

The short answer was not a lot other than part of it was once called Lloyd Street.*

This was in 1854 and instantly challenges that tired and well rehersed observation that "there are no streets in Chorlton".

Now, Lloyd owned a big chunk of Chorlton cum Hardy having bought into the township in the 18th century.

Back then Lloyd Street was a far more modest stretch terminating just beyond the Beech Inn where it ran into the 2 acre field called Row Acre which was owned by the Lloyd estate and farmed by Mary White.  In total she rented 77 acres stretched out across Chorlton and she lived at the southern end of Chorlton Green.

Whitelow Road, 2022

So back to the question because my new friend lives in one of the houses directly opposite the Beech and to stamp a bit more authenticity into the story high up in the wall is one of those stone inscription which usually offers up the name of the terrace and sometimes even a date.

Alas there is no date but the name Lloyd Terrace which is a nice connection to Mr. Lloyd.

In1891 my friend's house was occupied by a Joseph Miller who was 23 married to Emma and shared the house with three children, two brothers and a lodger.  

He was from Didsbury, she was from West Gorton and their eldest son, aged 5 had been born in Cheadle.  Within the year after he was born they moved to Chorlton and took up residence in the property by 1889.

Lloyd Terrace, 2022

Mr. Miller gave his as “coach man and domestic groom”  as were his brothers and the lodger.  At which point it is easy to speculate on who they worked for and whether all were employed by the same family. 

What is striking is the variety of birth places.  Along with Didsbury, West Gorton, and Cheadle, we can add three different parts of Shropshire as well as Chorlton.

I haven’t as yet got a date for when the terrace was built but a Frederick Fuller occupied another one of the houses in 1886 and by 1893 Whitelow Road extended all the  way to Wilbraham Road and all the buildings we now know and a few more had all been constructed.

So that just leaves a search of the rate books to push back to the moment when our terrace was built.  

All the evidence would suggest a date after 1881, when the land upon which the terraced is situated is shown up as Bowling Green.  

This must be the lost Bowling Green which had been connected to the Horse and Jockey where according to the historian Thomas Ellwood was “a number of gentlemen used to play bowls on the green then adjoining the Horse and Jockey.  For exclusive use of the green was reserved one afternoon in each week, in return for a small annual subscription, and the players generally partook of tea afterwards, and spent the evening together over a friendly game of cards."***

The lost bowling green 1881

In the 1840s the plot was owned by John Brundrett who rented it out to Thomas Cookson.

It was two acres in size which is roughly the same as the Rec on Beech Road. to and listed as "Garden"

The gentleman later decamped to Edge Lane where they formed a much grander club which limped on till 1950.

This may have precipitated the bowling green's change of use into residential because by 1885  Frederick Fuller was renting from the Brundrett estate in Lloyd Terrace.

As for those with a wider interest in Whitelow Road, it would appear that the stretch from High Lane had also not been cut by 1881, instead much of it is marked as a wooded area held by the Methodists.

So, from being a mystery road, Whitelow has started to give up its secrets.

Picture; map showing Lloyd Street from the OS map of Lancashire 1841-53, courtesy of Digital Archives,  http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/ Whitelow Road, 2022, courtesy of Google Mapsthe  map of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Withington Health Board, 1881, courtesy of Trafford Local Studies

* It was still Lloyd Street in 1871

**Ellwood, Thomas Bowling Greens, History of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, number 26, South Manchester Gazette, May 15, 1886

When did they steal our bowling green? ………..

Chorlton once had a lot of bowling greens.

Ken playing bowls, 1979

There was one beside the Horse and Jockey, another off Edge Lane, and the one that was destroyed to make a car park when the Irish Club opened.

And there was also one on the Rec in the northwest corner on the Wilton Road site.

It was certainly there by 1933, appears on the 1956 map but had gone by 1976.

I have written about it already, but have decided to make an appeal for anyone who can remember it.

And that is about it, other than to say it doesn’t show up on either photographs from the early 20th century or maps from the same period.

Leaving me to wonder if there is any reference to it in the newspapers or images held by people of long ago summer days in the Rec.

I hope so.

The former bowling green in the distance, 2020

And just to confuse things, Ken in the picture who was a keen bowler, was playing on the green at the Bowling Green pub when I took the picture.  

So not the Rec, but I like the photograph.

Two bowling greens for 1, 1934

And for the first memory comes from Steve Murphy, who tells me that, "In my very earliest memories of the Rec (we arrived in 1964), the NW corner was a bowling green, with a high hedge on the eastern edge separating it from the rest of the rec and the shelter, and a lower hedge on the south side with, if my memory is not playing tricks, a rose bed. 

At some point it was converted into a putting green. 

There was a small park keepers hut, where you could get a club and ball. I remember playing on there, but that lasted only a couple of years and was gone in the early 70’s".

To which Declan has added "it had gone before Colette moved in in 1986. 

The Park Keeper’s shed was still there when I joined her in 1991.  

It was demolished perhaps a year or three later due to vandalism". 

Before the bowling green, circa 1900

All of which seems a jumbled account but owes much to the inclusion of memories, and pit itches the bowing green to sometime in the early 20th century which had gone by the early 70s.

For those mystified by the red circle, this was an incendiary bomb dropped by a German aircraft in 1940-41

Location; the Rec, Beech Road, close to the barrage balloon.

Pictures; Ken playing at the “Bowler”, 1976, and the Rec, 2020, with the former bowling green in the distance, and the park keeper's hut, 1979, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, the bowling green in the Rec, with an added one, 1934, from the OS map of  Manchester & Salford, 1934, and the Rec before the bowling green, circa 1900, from the Lloyd Collection.

*When the Rec had a bowling green ………..https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2020/01/when-rec-had-bowling-green.html