HARTSHILL HISTORY WALK

Two hundred years ago most of the land in Hartshill was divided into five estates, the
history of which has determined the development of the area. North of Hartshill Road
were Cliff Ville, Hartshill Farm, Noahs Ark and Stoke Lane Farm. South of Hartshill Road
were the estates of the Reverend John Whalley and Mrs Ann Hoby, of which lands
Harpfield Farm (Whalley) and Stoke Road (Hoby) were part. In addition there was land
owned jointly by Sir Thomas Fenton Fletcher Boughey and the Reverend Lawrence
Armitstead, which was divided into several separate parcels on both sides of Hartshill
Road.
The first of these estates to have any development upon it was the Hartshill Farm estate
on which the owner William Cumming built Cumming and Allen Street in the 1860s.
Later in the 1890s Richard Peake built in Minton Street and erected Stile House for his
own house. The next development followed on the sale of the Noahs Ark Inn to
Robinsons Brewery of Stockport by the Bill family of Trent Vale in 1898 and the land
attached in 1900 to Albert Bullock. He immediately sold the Hartshill Road frontage in
two lots; one to the partnership of George Lewis Jones and George Evans and the other
to Frederick Frost. Jones and Evans built the houses from beyond Stanley Road (and in
Stanley Road) to Osborne Road and Frederick Frost from there to the Noahs Ark.
Also in 1900 Jones and Evans purchased part of the Hoby estate on the opposite side of
Hartshill Road and they and then Jones and his new partner Geoffrey William Hilton
purchased the rest of the estate in the next decade. Jones and Evans built the frontage
of Hartshill Road, Coronation Road, Albany Road, Riseley Road and Ashwell Road. Jones
and Hilton then built Egerton Road and Linley Road and then began what was to
become the Harpfield Estate with the construction of the Avenue and the first houses
there from 1913, together with The (Stowell) Green, and Upper and Lower Crescent and
the initial building in Longfield Road. As a consequence of the 1909 Housing and Town
Planning Act, a Town Planning Area was declared which included the Harpfield Estate
and this laid down the density of houses per acre to 12 per acre. It also began the
demolition of unfit properties, such as Hartshill Farm, Ratcliffes Pottery, Proctors Row
and part of Cottons Row.

House-building, particularly that designated working-class, had lessened in the years

before the First World War and ended completely during it. The Housing Act of 1919
aimed to alter this through the medium of a subsidy and a imposition on local
authorities to survey their housing needs and to build houses to meet the demand
indicated, either by buying land themselves or by persuading landowners to build for
them on their land. There was an attempt to do this on the Harpfield Estate where an
offer by Jones and Hilton to build 400 houses could not progress because of a failure to
agree a price for the houses and land. Other possible sites considered were Stanley
Road,

Riseley Road, Egerton Road and Lansdowne Road. These would be small

developments, known as scattered sites, such as that built by Stephen Heath in

Gladstone Street, Basford.
There was little private building until after the Housing Act of 1923 which gave subsidies
of up to 100 to build houses, depending on density, size and value. The upper limit was
about 600. The subsidy which was gradually reduced as prices fell lasted until 1929 and
caused an explosion of building in Hartshill, which became the most popular area in the
City for development. The land bought by Albert Bullock, still undeveloped, was built
over

with subsidy houses, with the exception of Trafalgar Road, built in 1930.

The Harpfield Farm estate was wholly developed after the First World War. The then
owner was Mrs EG Brown, whose former married name was Palmer. One of the children
of her first marriage was Leonard. Hence Palmers Green and originally Leonard Avenue.
. Mrs Brown received planning approval in January 1924 for the first houses. She later
applied to build a further eight houses, and asked for a loan of 2700 for the purpose,
but may not have pursued the matter. 27 houses had been built there by 1930. Part of
Harpfield Farm (the Butty Field) had been given over to allotments by the late
nineteenth century and remained so until the 1970s, when an extension from Palmers
Green was built on the land.
The other private post-war development in Hartshill was that of Collingwood Grove, off
Cumming Street in the early 1970s. This again had been allotment land, having been
bought by the City Council in the late 1930s from the niece of William Cumming,
Antoinette Fuller. A plan to build houses there before the Second World War had been
rejected. In the 1950s the Council built houses and flats in Cumming Street on the site of

Hartshill Farm and its buildings, the farmhouse having been demolished in 1913 and the
other buildings in 1933.
The Boughey/Armitstead property in Hartshill consisted of three separate parts; the land
was sold at auction in 1907 in six lots; Lot 1on which much of Lansdowne Road and
Claridge Road were built before the First World War was bought by Jones and Evans, as
was Lot 6 (Longfield Road). When the partnership ended shortly after the purchase of
the land, George Evans took Lot 1 and George Lewis Jones took Lot 6 into his new
partnership with Geoffrey William Hilton. Lot 3 was the property bought by the
Silverdale Co-operative Society, on which they built their dairy, bakery and shop.
In modern terms, the Cliff Ville estate was the area bounded by Shelton Old Road, North
Street and the boundary between the Jolly Potters and Bowyers Carpets, following the
line of the stream in Hartshill Park. The Hartshill Farm estate joined the Cliff Ville estate
to the west and was bounded by North Street, Shelton New Road and the alleyway
between Cumming Street and the Noahs Ark.

The Noahs Ark estate was bounded by

Stoke Old Road and reached along Hartshill Road as far as the Britannia Building
Society. Stoke Old Road Farmhouse still survives. The fields were on the north side of
Stoke Old Road and on both sides of Shelton New Road. Much of the land was lost to
the railway in the mid-nineteenth century, but a portion still survives in the Stoke Old
Road allotments. Harpfield Farm stood at the far end of Boundary Street and despite the
name did not include the Harpfield (site of the School and playing field). That land,
together with part of the Kings Field was owned by Thomas Kinnersley, a Newcastle
banker. Kings Croft, Spring Street, Cartlidge Street and Byron Street were built on the
Kings Field in the 1850s. Stoke Lane Farmhouse stood on the site of the Coroners
Court. Its land reached in length along Hartshill Road from Palmers Green to the
Avenue and in depth as far as Wayside Grove and was farmed for many years by the
Gorton family.