Page 11 - Churches Chorlton

Sample Chapter.
To buy the book click here.

This was only a temporary hiccup,
and a year later, “the land and
buildings known as Chorlton High
School on High Lane were
purchased”.***
All of which brings me back to those
trees, because as ever, there was a
developer waiting in the wings, and in
the space of a few years, the Priory
was demolished, the trees cut down
and the garden was built over.
The stretch along Barlow Moor Road
became Pemberton Arcade, with
Needham and Priory Avenues behind,
Oakley Gatepost 2016
and Maple Avenue to the south.
The story of the “battle of the trees” is now well in the past,
but as we know the issues of redevelopment and the loss of
green bits is topical, as is the conflict between public and
commercial use, which was also echoed back in 1897 by
another “tree letter”.
Writing on the same day, J.G.J, argued that the Oakley site,
should be given over to a public school and free library, “which
are required badly”.
It never happened, and Chorlton had to wait another decade
to get the school and a temporary library, leaving the children
of Chorlton reliant on the church school, and a host of “private
schools and academies”.

*Churches of the Establishment, St Clement’s Parish Church, Chorlton Green, St
Clement’s New Church, St Clement’s Road, St Edmund’s Alexandra Road, South, and St
Werburgh’s, Wilbraham Road. Roman Catholic, St Augustine’s High Lane, and English
Martyrs, Alexandra Road South. Baptist, McLaren Memorial, Wilbraham Road, and Union
Chapel, Edge Lane. Congregational, Macfadyen Memorial, Barlow Moor Road, and
Wilbraham Road, Withington Road. Presbyterian Church of England, Wilbraham Road.
Primitive Methodist, Macpherson Memorial, High Lane. Unitarian, Wilbraham Road.
Wesleyan Methodist, Manchester Road, Beech Road Mission, Beech Road, and Manley
Park, Clarendon Road. Free Church of England, Emmanuel Church, Oswald Road. From
The Chorlton-cum-Hardy District Almanack and Handbook, For 1910, Harry Kemp
**Correspondence to the Manchester Guardian, April 7, 1897
***Monsignor Joseph Kelly, St John’s Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Commemoration New
Church Year Book, 1928
9