Back at that shop on Manchester Road

I wonder how many people remember visiting Whitegg’s the grocer’s shop after its makeover in 1961.

Now I am fairly confident that there will be quite a few people given that yesterday’s story about the shop brought forth a shed full of memories.*

I have long wondered if there was a connection between the Whitelegg family that ran the Bowling Green and another Whitelegg who was the tenant farmer at Red Gates Farm further down Manchester Road.

It was a bit of research I never took further.

But then Andy Robertson sent me two pictures of the building as it looks today and pointed me towards a photograph taken in 1958.

And that was enough to set a story going and as they it is a tale which will run and run because Andy is back with another old picture and a bit of research.

It seems that this picture dating from 1961 was taken during the alterations to the shop and led Andy to ponder on the chap in white.

He suggested I "check out  the man in white coat who looks very grocer-like, could well be Thomas Whitelegg who was born in 1916 and looks just the right in 19161.

His parents were Thomas Whitelegg, Maggie Robertson who were married in 1910 and also ran a grocery and confectionary shop at 17 Hope Road Sale.

Thomas Whitelegg senior was the son of Joseph (1860-1944), a grocer and milk dealer, born Manchester.

And there the continuity breaks down because Joseph’s father and grandfather were cabinet makers from Manchester.”

Of course like all good researchers Andy is careful to point out that he could be wrong but concludes that “it all looks promising.”

Which indeed it does and along the way rules out my theories but offers up some fascinating new lines of inquiry, leaving me only  to quote from my favourite Fu Man Chu film “the world has not heard the last of this.”

Actually he said “the world has not heard the last of me” but that didn’t fit.

So before I get too silly I shall just add that Mr Thomas Whitelegg is listed as the shop keeper in 1969 and so will in all probability be the chap looking on at the conversion and will also be the chap who served so many of those customers who have remembered the place with fondness.

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Research; Andy Robertson

Pictures; No 61 alteration of shop front, A H Downes, 1961, m18076, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass and the shop entrance, 2016 from the collection of Andy Robertson

* In search of Whitelegg's on the corner of Manchester Road and Oswald Lane, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/in-search-of-whiteleggs-on-corner-of.html

A heap of lights … a place called the Edge ….. and memories of Sunday worship

The Edge Theatre on Manchester Road is one of Chorlton’s real jewels, which has entertained, captivated and enthralled audiences with some of the best small scale touring theatre in the country, alongside  productions made by [their] own wonderful in-house creatives”* since it opened in 2011.

Heaps of lights, 2025

And if you are between productions there is the Dressing Room, which is a café/bar, and meeting place which also boasts a walled garden for those days when the sun is cracking the paving stones.

Looking in at the Edge, 2023

On those occasions when I am Billy No Mates, I like sitting in the Dressing Room trying to imagine what it was like when it once accommodated 100 young Sunday School scholars, along with more young people spread out in the rooms off the main corridor.

The Wesleyan Sunday School opened in 1885, having started 80 years earlier on Beech Road in what had been the first Methodist chapel.

The present café might also have been one of the rooms used by the Red Cross who occupied the entire building during the Great War after the Wesleyans had offered it up as a voluntary hospital for serviceman recovering from wounds and illnesses.

It was staffed by a mix of volunteer nurses, cleaners, cooks and those engaged in administrative activities.  

Looking at the profile of the volunteers, they were drawn from the local communities, and mostly served for the duration of the conflict.

Over the years I have come across some fascinating items, from a silver cup presented to the Wesleyan in 1917 by a group of soldiers and a letter of thank you to a group of children who embroidered a special pillow.

At the Dressing Room, The Edge, 2025

And of course there is much more …. which is for another time.

Location; Manchester Road

Pictures; the Dressing Room at the Edge, 2025, and the gardens, 2023, from the collection of Andrew Simpson 

*The Edge, https://www.edgetheatre.co.uk/

The Art of Brick ... no. 2 .... sunshine and a cinema

The side of the Picture House cinema was never really designed to be seen or admired.

The Art of Brick .... The Picture House, 2025

True it was there running alongside Nicolas Road but I guess for most people it was just where you might have to wait in the queue for a popular film.

The Picture House, 1920

If you were near the fornt you would be under the ornate glass and iron canopy, and if not so lucky you got to stand under the more basic shelter that extended down the enrire side of the picture house.

But today standing in the car park opposite I think there is a simple elegance to the building.

Most people will remember it as the Gaumont, while there will be some who might still have memories of going there when it was the Savoy, but when it opened in 1920 it was the Picture House.

Location; Nicolas Road

Picture; the art of brick ..... sunshine and The Picture House cinema, 2025, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and the Picture House, 1920 from the Lloyd Collection

Busy day at Chorlton Markets …… April

The Chorlton Markets maybe a recent addition to how we shop but they continue to be popular both here and down on the old village green.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; Busy Day at Chorlton Markets, 2025 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

A garden in Martledge on an August day in 1882

It looks like a fairly ordinary Chorlton garden and if pushed you might suggest a location bordering the meadows which pretty much means Meadow Bank or Ivygreen Road.  

But the title is the giveaway for we are in the garden of Sedge Lynn* and the open land beyond is not the meadows.  We are facing Oswald Road, and the long roads of Newport, Nicholas and Longford and the year is 1882.

In fact to be exact it is August 11th 1882 which was a Tuesday and judging by the light sometime around midday, but I could be wrong about the time.

It is the third of my pictures by Aaron Booth of Martledge where he with his family lived during the last two decades of the 19th century.

I would like to think we are looking at a garden in transition and given that they may only have been in the house for a few months that seems plausible.  So here is a Victorian garden in the making with its Victorian wooden wheelbarrow, spade and packing case and perhaps at a moment when the labourers had gone off for lunch.  Of the three in the collection this casual and untidy scene for me is the most endearing and sets you down on an ordinary day when ordinary things are being done 143 years ago.

And then there is the view.  Back then it was open land popularly called the Isles because of the large number of ponds and small streams that crisscrossed the area.  The land here is clay and for centuries it had been dug up to make bricks or as marl to spread on the fields.  The pits then filled with water and gave the place its distinctive feature.  I counted 17 such ponds around Oswald Field in 1841, and they were a mix of the small and very large.

The Booth family would have had an interrupted view across the Isles towards Longford Hall only obscured by a row of trees.  It was a view which would have lasted into the late 1890s, but within another decade it would have been lost as the first rows of houses went up on the newly cut roads of Nicholas, Newport and Longford and behind them the sprawling brickworks.

All of which makes our picture a poignant image and one made a little more special because the photograph was donated to the collection by one of five daughters.

* Sedge Lynn stood on Manchester Road on the site of the old cinema and became the Coop Funeral Undertakers

Picture; courtesy of Miss Booth, 1882, from the Lloyd collection

When a heap of Chorlton’s history arrives on the doorstep …. thank you Dave King

Now, I am always on the lookout for new stories about our past.

A bit of Manchester's heritage, 1974

Sometimes they come out of diligent research from dusty archives and sometimes through the generosity of people who like me collect stuff.

Over the years it has been everything from photographs, letters and diaries, as well as stories handed down through families.

And yesterday Dave King dropped off a wonderful portfolio of maps pictures and other things.

Dave like me loves maps and here in the portfolio were a selection of OS maps from the 1950s and 1970s with a few from the turn of the last century.

Most relate to Chorlton, with a sideways look at Whalley Range, Firswood, Stretford and Wythenshawe.

Along with these were presentation folders from the Manchester Evening News and the City Council on some of the historic landmarks in the city.  They date from 1974 and ’75 and include some fine line drawings of buildings, which in the case of the Shambles in its Arndale setting and Albert Square have themselves become history.

Beech Road before our house, 1908

But it is the maps that have drawn me in, particularly those dating to the 1970s which fill a gap in my collection.

And as you do, I first turned to Beech Road which confirmed what I thought that the bowling green on the Rec was still there in 1974, while I can now date the former police station in the old tram terminus on Barlow Moor Road to 1955.

From there it was just a skip and a hop to the site of the now doomed Chorlton Precinct and the row of semidetached properties which occupied the spot.

In 1955 those that ran along Manchester Road and Barlow Moor Road were set in large gardens, and three were designated as “surgeries”, while what is at present the service way into the rear of the precinct from the car park was originally a road running off Manchester Road and connecting with that passageway between Yara and Costa Coffee.

Before the Precinct, 1955

This last revelation my not be in the same league as the discovery of the lost resting place of King Richard III, or the Cabinet Papers for the Miner’s Strike, but they are a little bit of our history.

And if nothing else offer up an insight into how the developers back in the early 1970s used the existing road network in the creation of the Precinct.

Leaving me just to dig out the OS map for 1974 with its detail of the Precinct’s footprint ready for when it demolition and replacement makes it just another bit of our past.

Location; Chorlton and Manchester

Pictures; detail of the OS map for Manchester and Salford, 1908 and 1955 and the cover of Make the Most of Manchester’s Heritage, Manchester Evening News, 1974, from the collection of Dave King 

How you steal a road ……… Manchester Road in Chorlton

Now, Manchester Road is one of our ancient roads.

Manchester Road, 1854

It twisted and turned through the township from High Lane through Martledge and out across open land to The Flash where it joined  a footpath to Hulme. *

Later still in 1838, Samuel Brooks cut his own private road from Brooks Bar along the route of that footpath  and in the process utilized the Black Brook which ran beside the old footpath “as a main sewer for his property which he drained into the watercourse”.**

But given that this new swanky road which we now know as Upper Chorlton Road, was the private property of Mr. Brooks, it is more likely that those wanting to leave the village would take another route from Manchester Road along Seymour Grove, which for most of its existence was “nothing more than an old lane or rough cart road with deep ditches at each side, overshadowed by trees, and used chiefly by the farmers and foot passengers of the village”.***

Manchester Road, date unknown

All of which means Manchester Road might well be seen as one of our “superhighways”, and as such the casual traveller would have lots to see on a trip from the village out towards The Flash.

At the junction with High Lane and Edge Lane the land was slightly higher than the surrounding, and on the site of what is now Stockton Range was a fine house which was popularly called the Glass House which was known as Pitts Brow, and during the early 19th century was regarded as the most attractive spot in the whole township.

A little further was an old ash tree which lent its name to the spot just past the church, which dates from the 1870s, when the Methodists built their third place of worship, adding a large Sunday School building a decade later.

Beyond this the road snaked out to Red Gates Farm, which now sits under Chorlton Library and on to the Flash.

The bit they stole, Manchester Road, 1960s

In the 1860s the Egerton estate cut a new road running from Edge Lane via Chorlton to Fallowfield in the expectation that by opening up a direct route from Stretford to Wilmslow Road it would stimulate development in the area, which it did.

Despite crossing Manchester Road, this new Egerton highway  had little impact on our road.

But not so the planners of the 20th century, who in their grand plan to build a shopping precinct here in Chorlton, stole a stretch of Manchester Road for a car park.

The result was the loss of some grand houses which lined this bit of the road and the severing of our ancient thoroughfare.

Next; that mystery water course

Location; Chorlton

Pictures;  detail of Manchester Road from the OS for Lancashire 1854, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/ Manchester Road, date unknown and the bit they stole, 1960s, from the collection of Ida Bradshaw


*The Flash is the spot where Manchester Road joins Seymour Grove and Upper Chorlton Road, and became known as West Point.

**Ellwood, Thomas, Chapter 6, Roads, The History of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, South Manchester Gazette, December 12, 1885

***ibid Ellwood, chapter 6

Remembering the swimming baths …. Gilbury Marsh and Horsefield

The Chorlton History Wall is back.

Very soon the third of our projects where art meets history will appear on the builder’s boards at the site of the former Chorlton Swimming Baths and Leisure Centre.

Many will remember the 80-meter installation which told the story of Chorlton-cum-Hardy from 1500 to the 21st century.

It ran across 16 large panels along Albany Road and part of Brantingham Road, included Andrew’s stories, Peter’s original paintings, and became a tourist attraction.

You could walk from Chorlton Green just before Henry VIII walked up the aisle with Ann Boleyn and traverse the centuries discovering the changes to where we live, ending at the former Cosgrove Hall Productions, home of Danger Mouse, Chorlton and the Wheelies and Count Duckula.

No less bold was the wall telling the story of Denbigh Villas on High Lane, which mixed the story of the two houses with accounts of the surrounding area.

And now on Manchester Road at the invitation of the developers* and in conjunction with Chorlton Arts Festival which is part of  Chorlton Civic Society we have created three panels stretching 7.2 meters long. 

Together they describe the story of the former swimming baths with a look back to when this part of Chorlton was open fields with names like Gilbury Marsh and Horsefield, accompanied by tales of “dark doings” and culminating with our own Carnegie library and its links to the Titanic.

The panels will soon go up allowing the curious and the tourist another opportunity to walk Chorlton’s past.

Location; Manchester Road

Pictures; bits of the History Walk

*MSV HOUSING GROUP

Sunny morning in Chorlton with a mystery beyond the gate …. and that building down on it's luck

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; Chorlton on a sunny Wednesday, 2024, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

When they took away my swimming baths ……..

So, after years of waiting for something to happen that building on Manchester Road is being demolished.

Poster place, 2022

For many of us who knew and loved it as our swimming baths it’s passing is a little sad. 

But just how sad I wonder? 

Reading carefully the news story of the demolition and the new development it appears it will offer much needed accommodation for the over 50s and include affordable homes.* 

Overgrown, 2022

I am loath to see any historic building vanish, especially one which represented a promise fulfilled to the voters of Chorlton when we voted to join Manchester in 1904. 

Added to which I have many fond memories of taking the kids there. 

But the building which dated from the 1920s is not unique architecturally and was perhaps tired for the purpose it had been erected.

That said they are a bit of Chorlton’s history which when opened had “two swimming baths – one for men and one for women, wash-baths and a suite of Turkish Baths.” **

They were the fulfilment of a promise made in 1904 but only fulfilled years later.  

Along with the promise to build the library, the Corporation had also offered to provide swimming baths. 

In 1915 there had been moves to buy land beside the railway for the sum of £730 and five years later the City Council was seeking to raise money to acquire the site. ***

Finally in the September of 1929 we got those baths and perhaps the wait was worth it.  According to the Manchester Guardian a large crowd gathered outside on Manchester Road, and while the building “could not be described as a thing of beauty, it has two swimming baths – one for men and one for women, wash-baths and a suite of Turkish Baths.” ****

The cost to attend the Turkish Baths was half a crown which The Manchester Guardian reported would allow “the people of Chorlton to lie for half an hour or so in a pale blue room amidst blue sofas and blue curtains” concluding that “thus has luxury come to Chorlton.”

That said Miss Annie Lee speaking on behalf of the City Council at the opening of the Baths argued “that it was time we ceased to think of the Turkish bath as a luxury invented for the sole use of elderly and obese millionaires.”

Now that is a sentiment I approve of and I would like to have met her.  She was born in 1875 and was elected to represent Gorton South as a councillor in 1919 and was the first woman Alderman on the City Council.  

You can come in now ..... official opening, 1929

As a member of the Labour Party on the Council she successfully opposed the Education Committees attempts in 1922 to reintroduce the prewar regulation which prevented married women from becoming teachers.  

The prohibition had been relaxed during the war but authorities across the country began to reassert the ban allowing only married woman “whose husbands were unable to support them” or women “who had great teaching abilities.”

Miss Lee also campaigned in 1929 for the Public Health Committee to give instructions in birth control in Council clinics, was active on the old Board of Guardians and later in 1930 on the Public Assistance Committee.

Alderman Wright Robinson recalled she was “a woman who had the strongest convictions and stood by them fearlessly, whilst her independence could be described as fierce.  Nothing could shake her on such matters as Sabbath observance and opposition to Sunday games or equal pay for women.” *****

Nothing to do, 2022

Many I think might be intrigued by that reference to “Sabbath observance and opposition to Sunday games” but would concede that in some instances Sunday working has led to exploitation and certainly the Gorton United Trades and Labour Committee were on record as expressing the opinion that “the feminist and trade union causes owe her a great debt.”

And that is it.

Over the years there has been speculation on what might happen to the site  including the suggestion that Unicorn might move in.****** 

The  announcement of the demolition had met with a mixed response including one from someone who clearly hadn’t read the article before making wild assertions about who might become residents of the new development.

And now that building so loved by so many for so many years is being demolished as I write, and on hand yesterday were Andy Robertson and Dave Kennedy who recorded the work as Derek the Demolition machine did its business.

Leaving me just to revisit memories of  that clammy feel as you exited the changing booth with at least one sock not quite on properly while the sleeve of your tee shirt was damp from falling on the wet floor of the changing room, and just how hungry you felt.

Yesterday as recorded by Dave Kennedy

Adapted from The Quirks of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Andrew Simpson and Peter Topping, 2018

Location' Manchester Road, Chorlton

Pictures; Chorlton Leisure Centre, 2022, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, an impression of the new homes, 2023, courtesy of Manchester City Council,  and the opening of the Baths, 1929, m77636, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass knocking down today, from the collection of Dave Kennedy and Andy Robertson, 2024

And a little later by Andy Robertson

*Former Chorlton Leisure Centre could be turned into dozens of affordable homes, Hakim Hafazalla, February, 13th, 2023, https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/former-chorlton-leisure-centre-could-26226682?fbclid=IwAR0d_KN7U8E_vhkyXVV44oQtWKb5OgXEYPwxtv--hOZfXwW_NlbI9vpm8lA

**Manchester, the Manchester Guardian, September 20, 1929

*** Ibid, the Manchester Guardian, September 20, 1929

****  Alderman Annie Lee Obituary, Manchester Guardian October 26, 1945

***** Chorlton’s Unicorn Grocery could be moving... to former Chorlton leisure centre, Beth Abbit, April 22, 2016, MEN, http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/chorltons-unicorn-grocery-could-moving-11223328

When we still had a furniture shop and a free car park .... down by the Lloyds in 1990

Now I am on a roll again with pictures from our most recent past.

And so here is another of Andy Robertson’s taken I think in the early 1990s.

I will leave you to identify the shops which have gone, along with that little piece of history which was Chorlton’s lost car par, which I think was free, contained also a set of public lavatories, and once a very very long time ago had been a set of tennis courts beside the Lloyds.

Picture;  looking out towards Wilbraham Road, circa 1990, from the collection of Andy Robertson

Martledge, that forgotten bit of Chorlton

As pictures go it is not the best quality but there is enough here to get a sense of this little bit of Chorlton.

The year is 1910 and we are just past the junction of Barlow Moor and Wilbraham Road.

This was once known as Martledge and until the 1870s was farm land with a few farmhouses, the old Royal Oak pub and block of houses known as Renshaw’s Buildings or just the New Buildings.

But during the 1880s this end of the township was developed pretty much as we know it today, with long lines of terraced and semi detached houses and parades of shops.

And this image captures this new Chorlton.  On the corner is the bank and beyond it is Renshaw’s Buildings which were a block of six two up two down houses or more likely twelve one up one downs.

They had been built sometime before 1832 by John Renshaw who lived on Beech Road.  He was a market gardener but diversified into property.

His block that you see was demolished to make way for the new Royal Oak and all that now survives of Renshaw’s Buildings is the kerb stone that runs at angles from Barlow Moor Road beside the pub.

Already by the beginning of the 20th century part of this old block had been turned into a cycle shop.

And just behind the wall of Renshaw’s was the entrance to the old Royal Oak which was more a beer shop than a pub and which dates from the 1830s.

Far away in the distance is the Temperance Hall and to our left parallel with the tram are a set of fine
Victorian houses which were demolished in the 1960s.

Picture; from the Lloyd Collection

The bold and the new …… down on Manchester Road in 1973

Now I am not a fan of just posting an old image and leaving it at that.

Often when I come across these on social media, it is posted with no date, no indication of where it has come from and it stands alone with no additional commentary.

All of which makes it difficult to appreciate its true significance, because without a date and a source, there is no context, other than to reflect that “here is a picture which is different from now, when they did things differently back then”.

Of course, that may sound sniffy, but if you are interested in the past you should always be after finding out as much as you can.

So, having said all of that, here is a picture with little in the way of additional information.

We are on Manchester Road where it joins Upper Chorlton Road, and the year is 1973 and it comes from the City’s Local Image Collection.*

It was one  of a series taken by H Milligan in the 1970s and what I like about the picture is the way that it records, just what a collection of “modern shopfronts” looked like back then.

Today, they look dated and even a bit amateurish but in 1973 they appeared sharp, modern and at the cutting edge of what was thought stylish.

I particularly liked the use of timber cladding seen on the bookie’s and that name which seems to topple down from the top of the sign.

Today I prefer the original shop fronts which are still visible on two of the fronts.

And that is all.

Location; Chorlton

Picture; Manchester Road, 1973, H Milligan, m17964, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

A Chorlton revolution ……….. the self service shop

Now we are so familiar with the supermarket and the convenience store, that it takes a moment to  appreciate just how much self service shopping was a revolution in how we bought our groceries.

I am of that generation, who was part of that revolution, and I can remember just how liberating it felt at the time to wander the isles, and touch and choose which apples, tins of vegetables and packets of biscuits to buy.

Today we can be cynical about it all, not least the way it allowed shops to cut costs, and set the customer doing some of the work, but it was I maintain quite liberating.

Here in Chorlton, there is still a book to write about the arrival of those first self service shops, including which were the first and just what people thought about them.

The Co-op  was the first to embrace the new way of shopping, turning a department of its store in Romford over to self service in 1943 and five years later fully converting its premise in Portsea to selfservice.*

And in 1949, The Manchester & Salford Equitable Co-op  began altering its existing stores the following year, with our own Hardy Lane opening in 1959.

Until this week, I didn’t know that the shop on the corner of Manchester and Ransfield roads, was offering its customers, “Self Service” in 1961 and a quick trawl of the directories should pinpoint when the Mark Down began its new venture.
Leaving that aside, it is the shop window which is equally fascinating, offering up a range of products which are still familiar, but at prices which at first glance appear astonishing.

But those prices must be set against most people’s incomes which were of course much lower than today.
The more pertinent question would be to explore and then compare the average food bill in 1961 with today and its percentage of all house hold bills.

All of which is getting too serious and so instead I shall just leave you pondering on the prices, which are expressed in shillings and pennies, which I suspect will be a mystery to any one born just before we went decimal in 1971.

Our own kids look back at me with sheer bewilderment when I explain that 12 pennies made a shilling, that 20 shillings made a pound and that 240 pennies made a pound.  Added to which there was a coins called a threepenny bit, a sixpence, and a half crown, all of which competed with the farthing and the ha’penny.

Added to which the price of posh objects often came as guineas and not pounds.

And that neatly brings me back to self service shopping which predated our decimal coinage by just a few decades.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures, Manchester Road, 1961, A H Downs, m18078 and current prices, Mark Down No. 93 Manchester Road, 1961, , A H Downs, m18080, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass, and Spotlight on Self Service, from Co-Op First Self Service UK, http://hardylane.blogspot.com/

*Co-Op First Self Service UK, http://hardylane.blogspot.com/

On Manchester Road with Uncle John at Redgates Farm at harvest time

We have been making our way down Manchester Road from the junction of Barlow Moor and Wilbraham Roads around the year 1910 and I thought that was pretty much the end of the journey for a while.

But you can’t be on Manchester Road just by the Library where the road swings to the north without mentioning Redgates Farm.

It dates back certainly to the late 18th century and maybe older and 1910 it was just about to disappear.

So I grateful to Carolyn Willits who supplied me with this picture when it was still a working farm, which is why I like this one of Red Gates Farm.

It is all more exciting because one of the men staring back at us is her Uncle John who worked on the farm for the Wood family.

I guess we are looking at the farm on a Sunday in late summer.

It is a quiet enough moment on a working farm. John and the other chap are out of their everyday working clothes into something smarter as befitting a day off.

To the right of the picture are the farm’s chickens pecking away and even further to the right some farm equipment has been left propped up against the tree.

The picture is actually a postcard and reminds us that travelling photographers would record scenes like this to sell back to the residents as well to commercial postcard companies. In this case Uncle John used the card to send a message to the Wood Family.

And we can date the picture to sometime before 1906 when the postcard was sent to James and Florence Wood at 78 Manchester Road.

James was the son of Thomas Wood who had been farming Red Gates since 1881.

Now it might seem bizarre that Uncle John would send a postcard from Red Gates which was just a few minutes’ walk from number 78 but that was how they did it then. With frequent collections and deliveries in a day people did really send a card in the morning to arrange to meet in the afternoon.

Ours was sent at 8.30 in the evening to arrive at breakfast time and the message was simple enough “Another view for your collection taken while harvesting.” And it was to be one of the last.

Thomas Wood the farmer had died in 1902 and sometime in 1913 or ’14 the farm house was demolished to make way for the new library. It says much for the way that Chorlton had changed since Thomas Wood had taken over Red Gates.

It had been one of the larger operations at this end of the township and had still employed three farm workers in 1901. But Thomas Wood was the last to farm Red Gates.

Already two of his sons had chosen not to follow him. James had become a commercial clerk and John a music teacher.

Their farm house with its seven rooms went the way of many of our farm houses, so it is good that Carolyn’s picture has survived.

Picture; Red Gates Farm circa first decade of the 20th century from the collection of Carolyn Willits.

Looking towards Oswald road ......another scene of lost Martledge from 1880

I have been visiting Martledge which has passed out of common knowledge, but was that part of Chorlton roughly from the four banks up to the Library.

Until the 1880s it was like most of the rest of our township a collection of cottages, farm buildings and open land.
 And in the summer and winter of 1882, Aaron Booth who lived at Sedge Lynn took a series of photographs of the area around his house.  This was Sedge Lynn and stood on the corner of Manchester Road and Nicholas Road.

He was a comfortably off business man who owned a packing business employing 7 men, and sometime after 1881 the family moved from Ardwick to Chorlton.  Only four of his photographs have survived but they are a rare insight into what Martledge was like.

Today I have chosen a picture he took from an upstairs backroom window looking out across what was called the Isles and is now the land stretching out along Oswald and Longford Roads to Stretford. In 1882 it was what it had always been, an open expanse of land dominated by ponds which had been dug out for marl for the fields and clay for house bricks.   The ponds were fed by little streams long since vanished.  Away to our left had been a row of cottages but the rest was just open land.

I rather think for any child it must have been a pretty wonderful place to roam, particularly on a warm summer’s day with little in the way of noise save the odd buzzing insects.  As a parent I might feel less happy.

There were I remember 17 ponds around what was Oswald Field where the cottages were and some were quite large and quiet deep.

Picture; from the Lloyd collection

Sedge Lynn …….. the missing picture

Now I am looking at a photograph of Sedge Lynn on Manchester Road.

Two Sedge Lynn's .... for the price of one picture, circa 1907-1920

It stood on the site of what was the cinema and later still the Co-op Undertaker’s and its name has now been appropriated by the Wetherspoons pub which in turn was once a temperance snooker hall.

The house dates from 1882 and was the home of the Booth family, who occupied it from when it was built till it was demolished in 1919 or 1920.

It consisted of eleven rooms and the rear offered up views across the fields towards Stretford.

Sedge Lynn, circa 1907-1920

The house and the family have fascinated me for a decade, and I have written about them along with the story of the cinema and the temperance hall. *

Mr. Arron Booth was a successful businessman and a photographer, and we have some fine pictures taken by him of Chorlton in the 1880s, including one looking out on the back garden and across to Longford Hall when the area was still open land and known as the Isles.

One of his daughter’s Ann Shepley Booth owned a private school on High Lane which later transferred to Napier Road, in what appears to be a swap with a Mr. Dadley.

He ran a Grammar school was looking for a larger premises and so transferred his school to 59 High Lane, and later extending into the neighbouring property.

But for those more interested in the Weatherspoons next door, is that irony that it began as a temperance hall, built by the Temperance Billiard Halls company with office in Pendleton.  In 1911 the company had halls across the city and beyond.**

The Temperance Hall, circa 1907-1920

These included Moss Lane East, Stockport Road, Rochdale Road, Ashton Old Road, Bury New Road, Broad Street, Eccles New Road, Liverpool Road, Station Road, Altrincham, Cross Street Sale, Manchester Road, Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Wilmslow Road, Rusholme, Hyde Road in Gorton, Stretford Road, Old Trafford and Cheetham Hill Road. 

All were built to a basic design with those large windows along the roof to admit the maximum amount of daylight.  Some still survive but have morphed into different uses, from a restaurant in Urmston to garages and supermarkets.

Ours in Chorlton long ago lost its temperance connection but remained a place to play snooker until quite recently.

Leaving me just to thank George Cieslik who kindly gave me permission to use the image and point out that the lamp post outside the house was still there in the 1950s.

Location; Manchester Road, Chorlton

Picture; Sedge Lynn circa 1907 -1920, from the collection of George Cieslik

*Sedge Lynn, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search?q=Sedge+Lynn

**Temperance, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Temperance