Travels on a tram ....... the much neglected Firswood

Now, never let it be said that Andy Roberston doesn’t roam wide.

In the space of two days he took off from Chorlton to Pomona and on in search of the new Trafford spur, and had time to explore Firs Wood, once a place of open fields and a farm.

Location, Firswood



Picture; on the tram 2018, from the collection of Andy Robertson

In Firswood with the Cookson family at Firs Farm in the June of 1841

Firswood Metro stop, July 2013

Firswood metro stop is one of the new ones on the old railway line that ran out from Central Station south through Chorlton, Didsbury and on into Derbyshire.

And a little to the west of the stop was Firs Farm.

Now I can’t be exactly sure when the farm house was built but it was there by 1830 and four decades later John Cookson was farming 225 acres and employing 12 labourers.

This was something of a success story because ten years earlier his father had farmed just 137 acres earlier still had described himself as a potato dealer rather than a farmer, and from 1830-36  as a labourer*

By 1841 he was at Firs Farm so the transition from labourer to tenant farmer will have occurred sometime during the previous five years.

And pretty much straight away the family begin to grow the farm, so that during that June of 1841 they already had eight farm servants living with them ranging from the eldest at 20 down to George Baker aged just ten.

The practice of employing farm servants is an interesting one, and had benefits for both farmer and employee.  The contract was for a year, often made at a hiring fair and in return for a slightly reduced wage the farm servant lived in with the family or in accommodation nearby.

Firs Farm and east to West Point, 1893

This suited younger farm workers who had left home and offered a degree of job security.  In some cases the contract was struck between the farmer and the parents of the labourer.

Like so much of the area Firswood remained farm land until quite recently, so while to the east at West Point the first fine houses were being built in the 1860s the area around the Quadrant came much later with the social housing arriving only with the end of the farm in 1930.

Pictures; the Metro stop at Firswood from the collection of Andrew Simpson and detail of the area surrounding the farm east to West Point from the OS map of South Lancashire, 1888-93, courtesy of Digital Archives, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/

*1841-71 census for Stretford and parish records of St Mathews Stretford 1834

West Point on the Chorlton, Trafford border and that marker sign

It’s less a new story and more an update on an old one.

West Point is the area around the junction of Upper Chorlton Road, Manchester Road and Seymour Grove.

Before its development as an area of fine houses for wealthy families it was known simply as the Flash.

But West Point was its name for most of the last decades of the 19th century and well into the following.

Since then the name has rather faded from living memory.

Recently there was a move to reinstate both the name and erect a sign post.

So David who lives in Firswood set the ball rolling by approaching a councillor in the Longford ward of Trafford who was sympathetic and collecting signatures on a petition.

The hope was that Trafford Council would fund the cost, but sadly it felt the area was too small to warrant a sign and would also “create confusion for people trying to find the building West Point at the junction of Chester Road and Stretford Road.”*

And while it had no objection to the erection of a marker pillar it “currently has no funding to pay for such a feature.”

This does not rule out a marker pillar but this would have to be paid for by voluntary contributions, which given the present economic climate is understandable.

So we shall see.

Pictures; of West Point from the Lloyd collection

*RE: PETITION Requesting ‘West Point’ Marker or Sign, August 21 2013