Tracking down that mystery house with the help of Laura

"Thanks Andrew, liked the post this morning, you've got me wondering where that house on Edge Lane is....!" Laura Taylor

Now that is music to my ears, not just because it means people are reading the daily stories but that they are interested enough to want to take what they have read a bit further.

In some cases it is to tell me of a personal connection, in others to share their own research and always what comes of this is that a little bit more of our history is uncovered.

The mystery house on Edge Lane demolished in 1987

So back to Laura and her detective work to track the house I wrote about in On Edge Lane sometime before 1987.*

I was writing about an image I had come across in the collection of a house on Edge Lane and admitted "that sometimes you just have to accept defeat.  Not that it happens often, but on occasion all attempts to probe the secrets of a picture come to nothing.

And so it is with this house.  The caption just says demolished in 1987, and that is all you get.

Now it is in a section of the collection devoted to Edge Lane so we are sort of a little way forward but that is as far as it goes.

And as you do I have scanned Edge Lane for any clues to where it may have been.  There are a few spots where there is new build which might date from the late 1980s or 90s but I can’t be sure.  Nor are the OS maps much help. Both the 1907 and 1935 maps deliver up a number of candidates but that is all they are.”

Which is where Laura came in.  She did the research on the ground, located a similar house in a spot which is just right and then also supplied a photograph.

Its surviving possible  neighbour © Laura Taylor, 2013

“Architecturally", she writes, "it’s very similar to a house just as you turn on to High Lane from Edge Lane. Second in on the right hand side past the footpath to Meadow Court, could be that it was close to the flats in that part of town? I'm saying this as maybe a builder built a few in the same style on that row....?”

Looking at the two of them they do seem a match to the point where I wonder if the caption is correct about it being demolished in 1987.

But then as Laura says it is more than likely that the same builder was involved and commissioned the same architect.

After all the development of the township was done piecemeal and land sold off through chief rents to small time speculators, businessmen and even shop keepers and market gardeners.

So the stories roll on, and a big thank you to Laura.

Pictures; original from the Lloyd collection and the other from the collection of Laura Taylor, March 2013

*http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/on-edge-lane-sometime-before-1987.html