Flooded fields Chorlton 2012

The River Mersey might not have flooded the fields in Chorlton for a very long time. But the heavy recent rains have made paths across the Meadows walkable only in wellington boots. Well you could wade through in regular footware and dry them later.

The picture shews the path from Brookburn Road out towards Jackson's Boat. It looks like a muddy stream. I was out collecting kindling just like local people would have done centuries ago. There is plenty of it about. Didn't get very far, and beyond the water covered path are the soggy ponds on the open grounds.

These days people buy kindling wood to create a fire. It's cleaner and quicker. I much prefer the cheaper and traditional option. I don't know the legal position on collecting fallen twigs and branches. It is probably not allowed without permission or a licence. Removing whole trees might be taken seriously by someone in authority or the land owner.

When the rains cease, and the paths dry out, which they will then I can continue the walk across to Jackson's Boat.

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

Flood Warning

We've had a lot of rain recently, and this is summertime not the spring or autumn deluge. Now I wish I had a better copy of this photograph from February 1923. The River Mersey has broken its banks, Jackson's Boat is in the distance and that is Rifle Road under water. Thankfully the flood defences on the River Mersey were built higher and higher in the 1980's and scenes like this will not be seen on this stretch of the river again. Well if it does happen in the future, there will be soon a tram track running to the right side of this picture and there won't be any service on that line.

Checking the level of the River Mersey is something I've done for years. You move to Chorlton and you casually observe that the sluice gates on the river are to take water out and not put it in. In short, when the river gets too high then go flood the meadows and any other low land.

Oh well, it's part of life but you just that you don't want to be the poor devil being interviewed by the local reporter with water breaching those sandbags around the front door .

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

Rifle Road

Rifle Road is the continuation of Hardy Lane after the Jackson's Boat public house. It runs south towards the M60 motorway. I have always thought it was an interesting name, maybe it's something to do with shooting. Well that hunce turned out to be correct.

It is named Riflebutts Road on the 1875 OS map, and then as Rifle Road on subsequent OS maps. There was a rifle range nearby. The path to the range was roughly on the edge of the football pitch that is opposite the pub. The edge that is furthest from the river. The targets were in a field beyond, the one that was used by people flying model aircraft. It might still be used by the aircraft flyers only I haven't heard them in a while...

The rifle shooting for practice and competitions were the interest of the 28th Cheshire Rifle Volunteers, founded 7th April 1860 from men around the Sale Moor district.

Now I'm no military historian but it appears rifle volunteers was a popular movement from the 1860's through to the 1880's. For example there was a grand inspection event on The Roode, Chester on the 20th July 1860. The chaps from the 28th headed by Captain Watkin attended with lots of other volunteers before 35,000 to 40,000 spectators. The numbers involved in volunteering is around 100, a report from 1877 lists the 28th Cheshires having 89 enrollments and led by Captain Mattinson. It is also a time of technical developments in rifles with the switch from muzzle loading to the easier breech loading.

The 28th Cheshires were absorbed into the 12th Cheshire Rifle Volunteer Corps as G Company on 13th April 1880. They were joined by the 12th Altrincham, 15th Knutsford, 23rd Northwich, 26th Cheadle, and 32nd Lymm. The rifle range doesn't appear on later maps in the 1890's.

So, all that activity is remembered in the name of Rifle Road, and also a wonderful building The Volunteer Hotel (built 1898, Grade II listed, now Joseph Holt brewery) on Washway Road. That's the A56 Manchester to Chester Road, though the Romans who built the original might have called it something else..

Links : Orders of Battle
I'd recommend Gene Hunt's Photos on Flickr. He gets all over Manchester taking pictures of how the city looks today. That's his photo of the Volunteer Hotel taken in 2008.

Jackson Bridge..tolls

Approach to the bridge from Rifle Road and the public house

Hardy Lane would be just come to an end at the River Mersey but at the end there is a footbridge to a pub and beyond into Cheshire. According to Thomas Ellwood who wrote about the history of Chorlton-cum-Hardy in 1885-86, and whose writings have been copied ever since..."The first bridge was erected in 1816, at a cost of £200, by Samuel Wilton. It was a wooden structure, with three supports sunk into the bed of the stream". Mr. Wilton ran the public house and instead of relying on the small ferry boat probably thought access via footbridge, very likely with a toll, would be better for trade. He never realised his investment for he was declared bankrupt in 1817.
......
The second replacement bridge, and the one you walk across today was erected in 1881. Again according to Thomas Ellwood "it was paid for by Mr. John Brooks." Don't know how much it cost but we know there was a toll of 1/2d if on foot, 1d with a bicycle. No information if you came on a horse or mule. There was a gate on the bridge near the pub side, and you can still see where it was positioned.

Mr. John Baguley Brooks (1856-1886) had inherited the land and property from the estate of his late father, Rev. John Brooks (1825-1856). He was then a 25 year old barrister from the wealthy Brooks family. He was later very briefly MP for Altrincham winning the seat in the 1885 General Election for the Conservative cause. But took ill and passed over when just aged 30 whilst in London a year later.

Going back even further Samuel Brooks (1792-1864) bought the land. A very successful banker who bought realty and developed estates of big houses for rich people in Whalley Range, Brooklands, and Hale Barns. He had three sons and five daughters, the eldest one, William, inherited the bank and lived at Barlow Hall, Chorlton.

One thing still puzzles. How come this bridge charged tolls, usually that power and the tariff was laid down by an Act of Parliament. Not found one so far, nor the year, sometime in the 1950's, when the tolls ceased...but then historical research isn't spoon fed it is prised from wide reading.

Historians of Chorlton Thomas Ellwood (Andrew Simpson)
Wikipedia has an outline of some the Brooks family : Samuel Brooks ; William Cunliffe Brooks
John Baguley Brooks

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.

Hardy Lane Goes to Rifle Road

Hardy Lane originally ended here at Jackson's Boat. When this picture was taken in 1900 the public house was called the Bridge Inn and it is listed in street directories as the last property on the lane even though it is on the south bank of the River Mersey. The iron bridge was built in 1881 at the E.Bellhouse Iron Foundry in Ancoats when Manchester was an industrial city. It replaced an earlier wooden bridge. There was a penny toll for using the bridge right up until the 1950's. It was one of the few bridges in Britain that charged for pedestrians. Like to know to whom the money was paid to perhaps the people who paid for the bridge?

Note the steep approach to the bridge which sits atop of the flood protection embankments. It's constructed of stone setts, still there and still tricky to go down with a bicycle or when wet. The gates and wooden steps shown in this picture have long gone. Hardy Lane then runs into what is now called Rifle Road. When this photograph was taken it was a narrow country track and the first building you would have come to was Sale Old Hall. That was demolished in 1920. You can still see an old dovecote that was in the grounds of the hall for it has been restored to a new home in Walkden Gardens, Sale. It's well worth visiting the Walkden Gardens - a hidden jewel, free admission, take a sandwich, explore and enjoy.

Further reference and better image : Trafford Lifetimes
E.Bellhouse Jackson's Boat Bridge.

Bridge at the end of the Lane

Hardy Lane is a no through road for traffic but it carries on as a footpath to Jackson's Boat. It deviates from its original course in places. At the end is an iron footbridge over the River Mersey to the pub and Rifle Road.

The bridge was opened on Friday 14th October 1881 and you had to pay a toll to cross it until sometime in the 1940's. The name of the iron manufacturer was E.T. Bellhouse who had the Eagle Foundry off Oxford Street in Manchester. I only recently found out that this was no ordinary foundry but a remarkable one. Edward Taylor Bellhouse (b. 1816) was the leading manufacturer of iron portable buildings, and did constructions for Balmoral Castle, in Peru, Argentina, Melbourne, some railway bridges, hydraulic presses, the list goes on...

This was one of his last constructions, though the firm carried on until around 1893. E.T. Bellhouse died on Thursday 13th October 1881 - the day before the bridge opened.

Lots of information in Chapter 4 E.T. BELLHOUSE AND CO. ENGINEERS AND IRON FOUNDERS - all 38 pages (PDF)