Page 13 - THE QUIRKS OF CHORLTON-CUM-HARDY

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was moved from the centre of the green to a corner and has
now also been lost.

And those looking for the two village ponds will be equally
disappointed. The one beside the Bowling Green vanished in the
late 19th century and the second, which ran the length of
Chorlton Row, was filled in to make way for a row of shops in
the 1870s.

Even the name Chorlton Row, which was what the lane out
of the village had always been called, was summarily changed
to the pedestrian name of Beech Road.

But not all has been lost. During the late 1970s and early
‘80s, a series of archaeological digs uncovered something of the
history of the parish church, and more recently there has been
a reawakened interest in our rural past.

The books of John Lloyd, and Cliff Hayes have dug deep into
the oral testimonies from the 18th and early 19th centuries,
which were collected by Thomas Ellwood in the 1880s. More
recently Andrew Simpson’s book used these folk memories,
along with a wealth of other original source material, to
recreate the Chorlton of the first half of the 19th century.1

And there is also our own blog site devoted to the history of
the township, which ranges over Chorlton’s past and attracts a
varied group of contributors, who share their photographs and
memories of Chorlton’s past.2

Chorlton circa late 18th century
1 Simpson, Andrew, The Story of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, 2012
2 Chorltonhistoryblogspot, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/

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