One hundred years of one house in Chorlton part 46, when you could see all the way across to Chorlton Brook

Looking south from Beech Road in 1907

The continuing story of the house Joe and Mary Ann Scott lived in for over 50 years and the families that have lived here since.*

Now I would like to have stood in our dining room on a warm summer’s day soon after Joe and Mary Ann moved in.

Back then they would have had an uninterrupted view south across to the Brook and the Ville and had they been on the same spot just a decade earlier that view would have stretched pretty much all the way to the Mersey given the odd set of trees.

Nor was that all because the plot of land they bought was sandwiched between two farms and overlooked the Rec.

All of which is a reminder that in 1915 this bit of Chorlton had yet to lose some of its rural character.

We still had a blacksmith at the bottom of Beech Road and children were still regularly sent to buy milk, butter and cheese from the local farms.

Looking south in 1934

But already if Joe and Mary Ann had looked a little to the east their view of Barlow Moor Road and Brook Bank farm had been obscured by the newly built houses on Claude and Reynard Road and off to the west the tall chimney of the laundry would be all too visible.

And it would be Joe Scott who added to the urbanisation by building many of the small houses on what are now Provis, Higson and Neal Roads, and then in the fullness of time completing the job with those on Beaumont and Belgrave.

So by the 1930s my view from the dining room had pretty much gone and with it a little bit of that once rural Chorlton.

Pictures; South of Beech Road in 1907 from the OS map of Manchester , 1907, and the same in 1934 from Geographia Street Plans, 1934 courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/

*The story of house,
http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20story%20of%20a%20house