epw041650 ENGLAND (1933). New housing estate under construction between Altrincham Road and Royal Oak Road, Baguley, 1933

Manchester City Council acquired the estate of Wythenshawe Hall (which stands just beyond the top right-hand corner of this photograph) in 1926. The intention was to develop this almost completely rural area south of the Mersey - one of a very few open agricultural areas still remaining close to the city boundary - with public housing to enable slum clearance around the city centre.



The local Bucklow Rural District Council having experienced difficulty in providing public services for the first stages of the new housing development, Manchester City Council was able in 1931 to engineer the transference of the three civil parishes of Northenden, Northen Etchells and Baguley from Bucklow Rural District and Cheshire County into Manchester itself.



Historically, Northenden and Northen Etchells were the two townships which comprised Northenden parish, while Baguley was the easternmost township of Bowdon parish, just south of the old market town of Altrincham, which covered a large area around that town.



This picture shows the construction of the first Manchester council houses to be built in the Baguley township, on land east and south-east of the village, in the fields which lay between the Altrincham-Stockport Road (A560) and the Liverpool-Altrincham-Stockport railway line a little to the south of it. The estate became known as "the Royal Oak", taking its name from the old pub on the Stockport-Altrincham Road just at the eastern end of the bottom village, which (with reasonable but not total certainty!) I've marked with a pin on the map. My certainty's not total because the old pub was completely demolished and replaced with a larger modern one in characteristic '30s style, which I do remember very well from schooldays. Like so many pubs, I believe that it closed some time around the end of the last century and the site has been redeveloped.



The aerial photograph shows the entire estate in the early stages of construction, looking broadly west in the direction of Altrincham. The fields, farms and market gardens around the bottom (shoeing forge/Congregational church) and the top (school and Gardener's Arms pub) ends of the village are (only just in the case of the latter) visible at the top of the picture.