A little bit of Manchester in Holland, and another bit in a garden in Chorlton-cum-Hardy

I am looking at a picture of the Manchester Assize Courts which I have added to the collection.

It was donated by my old friend David Harrop, who is a collector of all things posty.

The Courts were designed by Alfred Waterhouse and finished in 1864.

Sadly, this magnificent building did not last a century and after being hit during the blitz of December 1940 and again in ’41 it was demolished in 1957.

Some of the exterior sculptures were designed by Thomas Woolner who was one of the founding members of the Pre Raphaelite-Brotherhood, and others was the were of the Irish stonemason firm of O’Shea and Whelan.

But more of them in a minute.

For now, it is the postcard itself which interests me, and in particular the message on the back, which is in Dutch and begins, “Congratulations on your birthday We have a pleasant one ………….”

And here I have to credit Google translate, which over the years has allowed me to appear semi proficient in a host of languages.  And what makes the card that bit more interesting is that it appears to have been produced for the Dutch market, given that the printed word postcard is also in Dutch.

Not that I should be surprised at that.  F. Firth, like Raphael Tuck and other companies marketed their postcards across Europe and beyond.

But I like the idea of a little bit  of Manchester somewhere in Holland, and …………. with a smile at the contrived link that follows, I like the fact that for many years one of the stone figures from the Manchester Assize Court adorned a garden in Chorlton-cum-Hardy.

The garden was part of Park Brow Farm at the bottom of Sandy Lane where it joins St Werburghs Road.

My friend Tony Walker maintained that it came from the old Manchester Assize Courts on Great Ducie Street in Strangeways and looking at pictures of the building the figures do look the same.

And it has led me to more than a few stories about the farm, the Assize Courts and just what people put in to their gardens. *

Location; Manchester, Amsterdam, and Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Picture; The Assize Courts, 1898, from the collection of David Harrop, and stone figure in the garden of Park Brow Farm, 1988 from the collection of Tony Walker


*One stone statue ........ late of Park Brow Farm and the Assize Courts .......... makes its way into Cheshire and on “down south”, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2016/06/one-stone-statue-late-of-park-brow-farm.html

Remembering a lost Chorlton farm from over 87 years ago

Now I am looking at two pictures of Park Brow Farm which was doing the business of growing food from before the start of the 19th century.

And what makes the two pictures all the more remarkable is that I know one of the sons of the last farmer.

He is Oliver Bailey and his family ran the farm from sometime after 1911 and before that had been on Chorlton Row from the 1760s.*

Over the years Oliver has made available a whole heap of family documents from the contract his ancestor signed with the Egerton’s back in the middle of the 18th century to receipts for night soil from the 1850s, house and farm inventories and lots more.

Added to which he was able to describe in some detail the inside of Hough End Hall before it was much knocked about by a succession of developers in the late 1960s.

And his memories have also opened up the story of Park Brow Farm before it too was developed with that small group of houses to the west of the farm house and the barn conversion.

So I shall start with the farm yard and this photograph from 1938.

Oliver tells me that one of the young lads is his brother and the building behind them with the tall chimney was “used for boiling up p food bought from the UCP,” while the two elephants Mr Bailey hosted when the travelling circus arrived were watered from the wooden pump directly in front of the building.

And given that this was the farm yard, the two downstairs rooms of the building to our left were the kitchen and office, with the living room and dining room facing south onto the garden which backed on to Sandy Lane.

Now I could go on but think I will save the rest for another day, which will include more pictures of the front of the farm house, something on the certificates the farm won and a piece of garden furniture which links the farm to the old Assize Courts in town.

Those intrigued by the idea of hosting two elephants can read the story on blog which will also offer up some fine pictures of the Bailey bulls on the land where Adastral House now stands and can summon up in their imagination an image of the young Oliver driving live stock through Chorlton back to Park Brow from the railway station.

All of which just leaves me to ponder on how rural is the scene of the farm house when this picture was taken in the summer of 1940.

Location; Park Brow Farm, Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Pictures, the farm yard, 1938, m17381, and the farmhouse looking north, 1940, m17388, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

*Chorlton Row is now Beech Road

A prize for Park Brow Farm in Chorlton

Here is a little bit of our history which often gets over looked.

In 1916 Park Brow Farm was awarded a certificate of Merit at the Manchester Show “in the Competition for supplying Milk daily from Lancashire and Cheshire to Manchester and Salford or anywhere within a mile radius of Manchester Town Hall.”

In an age when a milk float is a rarity it is easy to forget that until very recently milk on the door step before eight in the morning along with a daily paper just how it was.

Of course on very hot days that milk had to be collected quickly and I do remember on occasion how the seal had been pecked by a bird.

And if like me you were born in the first half of the last century the chances are that your milk will have been delivered by horse and cart.

I know full well Mr Bailey who ran Park Brow delivered his by horse and cart as did Mrs Lomax who lived opposite and ran her milk round from Hough End Hall.

And back then the milk arrived in churns and was decanted into a jug. Sadly the stories of being sent to collect the milk direct from the farm are fading from living memory, but my old friend Marjory was full of the tales of being sent. and there were still plenty to choose from when she was young but given that she lived on Provis Road it was just a short trip across to the frm yard opposite

And that is all I am going to say having already in the past explored the demands for municipal milk and the milk boy of Edge Lane.

Location; Park Brow Farm, Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Pictures, 1916 certificate, from the collection of Oliver Bailey

Looking for the story behind the farm buildings on St Werburgh’s Road .......

Now even the most humble of buildings will have a story if you know where to look.

Those farm buildings circa 1970s

Of course in the great sweep of history most of us will plump for a Tatton Hall or ruined medieval castle.

But even the most mundane workaday building will offer up something.

So here I am on St Werburg’s Road with one of the farm buildings of Park Brow Farm.

Somewhere in the collection I have a set of pictures from my old friend Oliver Bailey whose family farmed there from the beginning of the last century and before that were on Chorlton Row from the 1760s.*

The farm and buildings in 1844

The building has been converted into residential use and like most people I have given little thought to the place.

But it is there on the OS map for 1844 and I rather think it also shows up on Greenwood’s map of 1818.

So there is history here and given time and a bit of research I want to explore the archaeology of the building.  In particular the brick stairway up to the first floor and when and why the large entrance on the eastern side was bricked in.

For now I will just close with the thought that it would have been on Mary Moore’s route to Dog House Farm.

Mary lived on the Green and as brutally murdered in the June of 1838, but that as they say is another story.*

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Picture; the farm buildings circa 1970s from the Lloyd Collection, and detail from the OS map for Lancashire showing Park Brow Farm, 1844, courtesy of Digital archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

*Chorlton Row is now Beech Road

**The murder of Mary Moore from Chorlton out in Whalley Range and an inquest in Withington, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2020/04/the-murder-of-mary-moore-from-chorlton.html

One stone statue ........ late of Park Brow Farm and the Assize Courts ............ looking for a new home

Now I have a soft spot for this chap.

He once resided in the garden of Park Brow Farm down on St Werburgh’s Road but originally had sat high up on the old Assize Courts in Manchester.

How it got from one to the other involved one of Mr Hitler’s bombs which did for the courts and led eventually from  a stone mason’s yard to the farm.

He wasn’t a small thing and I have every bit of respect for the men who got him from the ground up to the top of the courts and equally to Oliver Bailey who along with his dad and brother wrestled with the object in the garden of the farm.

Oliver remembers that “when we off loaded the beastie using the front loader on an old grey Ferguson tractor, despite having a one ton counterweight on the back we had to sit people on it to keep the back wheels on the ground but fortunately it was only a short distance.”

By the time it had arrived in Chorlton it had lost two small horns “where the lighter patches are on its head but they were broken off, possibly during removal so there were two small square plugs to show where they had been.”

And then with the sale of the farm in the 1980s the statue was on off on another adventure.

All of which may seem trivial stuff but I think not.  Its journey from the grand law courts to a garden is fascinating in itself and points to that simple observation that there are stories everywhere and in this case part of the fun has been tracking down the history.

I grant you it doesn’t involve some great event of a deep State secret but it offers up a close up of mid 19th century public sculpture mixed with the dram of the Blitz and that wonderful almost eccentric wish of the part of someone to preserve it.

All of which just leaves me to reveal where it went next.

But like all good detective stories that will have to wait.

Location the Assize Courts, Park Brow Farm and another place

Picture; stone statue, circa 1980s,  from the collection of Tony Walker

Remembering Park Brow Farm on St Werburgh Road as it was

You have to go looking for pictures of working farms in Chorlton.

I have two in the collection from the 1880s showing Higgnbotham’s farm on the green, a couple more of Ivy Farm on Beech Road and a few of when Hough End Hall was still producing food which just leaves five or six of Park Brow  from the middle decades of the last century.

Nor is there much in the way of written descriptions.

I can think of one short account of Ivy Farm matched by a mix of anecdotes about collecting milk and working on the land at Turn Moss with some detailed stories about Park Brow from Oliver Bailey whose family ran it during the 20th century.

So I was more than a bit happy when my friend Ann sent me a collection of models of Park Brow made by her husband.

“They were” she wrote “  made many years ago,  and may not be accurate, as he used it for his layout, but most of it is as he remembers it from 40 years ago when he walked past it every day on his way to work.”

All of which I think is a tad modest of Howard.  If you compare them with collection of photographs from the 1930s and 40s along with and Oliver’s description of the farm and the present buildings the models are a pretty close reconstruction.

And that is pretty much all I am going to say for now, but reserve the right to come back with lots more at a later date.

Location Park Brow Farm, Chorlton-cum-Hardy




Pictures; models of Park Brow, circa 1974, courtesy of Howard Love

So where is this chap?

Now never one to pass up a detective story here is one for anyone with a magnifying glass, a second hand violin and time on their hands after solving the case of the Red Toad Diamonds.

It is the mystery of what happened to this chap.  I have written about him before and he reappeared in a story yesterday. For nigh on 80 years he adorned the top of the Assize Courts in Manchester and ended up in the garden of Bailey’s farm on the corner of Sandy Lane and St Werburgh's.*

And then he disappeared and that disappearance has set quite a few people off on wanting to know his final resting place.

None more so than my new friend Catherine who even gave him a name.

I would like to think he went to a good home somewhere in Chorlton or perhaps he is looking across to the rose bushes in well healed Bramhall.

Sadly it is more likely that he is hardcore under one of our motorways.

Still we shall see if there are any takers.

But at least today I have found out a bit more of its origins.  Oliver who lived on the farm  remembers, "exactly what happened to it as it was removed before Baileys sold the farm house. 

Its origin is that it once adorned the law courts in Manchester (see Manchester Shield) and after they were demolished, my father purchased it from the demolition company. 

As far as I remember it originally had two small horns where the lighter patches are on its head but they were broken off, possibly during removal so there were two small square plugs to show where they had been. I remember it taxed our ability to off load it from the Land Rover and then put it in position in the back garden.

In any event, it isn't one of the Queen's beasts as at one time we were in touch with the College of Heralds to find out what it might be."

Location; unknown

Picture; stone figure 1980, from the collection of Tony Walker

* A little bit of the old Assize Courts in a farm house garden in Chorlton, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/a-little-bit-of-old-assize-courts-in.html

A little bit of the old Assize Courts in a farm house garden in Chorlton

Now this story appeared at the beginning of the year but given the interest in Park Brow Farm it just has to come out again.

Now I have to confess that this picture of Manchester Assize Courts interests me because of  the story behind one of the figures that adorned the roof.

And this is the stone figure which sat in the garden of Park Brow Farm at the bottom of Sandy Lane where it joins St Werburghs Road.

My friend Tony Walker maintained that it came from the old Manchester Assize Courts on Great Ducie Street in Strangeways and looking at pictures of the building the figures do look the same.

It was designed by Alfred Waterhouse and finished in 1864.

Sadly this magnificent building did not last a century and after being hit during the blitz of December 1940 and again in ’41 it was demolished in 1957.

Some of the exterior sculptures were designed by Thomas Woolner who was one of the founding members of the Pre Raphaelite Brotherhood, but I rather think our figure was the work of the Irish stonemason firm of O’Shea and Whelan.

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy



Picture; The Assize Courts,   from the series Manchester United Kingdom, marketed by Tuck & Sons, 1903, courtesy of Tuck DB, http://tuckdb.org/ and stone figure from the collection of Tony Walker