That house in Whalley Range and the grander one in Chorlton, which was Oak Bank and became Oakley

Doenberg today

Doenberg is that fine old house on Wood Road just where it joins College Road.

It was built in 1896 by Robert Rohleder and remained the family home until it was bought as the new residence for the Dean of Manchester in 1934.

And given that many of these houses were later torn down and replaced with more functional properties during the last decades of the twentieth century it is something that this one survived.

Today it has been converted into flats but was for a while left empty and forlorn which is where I left the story yesterday.

Sylvia who first asked me if I knew anything of its history thought that it might have once been a children’s home.  She had encountered a woman in the grounds searching for the site of a children’s home and thought Doenberg might have been the place.

Here then is the stuff of mystery and I wonder if the woman had herself been a resident of the home or had been drawn to Wood Road through a search for a relative.

Now a few people have confirmed that here was Cambrian House but so far that is where the trail ends.

Instead I shall return to an even bigger house which stood in the heart of had been Martledge and became New Chorlton.

The Oakley gate post

This was Oak Bank and was home in its time to the wealthy Morton family and later still the Cope’s who ran a chain of wine shops and drinking establishments in Manchester.

It stood in its own grounds which ran along Barlow Moor Road as far as Sandy Lane, and was bounded by what are now Zetland, Corkland and Wilbraham Roads.

By 1894 the estate had shrunk too little more than a pocket hemmed in by the houses on Corkland Road, Wilbraham Road and Maple Avenue and while its garden still extended west to Barlow Moor Road this too would be surrendered to housing by the beginning of the 20th century.

Today all that is left is a stone gate post with the name of the house and a bit of the old  wall.

The post gives the name of the house as Oakley and it was the Needham family who changed the name from Oak Bank.

They had moved in 1869 and stayed till the September of 1889 having changed the name to Oakley in 1883.

Oakley in 1894

To be fair the family did also leave their name which with that wonderful flair of civic imagination has become Needham Avenue although briefly in 1883 Oakley Moor Road appears in the rate books.

This seems to have referred to that stretch of Barlow Moor Road that ran alongside the estate.

A few years later and the old name of Barlow Moor had reasserted itself although there was a brief flirtation with Oakley Barlow Moor Road.

All of which seems rather nerdy but I am on a roll and will finish with Wallworth Road which again existed briefly from sometime around 1901 and was still in use in 1911.

It was that that short stretch of what is now Needham Avenue running off from Barlow Moor Road to the junction of Priory avenue where it continued as Needham.

Wallworth, Priory and Needham Avenues, 1907

Now this I tell you only because William H Wallworth had lived along here from 1901 and had owned the bakery on the north side of the avenue which is still there but has long since become home to a small set of industrial units.

This building has intrigued countless numbers of people passing along Neeedham on their way to the parcel depot.

And if you look closely there at the side of the building is our Oakley gate post, not I suspect in its original position which rather begs the question of why that wall is there.

But that is for another time.

In the meantime it is all that is left of Oak Bank/Oakley which has fared less well than Doenberg which can be still be seen and which has returned to its residential character.

Pictures; of Doenberg, courtesy of Sylvia Waltering, the gate post of Oakley from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and the Oakley from the OS map of South Lancashire 1893, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/ and the OS for Manchester & Salford, 1907

Down on College Road looking for Beech Hurst and Doenberg

Now I am back with gateposts and the stories they have to reveal.

Beech Hurst Close, September 2014

Andy Roberston recorded this one on College Road earlier this month.

Today it leads to Beech Hurst Close which is a small bit of development but was once the entrance to Beech Hurst, a grand looking property set in a tree lined garden with substantial outhouses.

It is a building I knew nothing about but I suspect I must have passed it countless times as I walked along College Road.

I don’t know when it was demolished or for that matter when it was built.

The gate post

It was there by 1894 bounded by the Independent College to one side and surrounded by cricket grounds that ran down to Burford Road and up Withington Road.

And in 1911 it was the home of the Beaty family.

Mr David Beaty described himself as a “Clothier and Merchant.”  He was married to Kate who had been born in Yorkshire in 1860 and they had four children of whom three were still living with them in 1911.

The family employed four servants one of whom Annie Birch was a “sick nurse” which invites all sort of speculation on who she was looking after.

Beech Hurst in 1894

If I have got this right they had moved into  Beech Hurst sometime between the January and the April of 1911.

Two decades earlier their home had been set in a secluded and pleasant spot for not only had they  been able to look out on the College and those cricket grounds but directly opposite were another collection of fine mansions set back in their own tree lined gardens with names like Whalley Villa, Hazel Green, Sunnyside, Liguria House and the Cedars.

But by the time the Beaty’s had taken up residence some of those fine properties were either vacant or demolished and by 1933 all had gone replaced by small semi detached properties.

Added to this development were now similar houses on the east side of Beech Hurst and almost directly opposite there was the “Sunnyside clothing works.”

Perhaps by then the Beatty’s had left their 13 roomed home.  There is a record of a David Beaty dying in 1925 in Bucklow, Cheshire and a Kate Beaty who died Bucklow, thirteen years later.

Doenberg today

That said they would have been familiar with Doenberg just a little further along College Road.*

It is a place I have written about already on a number of occasions, and Andy included it in his collection of photographs.

It too has a fascinating past made more so because since the stories were posted a number of people have come forward with bits to add to its history, including Jim Warner, who wrote that

“this was my great grandparents home, my grandparents being Wilhelmina Doris Rohleder and Dr. James Leather of Bolton.”

So there you have it, never pass an old gate posts without clocking its history.

Pictures; of Beech Hurst Close, and Doenberg, September 2014, from the collection of Andy Robertson, and Beech Hurst in 1894 from the OS for South Lancashire, 1894, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/

*Doenberg, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Doenberg

Doenberg that house in Whalley Ranges gives up more of its secrets

Now just when I had almost given up on Doenberg, that house on the corner of Wood Road and College Road, a little bit more of its history surfaces, courtesy of the one of the archivists at Manchester Cathedral.*

Now we had left the story just as the house was to be bought for the Dean of Manchester in 1934.

It was built in 1898 by Robert Rohleder and “was the first house in the district to be equipped with electric light, and the first to be connected with the Chorlton telephone exchange  [and] had been built largely according to his own design.”*

It contained “some notable stained glass windows” and a garden which Mr Rohleder had "spent thousands of pounds upon”** converting  from an empty field into something quite impressive.

Tracking its history after 1934 proved a bit illusive.  It became a children’s home sometime around 1960 but the missing years from 1934 intrigued me not least because by 1946 the Dean was living elsewhere.

And part of the answer came from the Cathedrals’ records.

“1934 – The Ecclesiastical Commissioners disapproved the purchase of a property ‘West View’ because of leasehold tenure. They therefore approved the purchase of ‘Doenburg ‘ at the reduced price of £3,400.

1942 – The Corporation has agreed to a rent of £115 a year for the Deanery and will accept responsibility for its maintenance. 

There is no indication at this stage as to who will occupy the building, presumably because of the withholding of information during the war.

1946 – An offer of £3,500 from Mr Howley for the Deanery to be paid by the Corporation, the sum to be retained as compensation for damage sustained during the occupation of the house by its Fire Service.”***

So during some at least of the missing years the house was given over to the Fire Service.

And a bit more of the jig saw falls into place.

Pictures; courtesy of Sylvia Waltering,

*Doenberg, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Doenberg

**New Home for Dean of Manchester, Manchester Guardian, December 14, 1934

***Mr Breaks, Volunteer Archivist, archives@manchestercathedral.org 

A house in Whalley Range ....... the start of a search for its history

Doenberg today

This is Doenberg on the corner of Wood Road and College Road and as you would expect there is a story.

It was built in 1898 by Robert Rohleder and “was the first house in the district to be equipped with electric light, and the first to be connected with the Chorlton telephone exchange  [and] had been built largely according to his own design.”*

It contained “some notable stained glass windows” and a garden which Mr Rohleder had "spent thousands of pounds upon”* converting  from an empty field into something quite impressive.

Sadly the stained glass is no more and the property has been converted into flats.  I would like to have seen the glass but am pleased that the house has been saved.

built according to Mr Rohleder's own design

All too often in the last forty years a developer would just have pulled it down or gone for the bed sit option.

Now I have nothing against bed sits I spent my fair share of time in them during the early 1970s as a student.

The best were cheap and cheerful but many suffered from negligent landlords who only appeared once a week to collect the rent, might employ a cleaner and whose concept of decoration involved once painting over the floral wall paper with watered down emulsion paint.

I know, I did enough of these over the years.  The only heating was what you provided, the rooms were often musty if not damp and the cold forlorn hall was a dumping ground for letters from tenants who were long gone.

Doenberg in 1934

This I suspect could have been the fate of Doenberg which may have lain empty for a while and may also have been a children’s home.

This I have yet to find out about.

What I do know is that in 1934 it was purchased by Church to become the new home of the Dean of Manchester who had decided to leave the deanery in Bury New Road which was too expensive to run.

Mr Rohleder moved to 1 Rowsley Avenue in West Didsbury where he stayed till his death in 1945.

I suspect that Doenberg was just too big.

His son by then was in Sale and the slightly smaller Didsbury house made sense.

I think I would like to have known Robert Rohleder.  He had been born in Germany in 1871, became a British subject in 1896 having married his wife three years earlier.

Now I can’t be sure when he came to this country but he was here by 1891, living in Salford and described himself as a clerk in a cotton goods.

A decade later he was running a business making umbrellas and was living in Wood Road.

The entrance hall

In 1924 he was unsuccessful in bringing a claim against J.Kendall and Co Ltd London forwarding agents,  for the loss by fire of 82 cases of umbrella frames  for £1,804, and in the July of 1929 travelled to South America returning a month later.

There will be more which in time will throw light on what happened to the property from 1934 till its conversion into flats and perhaps something more about his family.

His son had joined the army in December 1915 went south to Woolwich and was assigned to the Royal Horse Artillery but was discharged in April of the following year.

There are references to his family in the late 1950s and early 60s but they are not linked to our house and so will sit in the shadows.

In the meantime there are a few avenues still to go down and as they say I shall be back.

All of which leaves me reflecting that the search started yesterday when Sylvia asked me if I knew anything about the house, supplied with some pictures and the rest just happened from there.

And just after this was posted, Wayne Cleworth dug up a link to a whole set of images relating to Dohenberg and Mr Rohleder’s family.

The collection of 71 photographs includes pictures, “ommissioned by Robert Rohleder from the photographer Percy Guttenberg, 10 St. Ann's Square, Manchester in 1899 when ‘Doenberg’ was completed. 

At some stage the prints were bound into a red leather album with the words ‘Doenberg, Whalley Range, Manchester’ tooled in gold lettering on the front. Inside front cover along spine: A Megson & Son, Manchester."

They are in the collection of the Greater Manchester County Records Office, Dohenburg, reference 2495, cover the period 1893-1899 and were donated in 1988
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/A2A/records.aspx?cat=124-2495&cid=-1#-1

Nor is that all because Gordon Howe has responded "I can confirm that the house was indeed a children's home called Cambrian House when I lived next door from 1978-82."

And the rest of that story will follow tomorrow.  You just can't stop history

Picture’s; courtesy of Sylvia Waltering, and OS from 1934

*New Home for Dean of Manchester, Manchester Guardian, December 14, 1934