IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Hale Road, ALTRINCHAM, WA15 8XW

The Manchester Airport Marriott Hotel, Hale Road. The embankment of the M56 is just to my left.

Hale Barns: began life as the 'Four Seasons' but was taken over and developed as the demand for accommodation grew with the rapid expansion of nearby Manchester Airport. Is now one of four within a radius of a few hundred metres.

At junction 6 of the M56, Hale Barns

The 'San Carlo' occupies the historic 'Buck Hall' - the former farm on which the adjacent Marriott Hotel was built. For details of the original building see: Image

At the time of this photo, Buck Hall was a privately owned farm which had operated in Hale Barns for over a century and was known, locally, for its potato crop. It became a Grade 2 listed building in 1986 and the farmland was acquired for development as an hotel - The Four Seasons. That hotel was later bought by the Marriott Group and was further extended into their present 4 star airport hotel, being situated rurally but only a mile-and-a-half from the main Manchester terminal. The English Heritage description for Buck Hall is as follows: Farmhouse, now hotel offices. Mid 18C. Flemish bond brickwork with stone dressings and graduated slate roof. Double-depth central-staircase plan with 2 storeys plus attic. (The attached buildings at the rear are not included in this entry.) Stone plinth, rusticated quoins, overhanging eaves and gable stacks one with stone cornice. 3 bays with central 6-panel door which has rusticated surround and oversized keystone. Total of 4 window openings with C20 replacement tripartite sashes, flat brick arches with keystones and stone sills. A similar blank opening above the door contains a heraldic shield and scroll inscribed "DEUS REGIT OMNIA". Sash windows to attic storey in gable. Interior retains turned baluster dogleg staircase. We also have public records information about its former owners: George Goodier Warburton 1840, Dunham, Cheshire to 1919, Hale, Cheshire. Died Aged 79. (Warburton has been a prominent name in Hale and surrounding areas, e.g. note their connection with Arley Hall near Great Budworth.) George was the heir to his grandfather George Goodier's farm at Buck Hall, Hale Barns, George Goodier having acquired the farm between the 1841 and 1851.

The DELTA Marriott Hotel (on the edge of Hale Barns) - a very well-used venue for people attending nearby Manchester Airport - has a bleak future: under current Government plans: it is due to be demolished (probably three years hence) to make way for a control centre overseeing the engineering works which will accompany the building of a tunnel to take the future HS2 rail line beneath the adjacent M56 motorway and onwards to a new station serving the Airport, en route to Manchester city centre.

Looking along a path beside one of the roundabouts at the M56 junction.

The meeting point of Hale Road (westwards) with Wilmslow Road (eastwards). This motorway junction, on the M56, is destined for a short shelf life: under current plans to bring HS2 past the fringe of Hale Barns, the junction is due to be moved a kilometre further west and the high speed trains will run in a tunnel directly beneath the roundabout in the photo. Whilst it is good news that the line will be below ground in the vicinity of the exclusive houses nearby, the prospects for the village as a whole are less favourable since it faces several years of major disruption whilst the excavation of the tunnel is underway. Numerous lorries are expected on local roads transporting the vast amounts of spoil from sites around the area. Not surprisingly, local residents have petitioned Parliament for amelioration of the traffic problems that will ensue (probably from 2026 onwards).

The former Buck Hall Farmhouse is now almost entirely obscured by hedging. (See other photos, in this square, from an earlier era, when the period facade was fully visible.)