Summers here !

Here is a nice 'Summery shot' of Buttercup Meadow 
aka "Shanes Field" which is at the top end of Gower Hey Wood.

It used to be such a beautiful field in the Summer, until the council in its infinite wisdom started cutting the grass every  few weeks which stopped the buttercups from seeding for the next year. I'm happy to say that the council now leave it as a wild meadow and all the beautiful wild flowers are starting to return.


Photo circa mid 1980's.
Note the houses on York Road can be seen in the distance.

Gower Hey Wood

A couple of photos of Gower Hey Wood taken on the  6/1/09... Brrrrr...




Looking towards the cobbled path

House Title Deeds

When I eventually paid off the mortgage on the house the building society sent me the deeds to the house, although now that the Land Registry records have been computerised it's apparently not necessary for house owners to retain the deeds. The conveyance for the plots of land on which Marlborough Road and Balmoral Avenue were eventually built was dated 1938 and referred back to an earlier indenture dated 1881. The following amendment to the original indenture is dated 10 March 1924 and refers to the plans to build what later became Dowson Road:

The three plans shown below form part of the conveyance:

On this one the part of Dowson Road which then existed is shown as Stanley Road, although the original name is usually shown as Swain Street - was Stanley Road just a misprint?. What is now Garside Street is shown as Haughton Street, which is the street you now come to if you go up Garside Street and take the path to the left after going through the gate - it joins Market Street at the side of The Bush. The row of houses between the old railway line and AWB Motors' garage (photo below) were already there at that time and are shown on the plan.

This is similar to the last plan, although someone has mis-spelt 'Gower Road' as 'Bower Road'. At the top of the drawing it says 'Hyde Steam Laundry' and underneath those words it looks as if a large building is shown at the back of what is now Enfield Court. In June 2011 we featured a series of adverts and there's one for the Hyde Steam Laundry near the end of the post which shows the address as 'Swain Street, Hyde'.

The last plan was on an almost A3 size paper and I've scanned just part of it which shows that part of Gower Hey Wood which lies behind King George Road:

The pathway outlined in red coming up from the bottom of the plan is the one leading from Osborne Road down into Gower Hey Wood and the buildings marked near 'Goer Hey House' probably include Gower Hey Mill, about which little appears to be known.