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

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