Working class homes had since the beginning of the nineteenth century been built by speculative builders, landowners and even shop keepers, some of whom according to one Sheffield investigator “cannot even write their own name”.[1] 

It is just possible that the outer walls were only one brick thick and those dividing properties were just half a brick.  A fact that meant that there was very little privacy as almost any noise could be heard through the wall. The bricks were often of the poorest quality and tended to soak up rain water which made the houses damp as well as cold.[2]   The brick or floors resting on bare earth must have added to the dampness of the houses. 

And then there would have been the smells.  Some of these no doubt came from the privies behind the cottages but others came from the drains, which were fed into the house from the waste water pipe. Working class homes in the towns and countryside would not have had a sink; instead there would have been a slope stone.  This as the name implies was just a slab of stone with slightly raised edges and tilted at a gentle angle to allow water to drain away. Modern sinks have a trap in the waste pipe which prevents smells reaching into the house, but no such trap was built into the waste pipe of the slop stone hence the smell.  Having said this some housing experts of the time preferred the slop stone.  James Hole argued that this encouraged the inhabitants to wash the pots rather than leave them in the sink.[3]

Dominating the kitchen would have been the open range, used for cooking heating and in bad weather as the main source of heat for drying clothes.   No pictures exist of such a room in Hardy Cottages.  The nearest we can come is the reconstruction of a worker’s kitchen in Salford Museum.  We have to be careful because it is from an urban setting reconstructed from a one up one down house and may date from an earlier period but it is similar to rural kitchens in other parts of the country.

Nor do we have any contemporary accounts of life in Chorlton from the view point of people like the Gresty’s.  This means that in reconstructing their daily life we have to draw on the work of such people as Booth, and Rowntree who undertook major social studies in our cities during the late 19^th century.  Charles Booth had carried out a survey of the poor in London while Rowntree had conducted a similar survey of the poor in York. 

[3] Hole James, The Homes of the Working Classes and Suggestions for their Improvement 1866 Page 70

Working class homes had since the beginning of the nineteenth century been built by speculative builders, landowners and even shop keepers, some of whom according to one Sheffield investigator “cannot even write their own name”.[1] 

It is just possible that the outer walls were only one brick thick and those dividing properties were just half a brick.  A fact that meant that there was very little privacy as almost any noise could be heard through the wall. The bricks were often of the poorest quality and tended to soak up rain water which made the houses damp as well as cold.[2]   The brick or floors resting on bare earth must have added to the dampness of the houses. 

And then there would have been the smells.  Some of these no doubt came from the privies behind the cottages but others came from the drains, which were fed into the house from the waste water pipe. Working class homes in the towns and countryside would not have had a sink; instead there would have been a slope stone.  This as the name implies was just a slab of stone with slightly raised edges and tilted at a gentle angle to allow water to drain away. Modern sinks have a trap in the waste pipe which prevents smells reaching into the house, but no such trap was built into the waste pipe of the slop stone hence the smell.  Having said this some housing experts of the time preferred the slop stone.  James Hole argued that this encouraged the inhabitants to wash the pots rather than leave them in the sink.[3]

Dominating the kitchen would have been the open range, used for cooking heating and in bad weather as the main source of heat for drying clothes.   No pictures exist of such a room in Hardy Cottages.  The nearest we can come is the reconstruction of a worker’s kitchen in Salford Museum.  We have to be careful because it is from an urban setting reconstructed from a one up one down house and may date from an earlier period but it is similar to rural kitchens in other parts of the country.

Nor do we have any contemporary accounts of life in Chorlton from the view point of people like the Gresty’s.  This means that in reconstructing their daily life we have to draw on the work of such people as Booth, and Rowntree who undertook major social studies in our cities during the late 19^th century.  Charles Booth had carried out a survey of the poor in London while Rowntree had conducted a similar survey of the poor in York. 

Her father along with all the other working men listed his occupation as farm labourer, and it is possible he worked for either Hardy Farm or Hardy House Farm as both were close enough.  There is evidence that the cottages were at one point tied cottages linked to Barlow Hall Farm, so it is equally likely he could have worked there.  There is however one slight problem with this assumption, because according to another source at least one resident in the 1940s worked at Hardy Farm.[1]  And in 1901 some of the Barlow Farm workers were housed in cottages close to the farm house.  [2]  Until the accounts and employment records for these farms come to light it will be difficult to go any further.

Barlow Hall Farm was the biggest in the area.[3]  At over 300 acres in 1881, it employed nine men and boys.  Only six of these employees are listed as living on the farm so it is possible that some of the men from Hardy Cottages were also employed at Barlow Hall Farm.  It farmed covered much of the land along the Mersey and James’s day would have been spent labouring in these fields with names like Mill Meadow, Mill Field Park Eye and Barlow Ley. 

The term labourer is a deceptive one, because while work was manual and often physically exhausting it covered many different jobs.  In this sense the farm worker had to be flexible and proficient at many tasks. These could include, ploughing, harvesting, threshing and hay making as well as maintaining hedges, fences and walls. He might have to look after the welfare of the farm animals some of whom could be very valuable and handle the different crops grown during the year.  And as the nineteenth century progressed he would be expected to use an increasing number of different machines.  By 1901 aged 58 he described himself as a teamster which meant he drove a team of horses for hauling.  This was a skilled job and in some parts of the country was almost a hereditary occupation surrounded by secrecy and even a shadowy ‘brotherhood’.

But farming by the end of the nineteenth century was becoming marginalised in Chorlton and this is reflected in the occupations of the men living in Hardy Cottages.  In 1881 ten of the twelve men were farm labourers, but twenty years later there are two building labourers, a grave digger, and a coachman and plumbers apprentice.

Barlow Farm is interesting for another reason.  It employed a growing number of men who were from Ireland.  Only three or maybe four other farms used Irish workers and not in the numbers or as consistently as Barlow Hall Farm.  During the forty years from 1851 Irish workers represented 72 % of the workforce, and were engaged in everything from general farm work to the highly skilled teamsters who handled the horse teams. [4]

So far research has identified 59 people living in Chorlton between 1851-1901 who were born in Ireland.  All but two were male and all but four were in some way connected to farming.[5]  Most gave no details of where they were born in Ireland which may reflect either their distrust of authority or a lack of rigour on the part of the enumerators.   Of the 59, only 19 gave a place of birth.   Of these most came from the west of Ireland and in particular County Mayo in Cannought.   This area had been one of those most heavily depopulated in the years after the famine.  Between 1841 and 51 Connaught’s population declined by 28%.  This was worse than any other part of Ireland.

Sadly only one of these 59 people can be tracked across more than one census return.  Michael  McGagh  was living in Hardy Cottages in 1871 and thirty years later was still there.  During those thirty years he worked as a farm labourer and brought up six children.  His wife Elizabeth had been born in Cheshire and all his children were born here in Chorlton.

There were other Irish people in Hardy Cottages, but their records are transitory.  None can be found in the census records beyond one brief appearance.   Most were farm labourers like Michael McGagh, but three were building labourers and at least one was unemployed.

During the thirty years between 1871 and 1901 the records show that there was never less than 30 people living in these four roomed cottages.   In 1881 this had risen to 51.   The Gresty family was not alone in counting seven family members under the one roof, at least two other families were of the same size and one was even larger.  This was well above the national average.[6]   The Donlan family went even further, for not only were there five family members but also five lodgers. 

Nor are they the only example of overcrowding.  In the same year No 1 Summer Cottage off Beech Road was inhabited by a family of seven who also had a lodger.  These cottages were demolished in the 1970s but one eyewitness records that they had just four rooms. [7]  Twenty years later seven of the farm labourers from Barlow Hall Farm were living in just two rooms in Barlow Cottages. [8]

But we do have to be careful about the conclusions we draw from such examples.  In 1891 ten people were recorded as living at Jasmine Cottage on St Clements Road.  The house which dates back to the 1750s consisted of three downstairs rooms and three upstairs rooms.  However the Langford family were prosperous market gardeners which suggest that we are not dealing with a simple case of poverty. [9] 

 Annie had moved out by 1891. But she was back living in the family home in 1901.  By now aged thirty she was described as unmarried and working as a domestic servant.  Her son who had been born in Withington was just one month old.  And here the records throw up a mystery.  Harold’s father was living next door with Annie’s brother. There is one reference to his marriage in 1899 [10] but so far no similar records for Annie.  So why were they living apart and why did Annie describe herself as single? 

A similar mystery emerges from another of the cottages.  Here in 1891 lived the Wilkinson family.  Arthur, Jane and their four children.   The eldest son is listed as a step son and retained his father’s surname.  Remarriage due to bereavement was common enough in the nineteenth century. 

Jane Wilkinson had been married before to a Richard Chaloner and had six children between 1871 and 1879.  It is easy to imagine some disaster which could have carried away five of the children and father, sometime before 1891 when she appears at Hardy Cottages.  But no, Richard Chalinor and two of their children was still alive and living in York during the same census in 1891.  What led Jane to leave Richard and settle down with Arthur and one of her sons will probably never be explained.  To leave some of her remaining children in Yorkshire likewise is a mystery.

As for Hardy Cottages  they were to be demolished sometime after the 1950s.  No doubt in the course of research a date for their end will emerge.