Trams beyond Chorlton

The tram tracks are now being laid down the centre of Hardy Lane. Slowly the construction of the line to connect the airport with the centre of Manchester is coming along. I'm recording the progress with photographs.

As Hardy Lane is not a busy thoroughfare for cars reducing the road to single line traffic shouldn't cause any long tail backs. However the siting of the station at the junction of Mauldeth Road West and Barlow Moor Road might isn't ideal. Not ideal for foot passengers who will have to cross two main roads to reach the platforms. You have a similar situation in Droylsden and there are no cycle lanes to contend with there.

The picture below is from the Manchester Libraries Archives. It shews the tram times to reach the centre of town from the outlying districts in 1917.


Depending on which part of Chorlton-cum-Hardy you lived in it could take from between 20 minutes to 50 minutes to arrive at Piccadilly. It is maybe marginally faster on the Metrolink these days but then you have to factor in the time to walk to the station.

Old Trams Past Hardy Lane

When the Hardy Lane store opened in 1929 the electric tram network in Manchester was at its high water mark. Most miles of track and most passengers carried. But the improved motor buses and for some routes the trolley bus would be taking over. No sooner had the network expanded and further expansions were planned then the phasing out of trams had started. Nine years later it was the bus nipping down Barlow Moor Road.

I'm not a tramways historian, but like a lot of us trams both old rattler and modern metros are a wonderful means of transport. If I'm in your city I'll be travelling on one just 'cos I can. You forget the bus journey but I recall exploring Ghent, Torino, New Orleans, and Melbourne on rails in the road. My ultimate must try is De Kusttram that runs the length of the sea front of Belgium, all 42 miles or 68 kms....maybe just a section of it.

Trams came to Chorlton in 1907 and just a single track with loops for passing. It was part of the public clamour after Withington UDC amalgamated with Manchester in November 1904. People wanted the benefits of a city which was trams, a library, eventually a swimming baths and a municipal park, and general improvements to roads, street lighting and schools. On Thursday 9th May 1907 an illuminated car heralded that a new service would commence next day. Now I'd always thought that the original terminus was at the top of Beech Road but it wasn't it was at High Lane opposite the church. Even in 1913 the trams stopped there but by that time it was a double line after road widening. It was also where five roads met so complaints about congestion and safety were raised.

If you wanted to go to Hardy Lane, Southern Cemetery and on to West Didsbury a new bus service was introduced in June 1907. Every half hour from 1300 to 2030 hours. The full journey would have been 2p and the half journey up to Christ Church, West Didsbury would have been 1p. Not cheap for an Edwardian single fare.

After the Brookbank bridge over Chorlton Brook was reconstructed and widened in 1911 then the route could have tram tracks south to Southern Cemetery.

There is a lot more to find out, isn't there ever.... After 26 years with horses (1877-1903) and 48 years with electric traction (1901-1949) the old tram era ended . In 1994 the first of the modern era Metrolink service started, in 2012 it reached Chorlton.

Photographs : copy of old postcard of Manchester Corporation tramcars. Aerial view of Barlow Moor Road in 1926. There is Oak House Farm (not Hardy House Farm which I stated incorrectly until the comment below was recived) to the left rear of the large laundry building, and a field in the foreground that became Chorlton Park. Note the two tram lines and poles to carry the wires. Courtesy of Manchester Libraries Image Collection m72048.

Further reading :
Trams Stop Here - a weblog about trams of the world.
Chorlton Trams - on Chorlton History weblog

Tram Bridge Over the Mersey

In four years time trams will be thundering over this bridge over the River Mersey. From road speed, that's slow, down Hardy Lane onto the Meadows and up the ramp and down again. This was the picture yesterday. No work was being done but the clatter of construction could be hear from further down the proposed line. Only a few hundred metres from the sedate footbridge at Jackson's Boat.

Other pictures

Tram Bridge over the Mersey

Let's see how the new tram route to Manchester Airport is progressing. These photographs were taken on Friday 1st of June, 2012. Seen many wagons and other vehicles going down Hardy Lane to the site where the bridge over the River Mersey is going to be constructed. It's higher than I anticipated. You could easily get a small boat or yacht with a mast underneath. Not that I have ever seen any navigation this high up the river. The occasional canoe but never a sailing craft. It's going to be another four years before the whole route is completed.

The bottom picture is at the Jackson's Boat end of Hardy Lane. An elder tree is in bloom, the old bridge to the pub is on the left. It makes for a pretty country scene. You'd never guess that suburbia is on the doorstep.

So despite all the disruptions and digging up the little bit of countryside there are still tranquil places.

New Bridge on the Mersey

The map shews a new bridge to carry the new tram route to Manchester Airport. It takes a straight route from the end of the Hardy Lane as a roadway across the meadow land to the River Mersey. The old footbridge to Jackson's Boat can be seen north of the new tram route. This will be all be completed by 2016. It's been a long time since the plans were first proposed. So long ago it has become a distant memory of when I did work in Wythenshawe and they were announced. But work has started, it is no longer a description on paper and those are real foundations in the photograph.

The Open Street Map people have gone forward in time and have put the new route onto the existing road layout. Bridge building, even just footbridges, used to be such a massive engineering achievement but if you think how many have been opened in recent years over the River Mersey, the River Irwell in Manchester and the River Thames in London it is fairly commonplace.

Open Street Map Reference

Tram Works #1

The new tram to the airport is going to rumble down this quiet wide road. So over the next year, or is it more like two years, the construction and changes are going to be recorded because we know things will never be the same once the route is opened. A documentary in numerous installments. A minute long, filmed in a sort of time-lapse style, on a quiet grey winter's day in January. Return in the springtime, check the progress, if any....

The Green Fields Pass

Chorlton still has a slice of greenery and position yourself at the right spot it can be a bucolic scene. There is always someone who can remember when all this was fields, the more contemporary version for Manchester is someone who can remember when all this was factories employing thousands when all you have now is another industrial age relic converted to the ready-meal appartment lifestyle, another museum and a visitors centre....

But that rural aspect to Chorlton-cum-Hardy wasn't so long ago. The newspaper report is from 1929 and is entitled "The Green Fields Pass".

"There used to be some pleasant countryside lying alongside Barlow Moor Road between Chorlton-cum-Hardy and West Didsbury. Last year travellers on the "circular route" looked down upon fields of oats ripening in the sun. There was a farm with beasts in the pasture. A lane ran down to the river and a footpath followed by the hedges, both being much esteemed locally as lovers' walks.

Tram to the Mersey

The forthcoming year will see the start of the construction of the tram track to the airport down Hardy Lane. Brace yourself for months of traffic delays and walking disruption, as anyone who has visited the roads up to Droylsden where a new tram route is being laid down will testify. We've already been photographing the preliminary construction work and will be publishing the progress. Oh the heady delights of something new to blog about rather than just the past.

But back in the 1930's with the electric trams running on the streets of Manchester one of "the countryside on your doorstep locations" would be alighting at Hardy Lane and walking a mile down to Jackson's Boat for the charm of the River Mersey and the green fields of Sale and Chorlton.

"Manchester Municipal School of Art organised a competition to produce pictorial posters for the Manchester Corporation Transport Department trams and buses between 1933 and 1934. In all, eighteen designs were used; the corporation paid the School of Art two guineas in order to use them. Their unusual shape was designed to fit on the back of the driver's cab."

You can see all eighteen designs thanks to Greater Manchester Archives at
Mcrarchives' Flick Collection

Trips to Dunham Park, Platt Fields, football, the new Central Library, Bollin Valley at Hale were just some of the destinations on the municipal public transport system.