Taking in Mauldeth Road, Pinewood Close and Leegate Gardens
Mauldeth Road is lined with larger houses, Victorian and interwar villas, bijou apartments and the odd Modernist interloper.
Through the avenues and alleyways, home to those ever so tidy inter and postwar enclaves.
Where a mans gotta work out which side he’s on Any way he chooses Chances are he loses No one gets to live too long
Though in my experience the converse is true, this is a mature community gently maturing, on the inside of everything.
Hiding what may possibly be hidden behind the hedge, though the privacy of privet is in retreat, replaced by bay, birch, holly and the extremely hardy laurel.
The left hand house has purposefully retained the original Crittall Windows.
High above the streets of Stockport – zooming in to a cluster of cul de sacs branching out from Tithe Barn Road.
Cul de sac translates as bottom of the bag, the French do not use the term, preferring voie sans issue, literally a dead end.
In the slums of New York City, on the East River just below the Queensboro Bridge, wealthy people live in opulent and luxurious apartments because of the picturesque views of the river, while the destitute and poor live nearby in crowded, cockroach-infested tenements.
I assume that countless civic meetings and Estate Agents’ offices eschew the terminal term – dead end, in favour of the assumed elegance of the cu de sac.
Polanski’s second English-language feature, it follows two injured gangsters who take refuge in the remote island castle of a young British couple in the North of England, spurring a series of mind games and violent altercations.
I was informed by a local resident that the streets and houses had been used by film crews, firstly for ease of access, the location being closed off, and secondly as the period architecture aligns perfectly with the current penchant for mid-century styling.
Within the typology there area number of variants, bungalow, dormer bungalow, link detached, semi-detached and detached.
Very very few of the homes have retained their original features, the imperative of our age is to extend and improve.
There is a covenant in the deeds which prevents the building of border fencing – therefore the development retains its small-scale suburban American ambience.
I was a delicate child with bronchitis, must have done me good as I went on to serve 39 years in the army!
We lay on camp beds for an hour in the afternoons, on bad days on blankets on the floor in the main building.
Michael Dooley 10/03/2013
Tithe Barn school stands on land which was originally a house called Longfield, the house sign is on the wall near the side entrance to TBS, which was built around 1871 for John Brown who owned Afleck and Brown’s department store in the centre of Manchester. The gardener for the house lived at what is now known as Tithe Barn Cottage.
John later sold the house to his brother William whose wife sold it very cheaply to Stockport Education committee in 1929 to be used as an open air school for children who suffered ill health in the town, mainly through smoke pollution. This was called Longfield Open Air School. Pupils travelled there by bus before breakfast, from Portwood and other parts of the town. Most of them had a sleep outside in the afternoon so that they could take advantage of the clean air of Heaton Mersey. As the town became healthier and the chimneys stopped belching out black smoke, the need for an open air school lessened and it closed in 1968.
The original house was demolished and some of the beautiful wooden interior offered to museums in York where the original bath with its enameled sides and copper shower canopy is now on display in the Castle Museum. The only part kept and used by the architect was the Venetian glass bathroom window which Mrs Brown had made to remind her of the beautiful water scenes in Venice. This glass panel was installed outside the Headteacher’s office and is still there today.
Modern Mooch 