EPW041520 ENGLAND (1933). Wythenshawe Park and the Princess Parkway under construction, Wythenshawe, from the south, 1933

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Nearby Images (5)

EPW041520
  0° 0m
EPW036814
  209° 145m
EPW041519
  213° 212m
EPW041521
  232° 219m
EPW041517
  234° 278m

Details

Title [EPW041520] Wythenshawe Park and the Princess Parkway under construction, Wythenshawe, from the south, 1933
Reference EPW041520
Date June-1933
Link
Place name WYTHENSHAWE
Parish
District
Country ENGLAND
Easting / Northing 382369, 389688
Longitude / Latitude -2.2652210361344, 53.403457352084
National Grid Reference SJ824897

Pins

Chorlton Railway Station (now Metrolink)

effigy
Tuesday 13th of October 2020 03:45:56 PM
Egerton Road North

effigy
Tuesday 13th of October 2020 03:44:09 PM
Wilbraham Road

effigy
Tuesday 13th of October 2020 03:43:13 PM
Egerton Road South

effigy
Tuesday 13th of October 2020 03:42:19 PM
St. Werburgh's Road

effigy
Tuesday 13th of October 2020 03:39:51 PM
Yew Tree School

brian chadwick
Monday 28th of April 2014 09:04:29 PM
Roofs of houses in Darley Avenue

John Ellis
Saturday 18th of January 2014 07:12:07 PM
Mersey Bank estate

John Ellis
Saturday 18th of January 2014 07:10:28 PM
Princess Road (the future A5103), towards Moss Side and central Manchester.

John Ellis
Saturday 18th of January 2014 07:04:09 PM

John Ellis
Saturday 18th of January 2014 07:02:46 PM
Former Chorlton Union workhouse, later Withington Hospital, on Nell Lane, West Didsbury.

John Ellis
Saturday 18th of January 2014 07:02:08 PM

John Ellis
Saturday 18th of January 2014 07:00:58 PM
Barlow Moor Road (now A5145)

John Ellis
Saturday 18th of January 2014 07:00:08 PM
Tower of Christ Church CE Parish Church, West Didsbury. The first stage of Princess Road - the future A5103 - southwards from Manchester ended at its junction with Darley Avenue, adjacent to the church.

John Ellis
Saturday 18th of January 2014 06:58:35 PM
River Mersey. Lancashire side to the top of the picture.

John Ellis
Wednesday 8th of January 2014 10:52:28 AM
Palatine Road (B5167), towards West Didsbury, Withington and Manchester.

John Ellis
Wednesday 8th of January 2014 10:51:17 AM
Waterside Farm, off Fairy Lane in Sale Moor.

John Ellis
Wednesday 8th of January 2014 10:49:41 AM
Wythenshawe Road (B5167) beneath the trees, running west towards Baguley and Timperley.

John Ellis
Wednesday 8th of January 2014 10:48:12 AM
Sale Road (B5166)

John Ellis
Wednesday 8th of January 2014 10:47:08 AM
Baguley Brook - boundary between Northenden parish and Baguley township/Bowdon parish. The field in the bottom left-hand corner of the picture is in Baguley.

John Ellis
Wednesday 8th of January 2014 10:46:05 AM
Mersey Bank estate

John Ellis
Wednesday 8th of January 2014 10:43:16 AM

John Ellis
Wednesday 8th of January 2014 09:19:47 AM
Manchester City Centre

John Ellis
Wednesday 8th of January 2014 09:18:58 AM

John Ellis
Wednesday 8th of January 2014 09:18:04 AM

John Ellis
Wednesday 8th of January 2014 09:16:52 AM
Farmer's Arms pub

John Ellis
Tuesday 7th of January 2014 08:19:41 PM
Piper Hill Avenue (part of the Manchester overspill estate, under construction at this time).

John Ellis
Tuesday 7th of January 2014 03:08:41 PM
Greenpark Road

John Ellis
Tuesday 7th of January 2014 03:07:20 PM

John Ellis
Tuesday 7th of January 2014 03:05:54 PM

John Ellis
Tuesday 7th of January 2014 03:05:07 PM
Kenworthy Lane

John Ellis
Tuesday 7th of January 2014 03:04:30 PM

John Ellis
Tuesday 7th of January 2014 03:03:56 PM

John Ellis
Tuesday 7th of January 2014 03:03:23 PM

John Ellis
Tuesday 7th of January 2014 03:02:16 PM

John Ellis
Tuesday 7th of January 2014 03:01:13 PM

John Ellis
Tuesday 7th of January 2014 03:00:00 PM
Blackcarr Wood

John Ellis
Tuesday 7th of January 2014 02:59:03 PM
Altincham Road (A560) - towards Baguley and Altrincham to the left, Gatley and Cheadle to the right.

John Ellis
Tuesday 7th of January 2014 02:57:45 PM
Liverpool Central-Warrington Central-Stockport Tiviot Dale railway line

John Ellis
Tuesday 7th of January 2014 02:56:24 PM

John Ellis
Tuesday 7th of January 2014 02:55:19 PM

John Ellis
Tuesday 7th of January 2014 02:54:45 PM
Wythenshawe Park

John Ellis
Tuesday 7th of January 2014 02:53:32 PM
Northenden vilage centre

John Ellis
Tuesday 7th of January 2014 02:52:55 PM
Manchester's Southern Cemetery

John Ellis
Tuesday 7th of January 2014 02:51:57 PM

John Ellis
Tuesday 7th of January 2014 02:50:52 PM
Chorlton-cum-Hardy

John Ellis
Tuesday 7th of January 2014 02:49:35 PM
River Mersey - historic boundary between Cheshire and Lancashire.

John Ellis
Tuesday 7th of January 2014 02:48:22 PM

User Comment Contributions

The river Mersey and its floodplain were always historically a barrier between Lancashire and Cheshire, and crossing places - for long often fords and ferryboats rather than bridges, especially on the middle and lower reaches of the river - were few and far between.



For centuries that had mattered more to merchants and soldiers passing through than it had to local people, who usually had neither the opportunity nor the incentive to travel far. Even in the early twentieth century, the inhabitants of the scattered farms, cottages and hamlets of Northen Etchells would look to Stockport as their market town, while those in Baguley looked to Altrincham. Perhaps only Northenden village, benefiting from the Palatine Road bridge and a tram link northward, gravitated to some extent to Manchester as a centre.



That of course wasn't how Manchester's city fathers viewed matters when, in the 1920s, they began to contemplate building new public housing in the adjacent Cheshire countryside to replace their inner-city slums. At that time there was only one bridge linking Manchester with the tract of countryside it coveted: the 19th century Palatine Road, which just over eighty years before had made redundant both the ford and the ferry still commemorated by the names of Northenden's Ford Lane and Boat Lane. Nor was it likely to fit the preferences of the folk who would eventually come to live in the new houses, who were overwhelmingly inner-city Manchester folk who long continued to gravitate back to Manchester for their shopping and their social life.



Hence Manchester City Council's decision to extend Princess Road, a straight modern "expressway" already built from Moss Side through residual open country between Cholton and Withington as far as West Didsbury. This new road would now, the councillors decided, be driven on southwards, bridging the Mersey and passing the western fringe of Northenden, to link up with the Stockport-Altrincham road - the one main road already running east to west through the Wythenshawe estate area - so providing the new estate with a quick and relatively uncongested route into the city centre. When completed it was classified as the A5103.



The Northenden section of Princess Parkway - south of Kenworthy Lane - was deliberately laid out on both sides with enormously wide grassy perimeters, abundantly planted with trees and large shrubs and criss-crossed by a choice of tarmac footways. This reflected the style of Barry Parker, the town planner entrusted to lead the Wythenshawe estate project, who was a devotee of the "garden city" principles of urban development which came to the fore in the early twentieth century; his estates were very varied in house and ground plan design, with generous provision of green space and trees. He even managed to preserve almost all of the woods, spinneys and copses which had speckled the open farmland and these still mostly survive today.



Unlike Princess Parkway's serene parkland surroundings, which have been much diminished by the A5103's integration into the later twentieth century motorway network, with space-devouring slip roads replacing the original road's use of large roundabouts at its major intersections. But given the modern preoccupation with crime - not to mention Wythenshawe's later reputation in that respect! - perhaps the hundreds of yards of secluded pathway, often diving behind dense shrubberies, have come to be less valued than they were in the early days back in the more innocent and less suspicious 1930s?!



John Ellis
Wednesday 8th of January 2014 10:38:43 AM