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.

Walking in the north of the township through Martledge in the summer of 1847 part 2

Martledge in 1847

Continuing our walk along Barlow Moor Lane, north through Martledge, a  journey which will take in some great houses, a shop, farms and a pub as well as cottages of wattle and daub and brick

Yesterday we passed Clough Farm and Oak Bank and have crossed the Rough Leech Gutter.

At this point the modern traveller will cross the junction of Barlow Moor and Wilbraham Roads.

Officially this point is known as Chorlton Cross, a name bestowed by the city planners and not one which is widely used.  Place names tend to grow out of people’s experiences and survive long after the reason for the name has been forgotten.  So it is with this junction.  For perhaps three generations it was known as Kemp’s Corner, taking its name from Kemps the Chemist.

Harry Kemp was a local politician and his chemist stood on the west corner of Barlow Moor Road where it joins Wilbraham Road from the beginning of the twentieth century.  The clock above the chemist made it a local landmark and as such was a recognised meeting point.  Today the same spot is often referred to as the four banks, which given the fact that there is one on each corner makes sense.

Renshaws Buildings

Had we rested at this point in 1847, with the Rough Leech Gutter at our back we would have uninterrupted views of open fields to both east and west.

Ahead of us there was a sprawl of properties including farm houses cottages and a pub and ending at Red GatesFarm where the library now stands.

Dominating this stretch was the tall block of Renshaw’s Buildings.

These were built by John Renshaw some time before 1832 and like Grantham’s and Brownhill’s Buildings they were an exercise in speculative building.

But unlike the other two it was designed with an impressive gable end which fronted Barlow Moor Lane and was taller than the surrounding properties.

It ran at right angles to the road and access for most of the individual properties was by way of a path.  The building was demolished in the 1920s to make way for the new Royal Oak which still stands on the site. But the path is still there on the eastern side of pub, and it retains the stone pavement and road sets.

Maps show that there were twelve single units which suggest they may have been built as one up one down properties and this seems to be confirmed by the large numbers of families who lived there in the mid century.

The Royal Oak

Beyond Renshaw’s on what is now a double fronted set of shops stood the old Royal Oak.

It was a detached, two storied building and it had a commanding position.  Not only was it on the route to and from the city but it was the only pub here about.

To the north was Red Gates Farm and surrounding the pub were a cluster of cottages including

Renshaws or New Buildings.  In all it served a little community of about 100 people.  It’s only competition coming from Mrs Leech’s beer house.

In those spring days in the late 1840s and early ‘50s it would have been a busy place.  The first real Sunday visitors of the year would have taken advantage of the improved weather, and joined the locals who along with the gossip of the day may have swapped tips on gardening with William Wise the gardener while his wife Hannah who ran the pub dispensed the beer to her customers.

During the rest of the week there would have been a steady trade from farm workers passing on their way between the fields.  And those who lived in the township returning from the city may have added to the gathering.

One such was Thomas Leigh.  His mistake was to stop off on his way home from the markets in Manchester and spend the night drinking with a John Battersby who then stole two sovereigns [£2] from Leigh while he slept.

Like so much of the township the natural geography of the land has been lost.  Water courses like the Rough Leech Gutter have been culverted, ponds drained and slight rises hidden by buildings.  This is particularly true as we move further north.  And the first clue to all this is the road itself.  Old roads twist and turn following ancient field boundaries and natural obstacles.

Manchester Road snakes its way from the village to enter Martledge where the shopping precinct stands and for a short distance ceases to exist.  The break was occasioned by the creation of the precinct car park, not that this has stopped people using the route to come out on Nicolas Road which itself runs in to the continuation of Manchester Road at the junction with Selbourne Road.

Part of the Isles, 1847

But sections of it appear to have had different names.  From Edge Lane to Wilbraham Road was known as Chapel Lane terminating at Ash Tree, so called because of an ash tree which grew in the road.

And the rest where it crosses the modern Wilbraham Road before disappearing into the car park and reappearing at Nicolas Road was known as Chorlton Lane.

This was the site of the finger posts and for a while the area was also known as Martledge Green.

But these seem to be local names for a section of the road which was also called Stretford Road.

Had we not turned west at Ash Tree, we could have continued north towards Oswald Fields.  This today is the start of Oswald Road and in 1847 it would have taken us past Martha Helsby’s garden on our right and through the 4 acres she rented from the Lloyd Estate before the track came out beside the Longford Brook.

The Isles, 1882

Just beyond the car park are the school and the houses bordering the long roads of Longford, Nicolas Newport and Oswald.

Here is the site of Isles, where little streams fed ponds which had once been marl pits.  Marl was used to enrich the soil and has been dug here from the 16th century if not before.

Later still the clay was used for bricks and a little further west of Oswald Road were the Brick Kiln Pits which had already been excavated and filled with water by 1847.  Even later this was where the brick company made the bricks for the villas and terraces of the township.

Today St John’s School stands on part of the old brick fields while the occasional brick still turns up on and near the football pitch.

Adapted from THE STORY OF CHORLTON-CUM-HARDY, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/A%20new%20book%20for%20Chorlton

Pictures; map of Barlow Moor Lane, courtesy of Digital Archives, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/ drawing of Renshasws Buildings © Barri Sparshot, and the Royal Oak and the Isles from the Lloyd Collection