IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Green Gate, ALTRINCHAM, WA15 0SH

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

Ridge Road becomes Gorse Bank Road at a seemingly arbitrary point along this suburban road.

Warburton Green: Manchester-bound traffic on the M56 approaches the turn-off for Hale Barns and Wilmslow.

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.

The bridge connects Chapel Lane at Warburton Green with Sunbank Lane at Halebank.

During the course of M56 motorway development, the public footpath adjacent to Halebank Farm has been concreted and these steps are being added ... although why anyone would want, or need, to walk over the carriageway is something of a mystery, especially as there is a road bridge within fifty yards.

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!