Sarah Sutton, a life lived out on the Row

There are no pictures of Sarah Sutton, nor to my knowledge has she left a diary, or anything which might tell me about her life.

She was born in 1821 in Withington and lived with her husband in a wattle and daub cottage on the Row*. She died in the same cottage 70 years later. Her husband Samuel was a farm labourer which was about what most people did here in Chorlton in the first five decades of the 19th century.

Sutton's Cottage 1892

Unlike the wives of the well to do or even some of the farming families she had no servants to help her.

In the spring of 1851 she had two children under the age of eight, was married to a labourer and had the added responsibility of an infirm father in law.

So tracking her working day is a good start to understanding the daily routines of running a house.

Keeping a wattle and daub cottage clean was no easy task. Plaster walls tended to crumble, the roof of thatch could be home to vermin, and the stone or brick floors were damp and in need of constant sweeping.

The interior will have been similar to these pictures from a one up one down brck cottage which stood on Maitland avenue until the 1930s.

Her day would begin at six in the summer and not much later in the winter months. One of the first chores was the collection of water. This might come from a well or the pump in the Bailey farm yard opposite. She may also have used the fish pond on the Row, which was next to her cottage. In having a supply so close Sarah was lucky, for other people on the Row the regular daily journey back with a bucket of water would be a much longer journey. And this simple task would be mirrored across the township and beyond.

Downstairs room Maitland Cottage circa 1930

Water was needed for cooking drinking and washing and there would be a number of journeys to collect it. 

The next task of the day would have been laying and lighting the fire. This may have used wood or possibly coal. 

But traditional wattle and daub fire places were large and not suited for burning coal which needs a smaller fire place and an efficient flu to draw the flame. The compromise was to reduce the size of the fire place which would allow the use of coal now readily available from the Duke’s Canal.

The move from wood to coal may have been underway during the 1850s and while no one was selling the fuel in the township in 1851 there were a number of coal dealers recorded a decade later.

Once the fire had been made and breakfast served, there were beds to be aired, plates washed and the floor swept. Rugs and mats were taken out and banged against the wall, and even before the floor was swept and scrubbed in damp weather the stone flags had to be scrapped with a an old knife blade to loosen the trodden in mud.

But this simple task could only be done after Samuel had gone off to work and her son John who was seven to school. This left baby Ann who was just one and would have required frequent attention. It is likely that Sarah could have relied on one of her neighbours living in the same row. The midday meal needed preparing and if her husband was working too far away his meal would have either been prepared before he left or taken out to him which might have fallen to her son John.

Downstairs room Maitland Cottage showing boxed staircase circa 1930

Most rural families like the Suttons had a diet heavily based on vegetables. 

Some of these were available from the cottage garden, including the all important cabbages and potatoes as well as onions, carrots, parsnips and broad beans.

They were lucky enough to have an orchard behind their home and there may have been opportunities to collect some of the windfall.

 And like many cottage gardens there were also currant and gooseberry bushes, raspberry canes and rhubarb. Gooseberries were ready by June and were popular in the north where there were competitions and societies.

Sarah would also have grown some flowers and one that has survived and still grows on the site of her cottage is greater celandine. It has beautiful yellow flowers and like many that Sarah and others would have grown also had medical properties. Greater celandine is toxic but according to various sources in the right doses can be used for therapeutic uses. She may well have used it as a mild sedative to treat asthma, bronchitis and whooping cough along with other complaints including warts. But it is toxic nature and so not one to try at home.

It still grows on the site at the corner of Wilton and Beech Roads and may be one of the last survivors of our cottage gardens. My botanist fried David Bishop spotted it some time ago and wrote about on his blog.


In the back garden there may have been an area reserved for keeping chickens. Eggs could be expensive and keeping chickens not only avoided having to buy them but could be a small extra form of revenue. So in

1851 the price of a dozen eggs ranged from 4d [2p] in the summer to 8d [4p] later in the year. The family pig was another means of supplementing the family diet and might provide meat for up to seven months. It would be bought in the spring from a local farmer who might wait to the animal was killed and the meat sold before receiving payment in the autumn. This was the only way that some families could afford the cost of a pig which might be between 20s and 25s [£1-£2.25p].

Site of Sutton's Cottage, 2010

But it is unlikely that all their needs could be met from what they grew. Much research has shown that at best the garden supplemented the food they bought. But some might be gathered for free.

There were many wild fruits and plants across the township for the collecting. Wine might be made from a variety of flowers as well as fruit and for those who knew where to look there were rich sources of plants which could enhance cooked dishes.

Pictures; Sutton’s Cottage circa 1892, photograph from the Wesleyan Souvenir Handbook of 1895  and interior of the cottage on Maitland Avenue in the collection of Philip Lloyd, the site today of the cottage on the corner of Beech Road and Wilton Road, from the collection of Andrew Simpson


*The Row is now Beech Road

Settling a few old mysteries and uncovering a few new ones ……. Chorlton-cum-Hardy in 1881

Now, it is a simple observation that what you once thought you knew about a place or a past event can be turned on its head.

And that is pretty much what has happened today with the acquisition of a map from 1881.

My friend Richard came across it in the archives of Trafford Local Studies Centre, and it looks to be unique, in that there isn’t a copy at Central Ref.

Added to which it is a beautifully produced map in colour, and is more detailed than the OS map made a decade later.

Richard thinks it was made for the Withington Board of Health which had become responsible for Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Burnage, Didsbury and Withington, and replaced a system of governance which stretched back to the Middle Ages.

The detail in the map allows me to confirm what I had thought about some of the buildings in the township and offers new clues about some others.

So, in the case of the Renshaws Buildings which stood on the site of the Royal Oak I had long thought that they were back to back cottages which had been built before 1830.

The census returns and other maps suggested this was so, but the 1881 map offers up the evidence that there were indeed ten back to back cottages which also fits with the few photographs that we have.

And the map also clarified what I thought about a set of cottages on the corner of what is now Beech Road and Wilton Road, and back in 1881 bordered a small orchard which was part of Row Acre. 

One of these was Sutton’s Cottage, for which we have a photograph dating from 1892.

The earlier maps suggest that there was more than one cottage, and again the 1881 map confirms this, which for me is quite exciting, because we know that the Sutton family had lived in the end cottage from at least 1851.*  

We know he was an agricultural labourer, and we know how much rent the Sutton’s paid along with the size of the family.

And using even older maps it is possible to date the cottages back into the late and possibly even the mid 18th century. 

They were wattle and daub constructions and by 1881, there were only 50  left in the township, which was not a bad thing.

Most were wattle and daub cottages made by filling in the space between a wooden frame with walls made of woven branches covered with a mix of mud, and straw.

Such houses were easy to build and equally easy to maintain, but there could be disadvantages to living in them.  The porous nature of walls meant they were damp and crumbling clay meant endless repairs.

According to a later Parliamentary report, “Many of them have not been lined with lath and plaster inside and so are fearfully cold in winter.  

The walls may not be an inch in thickness and where the lathes are decayed the fingers may be easily pushed through.  

The roof is of thatch, which if kept in good repair forms a good covering, warm in winter and cool in summer, though doubtless in many instances served as harbour for vermin, for dirt, for the condensed exhalations from the bodies of the occupants of the bedrooms....”  *

Floors made of brick or stone were laid directly on the ground and were almost invariably damp, and in the worst cases reeked with moisture.  Once the brick was broken, the floor became uneven and the bare earth exposed.  

This might be compounded where the cottage floor was below the ground outside or the floor level was uneven which caused problems of drainage.  

Even the proudest wife and mother must have been reconciled to damp and dirt which were the result of such floors.

The only heating would come from the open fire or stove which might have been combined with a cooking range.

On damp days when the coal or wood was wet the smell would permeate every room in the house.

During the winter months the unheated bedrooms were particularly unpleasant places.  On the coldest nights ice would form on the inside of windows.

And that is it for now, but I will be returning to our 1881 map

Pictures; 1881 map of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Withington Board of Health, courtesy of Trafford Local Studies Centre, Sutton’s Cottage circa 1892, photograph from the Wesleyan Souvenir Handbook of 1895, and interior of a Chorlton farm cottage, 1930s, from the collection of Philip Lloyd

* Sarah Sutton, a life lived out on the Row, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2019/04/sarah-sutton-life-lived-out-on-row.html

**British Parliamentary Papers 1893-4 XXXV V,1, page 103 quoted from Gauldie Enid Country Homes p532  The Victorian Countryside edited by Mingay C. E Vol 1 Routedge & Kegan Paul 1981 ISBN 0-7100 1009734 5

Beech Road in the summer of 1932

We are on Beech Road in the summer of 1932.  

Judging by the shadows and the activity it must be sometime in the

morning.

The manager of John Williams and Sons looks on as his assistant sweeps the pavement in front of the shop and beyond him other shop keepers are laying out their produce.

As yet there are few people about and most of those are on bikes are more than likely out on their first delivery rounds.

Most seem oblivious to the camera, except that is for the two by the lampspost who have stopped their conversation to gaze back at the photographer.

The picture perfectly captures Beech Road in the early years of the 1930s.  The stone setts on Wilton Road have yet to be covered and the old railings around the Rec are still in place, otherwise it is not so different from today.

Of course the absence of cars is quite striking as are the shop fronts with their tall windows,  and painted signs.

What is all the more remarkable is that it is a scene which is more familiar to us than to those who walked the road before 1930.

I had always assumed that the row of shops which included John Williams & Sons had been built sometime soon after the beginning of the 20th century.

The site had originally been occupied by Sutton’s Cottage which was a wattle and daub dwelling and may well have been built in the early 1800s and was demolished in 1891.*

So it was reasonable enough to assume that the plot was built over soon afterwards but not so.

The other surprise was that John Williams and Sons were not local traders but in fact owned a chain of grocer shops across the city and beyond which in 1931 accounted for 41 shops of which there were three in Chorlton**, six in Didsbury and

another four in Rusholme.

Now I rather think there is a story here.  Back in 1895 they are listed as John & Sons with five shops in Didsbury abd Fallowfield which by 1911 had become 11 with John Williams described as managing director and the head office at 400 Dickinson Road.

Later still although I can’t date it is a wonderful advert for the company which advertises their ‘“Dainty, Delightful Delicious Tea, [from] John Williams & Sons limited, “The Suburban Grocers”, [at] 28 Victoria Street Manchester Stockport & Branches’.

And looking at the interior of one of their shops sometime in the early 20th century there is more than an element of “class” about the place.

So while the shelves groan with tinned produce and between the potted plants are the familiar posters advertising Californian Apricots at 6½d, and Coffee and other things, it is less cluttered, less in your face and far more discreet.

All of which makes me wonder at what our own shop on Beech Road would have been like, but that like the full story of John Williams and Sons will just have to wait.

Location; Beech Road, Chorlton


Picture; from the Lloyd Collection, 1932

*Sarah Sutton http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/sarah-sutton-life-lived-out-on-row.html

**32 Beech Road, Wilbraham Road, 211 Upper Chorlton Road.