Past Kemp's Corner and up to Redgate Farm in the summer of 1900

Looking across the Isles, 1882

This is another one of those walks I would like to have taken if only to set the contrast from what I would have seen just fifty years earlier in the summer of 1853.

Now I have been writing about a series of walks that you could have made along what was then called Barlow Moor Lane north from the junction with Chorlton Row up past Lane End, and on into Martledge.*

We would have seen a few fine houses, a couple of farms, and a mix of more humble dwellings along with a pub and beer shop all surrounded by fields and the meandering Rough Leech Gutter.
But by 1893 the fields had all but gone, as had two of the farm houses, and the old wattle and daub cottages.

There was still a little of that old Chorlton to see.  Up where the Library now stands was Redgate Farm and just before it Renshaws Buildings which dated from the early 1830s and lasted well into the 1920s.

And tucked away in splendid isolation in their own grounds and hidden behind high walls were Beech House and Oak Bank.  These two dated back to the early decades of the 19th century and both in that summer of 1893 would soon also be demolished.

Renshaws Buildings circa 1900

In their place would be the houses that still line Barlow Moor Road and Manchester Road.

These were the product of the housing boom from the 1880s and were the homes of the professional, business and clerical families, many of who used the newly opened Chorlton station to get into the heart of the city in just ten minutes.

Now although I fight it I am an old romantic and I don’t think I would have made much of this stretch of Chorlton in that last decade of the 19th century.

So what would we have seen from what is officially known as Chorlton Cross but is more now popularly called Four Bank Corner, or just the Four Banks?

The simple answer is not that different from today.  What is now the HSBC would soon become Kemps the Chemist and Harry Kemp’s name would be what this corner would be called well into the 1960s.

Sunwick House, circa 1900

Opposite was Sunwick House which is still there but is now the Royal Bank of Scotland and beyond down towards Redgate Farm there was a row of large detached houses set back from the road, while on the north side there were Renshaws Buildings and the old Royal Oak.

This dated back to the beginning of the 19th century and was pretty much just a beer house serving the local population, the thirsty farm labourers and the Manchester trade who had come out from the city for the walk and a drink in the countryside.

The present pub would not be built until the mid 1920s and would replace Renshaws Buildings.  It is still possible to see the kerb and bit of pavement beside the pub which once fronted the old property.

But all of that is a little in the future and so back in 1893 our walk would have taken us north of Sunwick past Warwick and Selbourne Roads up to the farm.

Sedge Lynn, 1885

We probably would not have really noticed the home of Aaron Booth which went by the name of Sedge Lynn.

It stood where Nicholas Road joins Manchester Road. Back.

In the 1890s Nicholas Road had yet to be cut and our little section was still part of Manchester Road which ran off down through what is now the car park of the precinct and over Wilbraham Road. And for those of a tidy mind I might just add that Wilbraham Road was still quite recent having been cut in the 1860s.

Now I have written about Sedge Lynn, Mr Booth and his fascination for amateur photography and it is his pictures which more than anything shows the dramatic transformation of this bit of Chorlton in the decade before our walk.

Looking across Manchester Road towards the station , 1882

In 1882 he took a series of pictures just after he had moved in looking west across the Isles into the area which is now Oswald Road and across Manchester Road towards the station.

Stand on the site of Sedge Lynn today and look towards the station and the view is obscured by the houses of Warwick, Albany and Keppel Roads, which is pretty much what you would have seen in 1893, but a decade earlier this was still open farm land.

Pictures; of Martledge in 1882 courtesy of Miss Booth, Sunwick from the Lloyd Collection and the corner of Barlow Moor Road and Wilbraham Road from the collection of Marjorie Holms

*Chorlton Row is now Beech Road, Lane End is the junction between Sandy Lane, High Lane and Barlow Moor Road, and Martledge was the area north of the former Four Banks.

Help us restore a bit of Chorlton’s lost story …...

Many of you will be familiar with the large “History Wall” which for over a year fronted the building site on what had been Chorlton Swimming Baths on Manchester Road.

It was a special commission and told the story of the Baths and the surrounding area, describing the transition from fields and farms to the rows of shops and houses we know today.

They were produced by the historian Andrew Simpson and artist Peter Topping.

There were three panels super imposed on to a painting of the Baths by Peter.

Each panel described part of the area’s history.  

So, panel one focused on the opening of the Baths in 1929 and its changing role from a place just to swim and enjoy the pleasures of a Turkish Bath to its years as a Leisure Centre offering a range of sporting activities.

The remaining two panels explored the wider story of this bit of Chorlton, and in particular described the field network, and the coming of that other municipal enterprise which was Chorlton Library.

My favourite of the three is the second with those wonderful field names of Horse Field, Hulme Marsh, Oswald Field and Gilbury Marsh.

And now with the redevelopment almost compete and the first residents preparing to move in, the History Wall is seeking a new home.

That home is close by on the wall of another block of apartments placed at right angles to Manchester Road commanding a prime location opposite Unicorn the food co-op. 

Sadly, one of the panels was damaged during its removal from the construction site.

And so, we are now seeking funding to replace the lost panel, enabling all three to go back on display and providing plenty more people the opportunity to read the “History Wall” and learn about a bit of our lost history.

It is estimated the cost of replacing the damaged including delivery and fitting will be £359.

For further information contact events@chorltonarts.org

Location; Manchester Road

Pictures; Three panels ... The History Wall, and the site of the History Wall

The Chorlton History Wall ........ looking for a new home

After two years the third Chorlton History Wall is on the move. 

It was the latest in our series where art meets history telling the story of a particular spot in Chorlton over the last three hundred years.

It  appeared on the builder’s boards at the site of the former Chorlton Swimming Baths and Leisure Centre and became a tourist attraction following the very popular 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.

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 the Manchester Road wall is on the move having done the business of recording the history of the former swimming baths and the surrounding area.

The three panels Stretching across seven meteres looked 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.

Suggestions for a new home have included Chorlton's Community Garden, a spell in Chorlton Library or perhaps ome of our local schools.

And in the spirit of community history all suggestions are welcome

Location; Manchester Road

Pictures; bits of the History Walk

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

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/

Down on Manchester Road with our poshest cinema

Now you know you were being treated when the cinema was the Savoy, or as it later became known the Gaumont on Manchester Road.

The Picture House, 1920, later the Savoy and Gaumont

I had always thought this was the case, after it was larger and more impressive looking that its two rivals which were the Pavilion on Wilbraham Road and the Palais De Luxe on Barlow Moor Road.

And by 1928 it’s only challenger in Chorlton was the Palais which was smaller and older.

All I wanted was confirmation of the Gaumont’s premier position, and it came today from the Kinematograph Yearbook for 1928.

The Savoy, 1928

I now have four in the collection, starting with the one for 1914, and running through to 1928, 1929 and 1947.

There will be more, but for now I have just the four, and it is the 1928 book which dishes up the evidence that it felt confident in charging 8d to 1s. 6d, for admission while the Palais came in at 6d to 1s. 3d.

The Palais De Luxe, 1928

So, on the nights you might want to impress someone special, that “specialness” was reflected in what you were prepared to pay.

Of course, the choice of film might still have something to do with it, but I reckon that that all important first date or anniversary would tip the balance in favour of the Savoy.

The Palais De Lux, 1925

Later in the 1930s, came the last of our cinemas, up by the park, and it outlasted the Savoy by a few decades.

All of which makes it an exciting idea that there are those who want to buy up the former cinema and transform it into a community hub.

Now that would be fun.

Location; Chorlton,

Pictures; the Picture House, 1920, later renamed the Savoy and later still the Gaumont, from the Lloyd Collection, listing details from the 1928, Kinematograph Yearbook, and the Palais De Luxe cinema, circa 1928, Charles Ireland, GD10-07-04-6-13-01 Courtesy of East Dunbartonshire Archives

Faces from a Library …..Chorlton stories across a century

I bet few people look up at the guardians on their columns at the entrance to Chorlton Library.

Afterall they are high and a century and bit of Manchester weather has done much to erode some of their features.

But there they are, and yesterday I wondered just who they were.*

The practice of Medieval craftsmen working on the great cathedrals of Europe often chose fellow work mates as models offering up all manner of comic and rude depictions of what they might do on top of their columns.

And that led me to ponder were ours modelled on real people, perhaps even Chorlton residents or just stock faces turned out almost on a conveyor belt by a craftsmen mile away and just imported in.

At present I don’t know, and yesterday I wasn’t even sure if we were dealing with just a couple of faces repeated around the columns, and being totally honest assumed there were but three which might be six.

But then Sally at the library did what I should have done on Sunday and carefully studied all of them, which revealed that there are four per column, and all the faces are different, which led me to revisit the library and capture them all.

And I am glad I did.

I may be no closer to knowing who they were but at least I know them better.

Silly history but like so much of what engages me about the past they have slid out of the shadows, and that is good enough for me.

Location; Chorlton Library

Pictures; Faces from a Library, 2025, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*So……. who were the Chorlton Six?, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2025-09-23T03:00:00%2B01:00&max-results=7

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