Hardy, lonely outpost on the edge of the township

Hardy is that bit of Chorlton-cum-Hardy that most people are vague about.  

It stretches east from the village and follows the river up past Hardy Lane and was a lonely outpost on the edge of the township.

Across its land were two farms a small hamlet and a little beyond the grand old house of Barlow Hall and the very large and impressive Barlow Farm.

A large part of Hardy was buried under tons of rubbish and the farm disappeared with the development of UMIST playing fields.

Back in the 1840s Charles Wood farmed 60 acres of meadow and arable land and employed three farm servants.


His home at Hardy Farm was on the edge of the flood plain and while he was safe enough the same was not so of the small collection of cottages which were situated a little further south.

In 1841 there were only two of these cottages left which were owned by Samuel Dean who farmed Barlow Farm and they were occupied by John Marsland John Burgess.

Both men were agricultural labourers and probably worked for Dean on his 300 acres.  John Marsland lived with his wife Mary and three grown up sons, Thomas, James and Charley who were also farm workers and John Burgess lived in the other cottage with his wife and son.

I doubt that they were little more than one up one down properties made of wattle and daub with a thatched roof.  A few of these survived into the late 19th century.  Our two had a garden and either relied on their own well for water or used the one up at Hardy Farm.

Sometime in the early 1850s the cottages were abandoned after the Mersey had flooded, but even before then both families had moved on and out of the township, although Charles Marsland had continued working for the Dean family and now lived at Barlow Farm.

It must have been a pleasant enough spot when the sun shone but remained a lonely remote place much favoured by those indulged in illegal prize fighting, but that as they say is another story.

Pictures; Hardy Farm and the land to the east and south from the 1841 OS map of Lancashire, courtesy of

Digital Archives, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/ and the meadows before the metro link from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Looking out on one of our farms from our house on Beech Road

I have always been fascinated by the Bowling Green Farm which stood on what is now the junction of Beech Road and Beaumont Road.

The Bowling Green Farm, date unknown

Part of the reason is simply that we live opposite in the house Joe Scott built who was also responsible for demolishing the farm house sometime in the 1940s.

There is strong evidence that it was there by the 1750s and had a mixed existence.

In the 1840s it was the home of Samuel and Mary Gratrix, who were in their early 70s.  They employed a farm labourer who lived with them.

Mr Gratrix's home and land on the right of the map, 1844

Now that is a little surprising given that they only farmed an acre of land which was located to the south and east of the farm, and consisted of parts of five fields which were a mix of arable, pasture and part of an orchard.

By 1852 the farm had passed into the tenancy of Peter Langford, who a year before had farmed an acre of land by Oswald Field.  The family appear to prosper because just nine years later they have 16 acres and employed two labourers.

And the family remained on the farm until 1909.

With a bit more digging it should be possible to firm up the final date because just two years later the house was home the Mylett family and the connection with the land seems severed.  He was a coal merchant.

Chorlton Row, 1854

I know that Mr and Mrs Mylett had three young children and that their home had six rooms.

And it is that small detail about the house which as ever draws me into the property.

There will be lots more to finds out, but the romantic in me has wandered back into the 1840s, when the Gratrix family had clear views north across the fields to High Lane, south towards Chorlton Brook, and no doubt passed the time of day with whoever was walking down Chorlton Row from Barlow Moor Lane to the village green.

Plan of the farm house, circa 1930s

And there would have been plenty of them, from the itinerant traders in from Manchester with everything you might want, to those wanting to use the blacksmith down by the Wesleyan chapel and of course those wishing to call in at one of the beer shop and pubs.

Samuel Gratrix might well have supplied some of the food eaten by the Holt family who lived just east of his farm in the impressive Beech House which was set in a walled garden.

And I guess will have sold much of his crops at the Manchester markets.

All of which just leaves me to puzzle over the foot print of the house on the old maps which doesn't quite match the plan in the 1930s.

But that is for another time.

Location; Beech Road

Pictures; the Bowling Green Farm, date unknown from the collection of Tony Walker, the plan of the farm circa 1930 from the collection of Andrew Simpson and Mr Gratrix's fields, 1844, from the OS Lancashire, 1854, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

A history of Chorlton in just 20 objects number 9 ....... a legal agreement 1767

A short series featuring objects which tell a story of Chorlton in just a paragrah and a challenge for people to suggest some that are personal to their stories. 

It is one of the most revealing documents in the Bailey family collection and sets out the tenancy agreement between James Renshaw and Samuel Egerton who owned much of Chorlton.   By the contract James Renshaw was to rent “several fields, Closes or Parcels of land, ..... containing four acres,” as well “All that Messuage or Cottages and tenement.”  It laid out the timetable for paying the rent and the Egerton’s rights to any minerals found under the ground as well as all “Timber Trees Woods and Underwoods.”   It was an agreement which lasted into the 20th century with the family continuing to farm the land and live in the same farm house into the first decade of the 20th century. And at the centre of it all was the home which was only demolished in the 1970s.

Picture; from the Bailey family collection

A history of Chorlton in just 20 objects number 7 ....... a plough 1894

A short series featuring objects which tell a story of Chorlton in just a paragraph and  a challenge for people to suggest some that are personal to their stories.

This was the last time the land opposite our house went under the plough.  The year is probably 1894 and the field was Row Acre.  I can be pretty sure that the chap at the plough was Alfred Higginbotham whose family had farmed here since the 1840s.  Row Acre stretched down from Cross Road to what is now Acres Road and was divided into strips.  Along with the Higginbotham’s parts of Row Acre were farmed by the Bailey family, Thomas White and John Brundrett, and perfectly echoed the medieval idea of a community each working a strip of land.  And of course the plough reminds us that we were a farming community. The image was originally dated 1896 but that was the year the Rec was opened, so I think we can push the date back by two years

Picture; Ploughing Row Acre before it became the Recreation Ground, 1894 from the collection of William Higginbotham

Lydia Brown ……… Chorlton farmer and businesswoman comes out of the shadows ...... after 176 years

I wish there was more to know about Lydia Brown, because back in the middle decades of the 19th century she was a busy woman, here in Chorlton.

Brook Farm, undated

She lived at Brook Farm, and farmed 70 acres of pasture and arable land, stretching along the Brook from the Bowling Green pub almost as far as Barlow Moor Road, and south across the meadows.

She also had portfolio of properties, which included the smithy worked by William Davies on what is now Beech Road, the house and workshop of William Brownhill the wheelwright on Sandy Lane and a number cottages, one of which was occupied by John Axon who had been one of the founder members of our own brass band.

And she was a formidable woman, strong enough in her own knowledge of farming to call down her landlord who was George Lloyd who she spoke of contemptuously as “Squire Lloyd” .

Brook Farm, no. 314 and fields, 1847

This I know because in the summer of 1847 she told the journalist Alexander Somerville that Mr. Lloyd was damaging the land she farmed by his refusal to allow her to cut down a line of ash trees.

These, Alexander Somerville commented were “not only objectionable as all other kinds are in and around cultivated fields but positively poisonous to other vegetation, …… causing much waste of land, waste of fertility, and doing no good whatever.  Squire Lloyd is the landlord.  

Mrs. Brown, a widow, is the tenant.  She keeps the farm in excellent order so far as the landlord’s restrictions will allow.  

But neither herself nor her workmen must 'crop or lop top' a single branch from the deleterious ash trees”.

Now, there is something quite exciting at being able to hear the words of someone who lived in the heart of the township a full 173 years ago,

But there isn’t much else.

Despite trawling the census returns for Chorlton I can not find any reference to her, although tantalizingly there is a Mary Brown, in 1841, who despite the different name fits the profile.
Mary like Lydia was 50 in 1841, both had a son of the same name and both were married to a Johnathan.

Jonathan and Lydia Brown appear in the baptismal records for 1823, 1825, 1828 and ’31.
Jonathan described himself as a publican and according to Ellwood in his History of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, he was the tenant at the Horse & Jockey.  Jonathan is in the electoral register for 1832, 1835 and 1840 with freehold buildings at Lane End and on Chorlton Row, which fits with the properties listed as belonging to Lydia from 1844 onwards.***

The gravestone, 2011

And that is about it.  Brook Farm where she lived was on the site of the old dairy, which in turn was redeveloped into a  collection of des res properties on Brookburn Road opposite the school. I do have one picture of the house and know that it had nine rooms.

But we do have her gravestone which is still in the parish churchyard and is in itself a link to Mrs. Brown.

I just wish there was more.

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Pictures; Brook Farm, undated, from the Lloyd Collection, the tithe map showing Brook Farm and some of the land farmed by Mrs. Brown, 1847, and the gravestone of Mrs. Brown, 2011, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Somerville, Alexander, A Pilgrimage in Search of the Potato Blight, Manchester Examiner, June 19th, 1847

**Ellwood, T, History of Chorlton-cum-Hardy Chapter 23, Inns April 17th 1886, South Manchester Gazette

***Chorlton Row, is now Beech Road

A postcard and a memory of our declining rural past

This remains one of my favourite pictures of the old church.

 It was taken sometime before September 1904 but could have been at any time after 1837 when the two side aisles were added.

 The cottage to the right was there by the beginning of the 19th century if not before while the roof of Higginbotham’s farm house behind it was at least fifty years older.

And it was a view that would soon be lost forever. Within six years the old Bowling Green Hotel just out of sight on the right would be demolished and replaced by a new pub which would obscure our view of the church entirely.

 It is still a rural scene and bits of farm equipment are littered around the picture and reminds me that here we were on the edge of the village which were cultivated as meadowland.

But for me what adds to the picture and makes it unique is the message on the back. In an age when a postcard sent in the morning could arrive in the afternoon postal messages remained the quickest and cheapest easy of communicating with friends and relatives.

In this case the offer by Mrs Wood of Manchester Road to help at the harvest festival decorations at the old Church on Saturday was “gladly” accepted. It had been sent on the Wednesday afternoon of September the 21st and would have fallen through the door of Manchester Road for teatime or certainly by the following morning.

Harvest festivals were still a real part of the life of our community at the beginning of the 20th century and ones which celebrated the end of a successful year on the land.

 There may have been fewer people who relied on farming in the township but there were still enough for a bad harvest to spell hardship and perhaps even ruin.

Mrs Wood’s husband had been born into a farming family and his father had farmed at Red Gates till his early death in 1902 aged just 52. Red Gates did not long survive his death and in the next few decades more of the farms which dated back to before the 19th century closed.
I am indebted to Carolyn Willits who lent me the post card and gave me permission to use it.

Lcation; Chorlton

Picture; the old Church, Chorlton-cum-Hardy, 1904,  from the collection of Carolyn Willits

Ours was a place dominated by working animals

Ours was a place  dominated by working animals.

For centuries the main draught animal had been the oxen and in some parts of the country their use continued well on till the end of the 19th century and the start of the twentieth.

But by the 1840s the horse had taken over in most areas.

The horse was a familiar sight here in the township.  As well as working the fields, they would have pulled the carts and wagons of the farmers and carriers as well as the coaches of the well to do.

Horses provided work for the blacksmith, and the farrier and indirectly for the wheelwright.  Then there were the men who worked with the horses.  Of these the ploughman and the carter earned more than most other farm workers.  The carter after all was assured a regular wage because horses needed to be looked after all the year round, unlike the farm labourer who could expect seasonal periods of unemployment.

But most farm workers came into some contact with horses at some point and on the smaller farms and market gardens, the job of caring and working with horses fell to the farmer or his son.

The Bailey family on the Row who farmed seven acres had just one horse which would have doubled for both ploughing and pulling the spring cart.  

This would have been the pattern here with so many of our market gardens operating with less than 10 acres of land.

On our bigger farms there were men who were employed specifically to deal with the horses.  James Higginbotham, farmer on the green employed a carter and at Dog House Farm just outside the township eight of the men who lived on this 380 acre farm were carters.

Here horses were worked in pairs and there might be two or three teams each with a carter and mate.  The most intensive period for a working horse were sowing wheat, or turnips, carting mangels and harvest time.

Many carters formed close bonds with their horses, a bond which was deepened by the long hours they spent together.  

A carter might start as early as five in the morning as the horses were prepared for work and last after the day had finished in the fields.

The horses had to be cleaned of the thick mud they had picked up and then fed, watered and groomed.

For this a carter might be paid just over £1 a week, although James Higginbotham was less generous.  During the mid 1840s he was paying his carters between 4s 6d [22p] and 6s [30p] a week.  But these wages reflected the fact that the men lived in and so received their food and lodging as part of their wages.

This supplement could make a difference of between 5s [25p] and 7s [35p] a week.   Even given this their wages seem much lower.

From THE STORY OF CHORLTON-CUM-HARDY, Andrew Simpson, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/the-story-of-chorlton-cum-hardy-new.html

Pictures; from the collections of Allan Brown, Carolyn Willitts  and the Lloyd collection

A day out on the meadows ..... circa 1910

The caption reads, “the footbridge over the stream at Brook Road entrance to the meadows. 

 From this bridge there was a diagonal path across Boat Meadow to Jackson’s footbridge which was part of the normal path from the green to the pub by the Mersey.” 

It is dated 1910.

The picture is a perfect reminder that the area was farmed as meadow land which involved regularly flooding the land from a series of irrigation ditches.

Picture; from the Lloyd collection

The secrets of the Old Road and the Isles …….. marl pits and water filled ponds

Now, we have lost most of the features of our rural past, here in Chorlton.

The Old Road, 2016

But just occasionally there are still a few hints of that past.

Of these there is the Old Road which stretches out from Chorlton across Turn Moss and on to Stretford.

I call it the Old Road, but most people will know it as Hawthorn Lane, although on official documents from the mid-19th century it was called Back Lane, while parts of it were also referred to as the Cut hole Lane and Town’s Bank.

It is somewhere I have written about in the past and keep coming back to.*

Once it will have been used by farmers transporting produce to the Duke’s Canal and the raised roadway underneath the canal’s aqueduct, bears witness to the need to protect pedestrians from passing wagons.

Even now, if you walk the route there is a sense that you are walking a country lane, with the overhanding trees, the remnants of hawthorn fences and the twisty nature of the lane.

And it is filled with history, starting with the site of Sally’s Hole, a pond which dates to at least the 18th century was only filled in, sometime in the 1960s.

The Old Road, circa 1900

That said, the scene on either side bears little witness to what it would have one looked like.

The mass of trees, and bushes would have been absent and instead the area was very much open land with the od avenue of trees.

And had you walked the lane two centuries ago you might well have caught sight of the “marl men” engaged in extracting marl from pits which was used to spread on the land.

Marl which contains carbonate of lime was a cheap substitute for lime and spreading it on the land would enhance the land’s fertility for up to twelve years.

Writing in 1899, H T Crofton in his book on Stretford, drew on older authorities who recorded that “most of the old pitsheads yet extant in the fields have been quarries whence marl has been obtained.

In marling, the gaffer of the pit, who controlled the falls and excavations, was called ‘My Lord’.  Passersby were solicited to contribute to the marling or shutting, or feast, at the conclusion of their laborer’s”.

Marl Pits, 1853

These pits could be quite substantial and involved clearing the top soil and then "‘shooting the pace’ which involved “making a broad way of a very easie ascent and descent for the convenience of fetching out the marl”.**

The degree to which this was a lucrative business can be seen in one legal dispute concerning the extraction of marl during the 17th century and the large number of pits in the area around Oswald and Longford roads, which was known as the Isles due to the larger number of pits and lazy watercourses which stretched out across the land.

The 1853 OS map shows plenty of these, and according to H T Crofton the area around what was once Firs Farm was similarly dug.

Most filled with water, and in time must have been a source of concern for parents.

Next; Firs Farm

Pictures; The Old Road, 2014, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, the Old Road, circa 1900, from the Lloyd Collection and detail from the 1841 OS Map of Lancashire courtesy of Digital Archives, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/


*The Old Road, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Old%20Road

**A History of the Ancient Chapel of Stretford H T Crofton, 1899

Chorlton farmers ............. Mr and Mrs Bancroft farming at Park Brow from 1841

Now I don’t have a picture of James Bancroft, but given that he was born in 1802 and spent his life at the plough I doubt he would have had the time or the inclination “to sit and be done in oils.”

The gravestone of James and Betty Bancroft

But I know a bit about him and it is enough to take the story of Park Brow Farm into another chapter.

In 1851 he was farming 60 acres of land and living with his wife Elizabeth and their six children in the eight roomed farmhouse on the corner of what is now Sandy Lane and St Werburgh’s Road.

I can’t be sure but I think the family will have moved into the tenancy sometime between 1838 and 1841.

They were originally from Stretford and their last child was born in Stretford in 1838 but three years later they appear on the census return at Park Brow.

And there the family stayed well into the 1880s, by which time James and Elizabeth were dead and the farm was run by their two unmarried daughters.

As Chorlton farms go Park Brow was at the top end of the middling farms.  The very big ones like Barlow Hall Farm at 300 acres and Hough End Hall and Dog House Farm at 240 were big, but there were plenty more that were much smaller and the majority of land holdings were between just 1 to nine acres.

At which point it is worth saying that Hough End Hal and Dog House were actually in Withington not Chorlton.

60 acres  would have made Mr and Mrs Bancroft respectable farmers whose land was split between arable and meadow land.

In 1851 they employed four agricultural labourers of which three lived with them and like the family had all been born in Stretford.

“Living in” was still a common practice in the middle decades of the 19th century and while the labourers got paid less their board, and lodging came free and usually they could expect their clothes to be washed and mended.

Park Brow Farm in 1845

In most cases the agreement lasted for a full year and it was a system which suited both farmer and worker and tended to apply particularly to young employees.

The farmer got the guarantee of a labourer for the year and the farm worker was assured somewhere to stay which was especially important when as was often the case they were still quite young.

So of our three living in labourers in 1851 one was 20, the second 17, and the third just 15 and a decade later the carter Edward Cook and the cowman Isaac Evans were both 17.

Like most of the farms in the township the land belonging to the farm was spread out and so while the Bancroft’s rented land along the north side of what is now Sandy Lane it was interspersed with fields farmed by Thomas Cookson and George Lunt and the rest of the Park Bow fields were off to the south beyond Chorlton Brook.

In time I will go looking for the rest of the family but for now I shall just leave you with that sombre fact that James and Elizabeth’s gravestone in the old parish churchyard survived the developers and can still be seen today.

Location; Park Brow Farm, Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Picture, gravestone of James and Elizabeth Bancroft, Chorlton parish church Yard, 2009, and Park Brow 1845 from the Tithe Map from the collections of Andrew Simpson and Philip Lloyd

Working the fields of Chorlton

We have very few working pictures of when we were still a rural community.

And so it is always exciting when one turns up and I get permission to write about it.

This one is in the collection of Carolyn Willitts who has kindly allowed me to use it.

There is no date but looking at the clothes of the chap on the left it might date from the early years of the last century. Now I am researching the machinery in the picture and this might fix the date. We shall see.

One of the men is a relative of Carolyn’s and he worked on Red Gate Farm which was close to the site of the library. There had been a farm here from the 1780s* and I guess much earlier.

By the 1840s the tenant farmer was William Whitelegg who farmed 68 acres of land which stretched out on either side of Manchester Road.

 It was mix of meadow, arable and pasture with an orchard.

He grew wheat and oats, along with potatoes, swedes, turnips, and mangle wurzuls, and raspberries and currants.**

But back to the picture. It is almost impossible to locate but it is just possible that it was between Ryebank Road and Longford Brook. Maps from the 1840s show a line of trees stretching out from Edge Lane.

 By the early years of the 20th century some of these beyond Ryebank Road were still standing and even today there are a few left roughly in the same place. So these may be the line which appear the photograph.

For me it is the detail that is fascinating. The man to the left holds one of those ceramic jars which might have been full of anything from water to beer and even cider. 

And there is no reason to suppose it wasn’t cider. Chorlton had plenty of orchards and there is anecdotal evidence of old cider presses turning up in the township. Most of the apples would have destined for the markets of Manchester but some at least would have been retained for home use.

It is one of only five pictures I have come across of men working the fields here in Chorlton and takes us back to a time now almost out of living memory. And it is all the more remarkable because we know one of the people in the picture.

Location; Chorlton

Picture; working the land, date unknown from the collection of Carolyn Willitts


*Yates map of 1786 shows the farm

** From an advert for the sale of the farm contents of Red Gate Farm, Manchester Examiner & Times, November 3rd 1855, Issue 711, British Library of newspapers

Walking the northern boundary of Rent Meadow in the summer of 1848 …………

Now, it is always fascinating to take a spot you know well, and try and think it back to a time before now.

Looking out towards Chorlton Brook, 2020

So here we are on that footpath that stretches from Barlow Moor Road, down to Nell Lane, with the allotments and park on one side and those roads that run off Sandy Lane on the other.

It is an ancient footpath, and is clearly visible on the OS maps of the mid and late 19th century and shows up in the 1847 tithe map.

The western end ran alongside Lime Bank which was a fine looking house and dates from at least the late 18th century.  At this point the path was more a road, but as it made its way east down to Nell Lane it pretty much petered out becoming quite narrow.

Trees, and bushes, 2020

Walk it today heading towards Barlow Moor Lane, and you get glimpses of the bank of Chorlton Brook, with its dense vegetation and it is easy to think it was always such.

But not so, because back in the 1840s, the land from the path, on either side of the brook and stretching across what we now know as Chorlton Park was fields.

Rent Meadow, [1] and Lime Bank, [3], 1847

The biggest of the two was Rent Meadow which covered 4 acres and was farmed as meadow land.

Its neighbour was Lime Bank, consisting of just 1 acre and was given over to arable farming.

Had you stood on the footpath looking south towards the brook, there would have been a clear view, down to what is now Mauldeth Road West.

But bits of that scene would have been obscures by a belt of trees and bushes which followed the line of the water course.

Beech House, 1853

Both fields belonged to James Holt, who lived in Beech House.

His grounds covered all of the land from Beech Road to High Lane, and down from Barlow Moor Road, almost to Cross Road.

Added to this he owned 17 acres of prime agricultural land in the township.

But his money and that of his family had been made in town in a factory at the bottom of Deansgate, where he made the wooden engraving blocks for calico printing.

Such was his wealth that he also owned a considerable portfolio of properties around St John Street, including the only double fronted house on that street.

As befits a man who had “made it”, he retired early, moved to Chorlton-cum-Hardy, and settled in Beech Cottage which he  redeveloped into a grand property which he renamed Beech House.

The Holt's town house, 2010

His son continued to live in the city centre in St Johns Street, managing the business, and in the fullness of time followed his father and moved into Beech House.

Now, none of this is romantic conjecture, but based on maps of the 19th century, the Rate Books, Tithe schedule and a series of legal documents belonging to the Holt’s.

Together they offer up a detailed picture of the Hot’s business along with the lie of the land by our footpath.

I would love to know who worked Rent Meadow and Lime Bank, but alas that is lost to us.

But there are the odd little glimpses of who might have laboured there.

One such clue, comes in the form of of clay pipes found on the allotments.  It is just possible that they were refuse from night soil spread over the fields which had been bought in from Manchester.

A clay pipe, 2020

But I like to think they may have been discarded by an agricultural labourer on the edge of Rent Meadow sometime in the 19th century.

And as unhistorical as it might seem I would think that the resident of the house known as Lime Bank might have taken a stroll along the footpath on a summer’s evening.  He was a Charles Morton, but more of him another day.

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Pictures; Rent Meadow, 2020, the Holt's town house, 2010, and clay pipe, 2016, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and in 1847, from the Tithe map, Beech Cottage in 1841, detail from the OS map of Lancashire, courtesy of Digital Archives, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/

The lost woods of Chorlton …… and a mystery concerning Mrs Lydia Brown and John Holland

We are looking out on John Holland’s Wood which stretched west along Chorlton Brook towards the Bowling Green Inn.

John Holland's Wood, circa 1900, looking towards Brook Farm

Today the footpath to our left is Brookburn Road which once ran east to Barlow Moor Road and west into the village and then out again to eventually cross Turn Moss to Stretford.

John Holland's Wood, formerly the Cliffs, circa 1900

I can’t be sure exactly when it became known as John Holland’s Wood, but John Holland had taken over the family farm in 1865 on the death of his father. 

The Holland family were farming 54 acres around Chorlton from at least 1841 and their holdings were dotted about the township.

These included a strip of land on Row Acre which was the large field running along Beech Road, a stretch on the northern border beyond the Longford Brook and the delightfully named Back of the World which was located where Chorlton Brook joins the Mersey to the south of the stone bridge.

The Cliffs and Brookburn Farm, 1854

Back then, according to the 1854 OS map the stretch we can see in the picture was more heavily wooded, and was known as the Cliffs, which was rented by Lydia Brown who lived at Brook Farm, and farmed across the township, on land which she owned and land she rented from the Lloyd Estate.  

Added to which she owned the smithy on what is now Beech Road, the property used by the wheelwright, Mr. Brownhill on Sandy Lane and a portfolio of cottages.

We even have a snatch of a conversation she had with the journalist Alexander Somerville who came  to Chorlton-cum-Hardy in the summer of 1847 looking for potato blight, the disease which had ravaged Ireland, and was that summer causing concern in Derbyshire.

He stopped at Brook Farm, and reported his conversation with Mrs. Brown who complained about the ash trees which grew around the fields  “which are not only objectionable as all other kinds are in and around cultivated fields but positively poisonous to other vegetation, and ran through the ground causing much waste of land, waste of fertility, and doing no good whatever.  Squire Lloyd is the landlord.  

Brookburn Farm, circa 1900

Mrs. Brown a widow, is the tenant.  She keeps the farm in excellent order so far as the landlord’s restrictions will allow.  But neither herself nor her workmen must ‘crop or lop top’ a single branch from the deleterious ash trees."

And what is exciting is that we know just which fields she was referring to.  These were Rye Field and New Hey which were plots 317 and 318, and ran beside the woods and today form part of Chorltonville.

Despite not yet finding her on the census record I can track her and her husband across the Rate Books from the 1840s through to the mid 1870s.

The woods and Rye Field, 1845

And here is the mystery, because while Lydia Brown lived at Brook Farm which was roughly on the site of Brookburn School, the Holland family are also recorded at a Brook Farm which was according to the tithe record on the bit of Manchester Road which  for a century and a bit was the Conservative Club.

All of which is compounded by the census records which in 1861 place the Holland farm house  on Brookburn Road.

I will leave it to Eric, and who else cares to attempt an explanation, suggesting only that perhaps Lydia had given up farming by 1861, and was happy to live off the rents from her properties, leaving the Holland family to move closer to the woods which took their name.

Sadly, it is no longer possible to recreate the scene and reproduce an image from roughly the same spot.

The trees have vanished under what is part of Chorltonville and a new residential development which was built on the old dairy.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; John Holland’s Wood, and Brook farm from the Lloyd collection and the Cliffs in 1854 from the 1854 OS map of Lancashire showing a section of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/ and theTithe map of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, 1845

Remembering a lost Chorlton farm from over 88 years ago

Now I am looking at two pictures of Park Brow Farm which was doing the business of growing food from before the start of the 19th century.

And what makes the two pictures all the more remarkable is that I know one of the sons of the last farmer.

He is Oliver Bailey and his family ran the farm from sometime after 1911 and before that had been on Chorlton Row from the 1760s.*

Over the years Oliver has made available a whole heap of family documents from the contract his ancestor signed with the Egerton’s back in the middle of the 18th century to receipts for night soil from the 1850s, house and farm inventories and lots more.

Added to which he was able to describe in some detail the inside of Hough End Hall before it was much knocked about by a succession of developers in the late 1960s.

And his memories have also opened up the story of Park Brow Farm before it too was developed with that small group of houses to the west of the farm house and the barn conversion.

So I shall start with the farm yard and this photograph from 1938.

Oliver tells me that one of the young lads is his brother and the building behind them with the tall chimney was “used for boiling up p food bought from the UCP,” while the two elephants Mr Bailey hosted when the travelling circus arrived were watered from the wooden pump directly in front of the building.

And given that this was the farm yard, the two downstairs rooms of the building to our left were the kitchen and office, with the living room and dining room facing south onto the garden which backed on to Sandy Lane.

Now I could go on but think I will save the rest for another day, which will include more pictures of the front of the farm house, something on the certificates the farm won and a piece of garden furniture which links the farm to the old Assize Courts in town.

Those intrigued by the idea of hosting two elephants can read the story on blog which will also offer up some fine pictures of the Bailey bulls on the land where Adastral House now stands and can summon up in their imagination an image of the young Oliver driving live stock through Chorlton back to Park Brow from the railway station.

All of which just leaves me to ponder on how rural is the scene of the farm house when this picture was taken in the summer of 1940.

Location; Park Brow Farm, Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Pictures, the farm yard, 1938, m17381, and the farmhouse looking north, 1940, m17388, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

*Chorlton Row is now Beech Road

Looking for cows, farm buildings and a milkman on Brookburn Road in 1927

Now I am the first to admit that you would be hard put to fit this wooden door into the history of a farm in Chorlton.

Outside the stables circa 1920s

But this is the stables of Brook Farm which dates back to at least the late 18th century and was still a farm of sorts in the 1920s.

The farm stood on Brookburn Road opposite the school, and the stables was sited on what is now the playground beside the new bit of the school.

I can’t be sure exactly when it was demolished but it may have lingered on into the very early 1970s finally being knocked down to make way for the school which of course means there will be people who remember it.

I missed it by just a handful of years but Peter Mcloughlin has vivid memories of the stables and the farm which for a big chunk of the last two centuries was also a dairy.

Peter’s father worked there for twenty or so years from the early 1920s and as you would expect amassed some fascinating pictures of the place.

I had already been interested in the farm and have begun to track the tenants who ran it from Mrs Lydia Brown who was there in the 1840s, through to the Holland family and Mr and Mrs Cookson who were still there in 1911.

After that the chronology gets a bit hazy but by the 1920s the diary belonged to Mr Charles Boden and later became Dobson’s  before becoming Express Dairies.

At which point we have reached that moment in time when my own sons will be able to talk confidently of the milk yard across from their school.

Letterhead from the 1920s

During its time under the Boden’s the business expanded to include branches in Eccles and Stockport and after the last world war Peter’s father became manager at the Daisy Bank Dairy on Brinnington Road successfully expanded the number of rounds.

This is a bit of the history of the farm I knew nothing about which is all the more remarkable given that it is recent history.

Bits of the farm’s story from the 19th century are fairly easily accessible, so I know how much land Mrs Brown was farming in the 1840s, where it was located and its usage.

Added to that I can track the families who ran the farm for the rest of that century using the census records and street directories and it will be possible to crawl over the old rate books and get an idea of the value of the farm.

I even know that in the October of 1865 Mr Holland reported a case of cattle disease on his farm which
turned out to be “the only case in this division of the county.”*

And we do have the odd photograph of the farmhouse which had nine rooms making it a substantial building.

At Brook Farm, 1920s

But the evidence trail for the period after 1911 is more difficult to find and so Peter’s pictures and memories are important.

At which point I could become pompous and slide into a series of observations of how much of our collective past we let slip away.

But I won’t, instead I shall just thank Peter, promise more stories from his collection and just make the appeal for any more photographs or stories of the farm.

Which just leaves me to offer up a hostage to fortune and ponder on the building in the background of this picture of Peter's dad and Mr Boden at the farm.

I think it is the rear of the Bowling Green which when our photograph was taken was still relatively new having replaced the old one which dated back to the 18th century.

So there I have said it and await the comments.

Pictures; from the collection of Peter McLoughlin

*Manchester Times Saturday October 28, 1865

The story of one family in Chorlton ........... part 4 working at Brook Farm in the summer of 1927

It is easy to forget that just two generations ago we still had a number of independent dairies here in Chorlton and stories of being sent for milk at the farmer’s door is only now passing out of living memory.

Mr McLoughlin outside Brook Farm, 1927

The Bailey’s down at Park Brow Farm, Mr and Mrs Riley on Beech Road in the 1960s and Mrs Lomax at Hough End Hall two decades earlier were part of a local industry which stretched back into our rural past.

By the 20th century the dairies had lost most of their land but go back fifty or so years and most of them were part of bigger operations centered on cereals and market gardens.

And that brings me to Brook Farm which in the 1870s had been the home of the Holland family who farmed 54 acres and employed three men.

It stood on the north side of what is now Brookburn Road opposite the school and dates  from at least the late 18th century.

Brook Farm circa 1900

Back in 1847 the radical journalist Alexander Somerville stopped at Brook Farm and reported his conversation with Lydia Brown the tenant farmer who complained about the ash trees which grew around the fields  “which are not only objectionable as all other kinds are in and around cultivated fields but positively poisonous to other vegetation, and ran through the ground causing much waste of land, waste of fertility, and doing no good whatever.  Squire Lloyd is the landlord.  

Mrs Brown a widow, is the tenant.  She keeps the farm in excellent order so far as the landlord’s restrictions will allow.  But neither herself nor her workmen must ‘crop or lop top’ a single branch from the deleterious ash trees."

It was my old friend Lawrence who came across the orginal newspaper story and set me off researching the farm and more recently I have Peter McLoughlin to thank for offering up a wonderful collection of photographs of his father who worked at the dairy during the 1920s.

The Farm and dairy in 1927

Most of the pictures show Mr McLoughlin at work delivering milk and that makes them unique, because so far there are very few pictures of people at work here in the township and those we have tend to be by professional photographers who included workmen more by accident than design.

Now I can say that because they do not tend to be the subject of the photograph, rarely are caught up close and are never referred to.
But Peter’s pictures are different and they also record those working places which were unlikely to sell as postcards.

So I return to this one which includes part of the farm and dairy in 1927 and in the fullness of time will return with another showing the stables opposite the farm which is now part of Brookburn School.

Pictures; Mr Jim McLoughlin outside Brook Dairy in 1927, courtesy of Peter  McLoughlin  and the farm house circa 1900 from the Lloyd Collection

A prize for Park Brow Farm in Chorlton

Here is a little bit of our history which often gets over looked.

In 1916 Park Brow Farm was awarded a certificate of Merit at the Manchester Show “in the Competition for supplying Milk daily from Lancashire and Cheshire to Manchester and Salford or anywhere within a mile radius of Manchester Town Hall.”

In an age when a milk float is a rarity it is easy to forget that until very recently milk on the door step before eight in the morning along with a daily paper just how it was.

Of course on very hot days that milk had to be collected quickly and I do remember on occasion how the seal had been pecked by a bird.

And if like me you were born in the first half of the last century the chances are that your milk will have been delivered by horse and cart.

I know full well Mr Bailey who ran Park Brow delivered his by horse and cart as did Mrs Lomax who lived opposite and ran her milk round from Hough End Hall.

And back then the milk arrived in churns and was decanted into a jug. Sadly the stories of being sent to collect the milk direct from the farm are fading from living memory, but my old friend Marjory was full of the tales of being sent. and there were still plenty to choose from when she was young but given that she lived on Provis Road it was just a short trip across to the frm yard opposite

And that is all I am going to say having already in the past explored the demands for municipal milk and the milk boy of Edge Lane.

Location; Park Brow Farm, Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Pictures, 1916 certificate, from the collection of Oliver Bailey

A history of Chorlton in just 20 objects number 18, a map and what we have lost since 1907

Continuing the story of Chorlton in just a paragraph. They are in no particular order, and have been selected purely at random.

In just 40 short years much of our open land which had once been farmland and market gardens had been built over. Most of this development had happened around what was Martledge in that area stretching from the metro station west to Oswald Road and east along Barlow Moor Road. But to the south beyond Beech Road out past the Brook and onto the Mersey it was still by and large untouched, and the sight of meadowland and cows being brought back to be milked have only just   faded from living memory. Claude and Reynard Roads gave out onto fields and just a little further down Beech Road if I had a mind I could have walked the field boundaries all the way to the river.
Picture; detail from the 1907 OS map from the collection of Andrew Simpson

What we did in October when we were still a farming community

Cows on the meadows, 2003

An occasional series reflecting on what we did in the township when we were still a small rural community.

Now if I had been farming here in the 1850s I might well have turned to The Book of the Farm by Henry Stephens.*

It was written in 1844, and ran to countless editions. It was the manual for anyone wanting to be a farmer.

Everything is here from what crops to plant and when to how to make a well, as well as sound advice on hiring labourers, the construction of a water meadow, and the best location for the milk house and cheese room. I learned which materials were best for building a farm house and how much I could expect to pay for materials, as well as the most up to date scientific information on planting wurzels.

It was a practical book and so “the cost of digging a well in clay, eight feet in diameter and sixteen deep and building a ring three feet in diameter with dry rubble masonry is only L5 [£5] exclusive of carriage and the cost of pumps.”

He calculated that that two brood sows could produce 40 pigs between them and that retaining six for home use the remaining 34 could easily be sold at market.

So many of the smaller farmers and market gardeners in the township might well keep at least one sow and use it to supplement their income.

Nor should we forget that these animals were destined for the table and so the slaughter of pigs was best done around Martinmas in early November because “the flesh in the warm months is not sufficiently firm and is then liable to be fly born before it is cured” and doing so in early November had the added advantage that cured hams would be ready for Christmas.

But today and over the next few weeks I want to drop in to another farming book which is H Rider Haggard’s A Farmer’s Year, written in 1898 and published the following year.

Now he was farming in Norfolk a full half century later than Mr Stephens and of course Norfolk isn’t rural Chorlton or Eltham or anywhere in south east London..

Harrowing in Mustard on stubble

That said this is what he wrote for the beginning of October.

“Since harvest about 250 loads of manure have been carted from the yards direct to the various fields where they are to spread, and sundry dykes on the marshland have been drawn.  

Also a little thrashing has been done and we sold some barley at sixteen shillings and fifteen shillings according to its quality.

Today October 5th we are ploughing on the bean stubble but with the soil in its present condition it is dreadfully hard work for the horses.”


*Stephens Henry, The Book of the Farm, 1844

** Haggard, H Rider, A Farmer’s Year,  1899

Pictures; the Meadows, courtesy of David Bishop 2003, and Harrowing in Mustard on stubble from A Farmer’s Year, 1899

A story behind the picture, ............ ploughing on Beech Road in 1890

Ploughing Row Acre, circa 1894

It’s a familiar enough picture and takes you back to that moment when Chorlton had almost lost its rural character.

It was taken around 1890 on Beech Road and may have been one of the last times the land was ploughed before becoming the Recreation ground.

But like so many photographs there is much more.

The picture belonged to William Higginbotham who may be the man behind the plough. His family had lived on the green since the 1840s and most of the land they farmed was on either side of the Brook stretching up towards the Mersey. But they also worked a small strip of land between the Row* and High Lane.

Chorlton Row and Row Acre 1853

In the 1840s this was almost entirely Egerton land and was rented out in strips to a number of farmers. Along with James Higginbotham, there was William Bailey, George Whitelegg and Thomas White.

This pattern of land tenure was not so different from the old medieval strip farming where each peasant had a share of the land in different places.

This was repeated across the township and so while the bigger farmers had most of their land concentrated near the farmhouse, the land of smaller farmers and market gardeners were distributed across the area.

The Higginbotham’s farmed a mix of meadow and pasture land close to the Mersey and arable along the Row.

This arable farming along the Row continued well into the 19th century so as late as 1893, there was open farm land and orchards running from Cross Road down to what was to become Wilton Road and stretching back to High Lane.

Pictures; ploughing on Beech Road, circa 1890, courtesy of Mr Higginbotham, from the Lloyd collection, and detail from the 1841 OS map for Lancashire by kind permission of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/

*The Row or Chorlton Row is now Beech Road