page_title: Chorlton-cum-Hardy
section_title: Suburban growth
hierarchical_section_title: Chorlton-cum-Hardy / History / Suburban growth
caption_attribution_description: Shadow of the horse chestnut tree on The Meade, Chorltonville estate, Manchester, UK.
context_page_description: Chorlton-cum-Hardy is a suburban area of Manchester, England, three miles southwest of the city centre. Chorlton ward had a population of 14,138 at the 2011 census, and Chorlton Park 15,147.
  By the 9th century, there was an Anglo-Saxon settlement here. In the Middle Ages, improved drainage methods led to population growth. In the late Victorian and Edwardian periods, its rural character made it popular among the middle class. The loss of its railway station, the conversion of larger houses into flats or bedsitters, and significant social housing development to the south of the area changed its character again in the 1970s.
  Historically, Chorlton was a village on Lancashire's southern border with Cheshire, and a township within the ancient parish of Manchester. It was incorporated into the city of Manchester in 1904. Chorlton borders Stretford, Sale, Didsbury, Withington, and Whalley Range. The River Mersey runs past Chorlton along its southern boundary. The area's eastern boundary has changed since the 19th century because of incorporation into the City of Manchester and division into wards.
context_section_description: Until the last quarter of the 19th century Chorlton's population had increased slowly. When the railway reached neighbouring Stretford in 1849, upmarket villas were built on a flood-free area in Edge Lane and High Lane. Wilbraham Road was built in 1869 to connect the Egerton holdings across Withington from Edge Lane to Fallowfield. The Midland Railway built a line from Manchester Central through Chorlton station which opened on 1 January 1880. Over the following decade land close to the station was developed for residential and commercial purposes centred on the Barlow Moor Road/Wilbraham Road crossroads, northeast of the old village centre. Houses built in the 1880s attracted more affluent residents who worked in Manchester city centre to high quality homes in a more rural area.
  Irish immigrants came to work in the expanding industries of Manchester, in small-scale horticulture and farming and domestic service. They brought Roman Catholicism, and by the first decade of the 20th century a church and convent school had been established on High Lane.
  Further growth was aided by the arrival of Manchester Corporation's tramway before the First World War: a terminus was built on Barlow Moor Road a short distance south of the junction with High Lane. Chorltonville was developed as a garden suburb south of Chorlton Brook: the houses are mostly large and semi-detached and individual in design, standing on tree-lined roads. Alexandra Park Aerodrome (1917–24), was Manchester's first major airfield located east of the Midland Railway overbridge on Mauldeth Road West.
  After the First World War came a period of residential development to the east of the new village either side of Wilbraham Road and a council housing estate at Merseybank. The Ashby, a two-seater light car, was produced in Chorlton-cum-Hardy by Victor Ashby and Son from 1922 to 1924.
  From the 1960s onwards a council estate at Nell Lane near Southern Cemetery and patchy redevelopment in other areas were completed. There has been immigration particularly from the Indian subcontinent and from Poland; the Polish community arrived in the 1950s and 1960s.
caption: The Meade in Chorltonville
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