The lost cottages of Hardy ……………. the lonely outposts of Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Now I am returning to the story of the lost cottages of Hardy, which was the furthermost out post of Chorlton, hard up against the River Mersey.

Typical Chorlton cottages

Just how many people lived in the stretch of land roughly from Hardy Farm to the river crossing at Jackson’s Boat is difficult to estimate.

Thomas Elwood, writing in 1885, records that,  “The hamlet of Hardy consisted of groups of cottages between Hardy Farm and Jackson’s Boat, the last of which were taken down shortly after the flood of 1854, when the meadows were flooded to a depth of three feet.  

These ancient cottages were situated on an eminence at the extreme end of Hardy Lane and were occupied by John Marsland and John Burgess”. *

Hardy in 1854, with the cottage east if Hardy Farm

A search of the maps of the mid-19th century show the cottages just east of Hardy Farm and an earlier map dating from 1830 shows three properties, one of which is at the end of the lane running to the river crossing.

But despite knowing the names of two of the occupants, the historic records have yielded few details.  Neither John Marsland or John Burgess, show up in the rate books for the period up to 1854, and there is an ominous silence in the rate records for any properties other than Hardy Farm.

That said both men and their families were living in Chorlton in 1841 and 1851 and are recorded beside each other and close to Hardy Farm.

Hardy in 1830

So that I think places them in the hamlet in the early 1840s.

Leaving just the mystery that only one property is mentioned in the tithe records for 1845, east of Hardy Farm.  It belonged to the Egerton’s and was part of the land and buildings rented from the Egerton’s by Samuel Dean who lived in the much grander Barlow Hall Farm.

All of which does rather seem very pedantic.

But I remain fascinated by those cottages and the people who lived there.

Both Mr. Marsland and Mr. Burgess were agricultural workers and given that their homes were part of Samuel Dean’s portfolio of houses and land, I guess they worked for him, and in 1851, Charles Marsland was listed as a farm servant living at Barlow Hall Farm.

The census returns also give a clue to just how long the Marsland family had lived in the cottage, because none of their children were born in Chorlton-cum-Hardy.  In 1841 Charles who was the youngest, was fifteen years old and had been born in Sale.  Nor were the Burgess family from Chorlton, which suggests they were part of that huge group of agricultural workers who moved around looking for work.

Wattle and daub Cottages

Hardy would have been a pretty remote spot, with the village with its church and two pubs a full fifteen minutes’ walk away, and nothing in either direction save the river, Hardy Farm, and of course the pub over the water at Jackson’s Boat.

Their homes would have been made of wattle and daub, which would have rendered them no match for those floods of 1854, which is where I shall leave the lost cottages.

Location; Hardy

Pictures; Chorlton cottages, drawn by Bari Sparshot from original old photographs, map of Hardy in 1854, from the OS for Lancashire, 1854, and Hennet’s map of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, 1830, courtesy of Digital Archives Association

*Elwood, Thomas, Chapter 1, The Story of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, November 7, 1885

Hardy Farm ..... on the edge of the Township

 This is Hardy Farm at the end of Hardy Lane, and you will have to be of an age to remember it.

Hardy Farm, 1965

It has gone now, but it appears on Yate’s map of Lancashire for 1786 and may date back further into the 18th century.

In 1845 it was home to tenant farmer John Cook who farmed 29 acres of meadow, arable and pasture, included in which there was three quarters of an acre of woodland and an acre of orchard.

Four years earlier the census records that he lived here with his wife, five children and Thomas Hand.

The family were methodists and his standing in the community was such that he was a member of the Rate Payer’s Committee and in 1848 was one of the two elected Overseers for the Committee.

The farm stood on the edge of Chorlton and strictly was in the small hamlet of Hardy out by the River Mersey.

Hardy, Chorlton and bit more, 1830

This was a lonely spot which at one point in 1830 could boast five cottages as well as the farm.

But the cottages appear to have been progressively abandoned with the last residents leaving in the early 1850s.

Location; Hardy

Pictures; Hardy Farm, 1965 from the 1965 Collection, and Hennet’s map of Lancashire 1830

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

Out on the meadows sometime on a wet winter’s day with Chorltonville in the distance

We are out on the meadows sometime on a wet winter’s day with Chorltonville in the distance.  

It is another of those vanished scenes which I guess will be sometime during the second two decades of the last century.  I am fairly certain of that because the estate was completed in 1911, and later the land was being used as a tip.

So it perfectly captures what this part of the flood plain would have looked like and how it was farmed. *

What we now call the meadows was a vast stretch of land from the edge of the village on either side of the brook up to the Mersey, and some was farmed as real meadow land which involved regularly flooding it and managing the water flow to ensure that the grass grew up earlier than the surrounding pasture land.

And this may be the origin of the well known belief that old farmer Higginbotham deliberately flooded one of his field for skating.  Now this is unlikely as the expert advice was that to prevent damage to the grass the water should be drained off before the frost.  Now this warning comes from my old friend Henry Stephens whose book on farming was written in the 1840s and which helped me unlock so much about how we farmed the township in the mid 19th century.  So it is more likely that the ice had got to the field before he could drain the water.

Looking again at our picture most of what you can see was meadowland, in fact back in the 1840s when the township was surveyed two thirds of the land stretching from Hardy Farm down towards the village and south to the river was described as meadows.

*http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Chorlton%20farming

Picture; from the collection of Alan Brown