"See better days and do better things," the sad end of the Chorlton Liberal Club.

The Chorlton Liberal Club had opened in the October of 1897.

It wasn’t the first club the Liberals had had here, that was on Wilbraham Road but the new one on Manchester Road was more “commodious and suitable for the purpose.”*

Its opening was greeted “with the hope that the club would strengthen Liberalism in Chorlton-cum-Hardy” and membership figures seemed to bear this out. 

In the space of the year they had recruited another 50 members and were confident of more.  I suspect the club was only part of that success, with something also down to the influx of new people into the township.

Not that they saw it that way.  The official opening was done with a gold key and the job fell to Reuben Spencer “an old Liberal” who “hoped it would be a centre of light and leading, round which young men would be prepared to take a part in social, municipal and public life generally.”

We might jib at the emphasis on men especially as women were active in local politics and within two decades Sheena Simon was elected with a majority of over 1400 votes and 58% of the vote as the first woman Liberal councillor for Chorlton.**

Nationally the years around the opening of the club were not good for the Liberals.  They lost both the 1895 and 1900 general elections and would not be returned to office till 1906.

Locally they fared better both on the old Withington District Council and after our incorporation into the city on the Manchester City Council and by the 1920s were so evenly balanced with the Conservatives that the Manchester Guardian reported in 1928 that

“there are few wards in which Conservative and Liberal opinion is so nicely balanced.  Of the eight elections that have been fought in Chorlton since 1920 four have been won by the Conservatives and four by the Liberals.”**

But by the early 1930s the Liberals were on the defensive increasingly being squeezed by the Labour Party.

They won their last seat in 1932, saw their sitting councillor Lady Sheena Simon loose to the Conservatives the following year and after 1935 did not  contest another election  till 1946 by which time they had slipped to third place.***

I suspect this might have also been reflected in the state of the club which I remember as a slightly dowdy place by the 1970s.

All of which was a great shame.  It had been a private residence before becoming a club and I rather think might have been built sometime in the 1880s.  It last occupants had been the Lloyd family who where there in 1891.

It remained an impressive building and gained a new lease of life after the fire in the 1980s when it became the Lauriston Club.

And now with the close of the club it is again a residential property.

Pictures; the Liberal Club after the fire from the Lloyd collection, undated

*Liberalism at Chorlton-Cum-Hardy, Manchester Guardian, October 11, 1897
**Not that she was the first woman councillor here in Chorlton, that was Jane Redford elected in 1910.  She was not a Liberal but styled herself a Progressive Candidate and must have been close enough to the Liberal outlook to ensure they never put up a candidate against her or other Progressives.
**The Chorlton By-Election, Manchester Guardian December 18, 1928
*** Local election results 1904-1949, compiled by Lawrence Beedle

From Lauriston House to the home of Chorlton Liberals and now the Lauriston Club

I am looking at Peter’s painting of the Lauriston Club*  and I rather think it is as close as we will get to what it originally looked liked when it was built in 1885.  

Of course back then it had chimneys and the front of the house was full of well grown shrubs but essentially what you see is what you would have got back then.

It was a good example of the sort of place being built for the well off.  You entered through that “massive stone Portico and Vestibule with outer solid doors, tiled floor and inner stained glass doors.  The walls of the Hall have a diado of Lincrusta and the floor is entirely laid with Linoleum, with brass cap to step.  There is also a pendant coloured glass Hall Lamp.  The Hall is 25 feet 3 inches long, exclusive of the vestibule and is 9 feet wide.”**

On the ground floor were three largish rooms each with a marble mantelpiece, gas lighting and Venetian blinds at the windows.  The kitchen was deemed to be “capital” and the house was “cellared throughout with cemented floors and was well lit.”

Upstairs there were four more rooms as well as a bathroom which all led off from landing.  At the end of which was a “small compartment with coloured glazed door opening out on to the top of the stone portico.”

Now there is some more research to do on the early years of the house, but by 1891 it was occupied by Henry C Lloyd who described himself as a merchant, was a widower and lived with his daughter, a housekeeper and domestic servant.  I am not sure if he owned the place and will only find that out after digging around in the rate books but ten years later he was living at The Hall, Somerford Booths.

He his daughter and son were cared for by an army of seven servants, including a house keeper, footman, cook, butler, two housemaids and a kitchen maid.  The house was surrounded by farms and the area then and now was open countryside.

Back in Chorlton Lauriston House had been sold to the Liberals as their new club.  It is a story I have already told and suffice to say that despite grand hopes on behalf of its owners it slowly declined as did the fortunes of the Liberals and by the 1980s was in a sorry state which was made worse by a fire which partially destroyed the roof and gutted the inside.

It is an all too familiar story and one that might have ended with its demolition but it was saved, became the Lauriston Club and from the outside looks a little like its former self.

So we are almost full circle, looking again at the old house.  Little of the interior remains, although the name is still there on the stone pillar at the entrance to the front garden.   But back in 1897 the road was still unpaved and the place was still lit by gas.

*Lauriston Club, Manchester Road
**from the report of Mr Arthur E. Piggott on the house known as Lauriston, May 13th 1897.

Pictures; painting © Peter Topping 2012,  web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk
facebook: www.facebook.com/paintingsfrompictures and photographs from the Lloyd collection