IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
High Elm Road, ALTRINCHAM, WA15 0HX

An unusual sight after 10 years of mild winters. Many young children may never before have been able to build a snowman.

No one expected to awake to this. The garden table registered six inches of virgin snow overnight.

Joins Ravenwood Drive to Winmarith Drive but is just part of an old right-of-way used by people walking from Brooks Drive, or Hale Road, to Chapel Lane, across intervening farmland. There were still crops of oats and barley here in the 1950s and considerable excitement amongst local children when the big combine harvesters were at work. Expansion of housing estates around Hale Barns, and the growth of Ringway airport, saw the end of large scale farming in the vicinity.

It seems unlikely that the current residents here realise that this path is all that remains of the right-of-way, across open farmland, from Hale Road to Warburton Green. The 1950s building boom in Hale Barns obliterated most of the meadows, copses and fields that surrounded it before the War. There is a (1954) watercolour sketch of the meadow - belonging to Prospect House - which once bordered the brown fence (formerly iron railings) to the right of the photo. Just beyond these railings was a stand of massive beech trees, with a rookery. The meadow was ankle deep in daisies, buttercups, clover and rough grass. Several ponies grazed there, and the nearby pond attracted dragonflies in the summer months. What a change!

The owners of these houses and gardens in Winmarith Drive may not know that it was once the site of two conjoined ponds, located between the weeping willow and the boundary of Prospect Drive, beyond. These were about 2 metres deep and roughly 70 metres by 10 metres in surface area. They can be seen on 1940s plans of Hale Barns. A buried culvert pipe - fed by run-off from adjacent fields - kept them topped up, the water being unable to escape the underlying clay. One presumes the developers laid a concrete raft over the drained land before constructing the housing foundations. Perhaps the 'spring' is still there but diverted into the main sewers.

Beyond these houses is Prospect Drive, completed in 1955 and then the latest encroachment of private building into the area. Before Winmarith was developed, residents on the eastern side of Prospect Drive had a clear view across country to Alderley Edge. At the end of the 50s, the owner of Prospect House disposed of the paddock and five acres of rough meadow adjacent to its gardens. This became the estate we see today. All that remains visible of an earlier era is a nearby, enclosed footpath - the remnant of a right-of-way over open fields to Warburton Green. Where the left hand bungalow now stands, was a figure-of-eight-shaped pond, fed by water draining from surrounding farm land. (This is shown on the 1940 O.S. map). The pond was home to mallards, water hens and an occasional heron. After heavy rain, it overflowed into low gardens at Prospect Drive, forming a temporary mini-lake. One wonders if the present residents realise their homes sit on a former marsh!

A less than elegant - if expensive - replacement for 'Winmarith', the villa which stood here from pre-war times until beset by developers. This was the start of a trend which continues to the present day in Hale and Altrincham: the demolition of large, perfectly habitable homes, to make way for even larger but sometimes less elegant replacements. Doric columns (and gold-tipped, wrought-iron gates) have been a favourite appendage amongst local builders - for those that can afford them.

At the junction with Hale Road. The 1910 map of Hale shows a farm track and public footpath here which ran directly across meadows and farmland to Warburton Green (and nearby Tanyard Farm) where there was a small hamlet and shop. The fence in the photo marks its edge and direction. In the 1950s, it was still the side access to a paddock at the back of nearby Prospect House. The construction of Winmarith Drive and adjacent roads completely obliterated this rural sector of Hale Barns.

Hale Road