HYDE CHESHIRE

Harry Rutherford's
Festival of Britain Mural




Thursday 29 December 2011

Cheethams Farm (Holly Farm) Demolition (disappeared farms)

We recently got sent a couple of photos from Martin Taylor with this description...

"I have been meaning to find these photos for you for a little while and got the motivation to scan them in this afternoon.
The bottom photograph is of the Rising Moon pub taken from Cheetham’s wood. The date on the back of the photograph says January 1977. Those fields are covered with houses now.
The top one is earlier, if my recollection is correct, but not much because I didn’t own a camera and I was not often trusted with my father’s!. Taken from my bedroom on Talbot Rd., the scene is the demolition of Cheetham’s farm at the bottom of Matley Lane. You can see Shaw Hall Avenue in the background.

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Thanks Martin, great photos !

Updated with a scan from an old A to Z belonging to Dave.

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Here's a scan of the bottom end of Matley Lane which shows the farm named as Holly Farm right opposite Shaw Hall Lane... Dave notice that on Cartwright Street the map shows a Cheetham Street...  so the name was known in this area. On the corner of Muslin Street (Talbot Road) and Matley Lane where the Bay Horse Pub is now it mentions a Well... Ian as left a comment about a row of terraced houses that around there called 'Well Row' and that his mum grew up there. I'm sure this row was built by the mill owners of Shaw Hall Mill which was opposite and a tad further back from the road.

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The picture above shows the 'Sports Ground' at Newton Hurst which shows up on Dave's old A to Z map... top right can be seen the chimney of Shaw Hall Mill a tallish gable can be made out just right of the centre top of the picture... this building looks to be the same as the one in the first picture sent in by Martin. 

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

What a shame how they filled up all the gree open space with houses. :-(

Anonymous said...

I meant green not gree ha!

Tom said...

Ha! I read it as Green... ;o) and of corse you are right... I hope the rest of Matley remains forever green.

Tom said...

I never realised that there had been a farm there.. least of all a Cheethams Farm... I know that there is a kennels on Harrop Edge that say Cheethams Farm... I will have to try and find out more about this farm..

Jean said...

hey my hubby used to live on Shaw Hall Ave his gran used to send him to Cheethams Farm with a jug to collect milk that would be in 1952ish

Tom said...

Cheers for this info Jean... I hope we can find a picture of the farm as it was.

Dave Williams said...

Was it called Cheetham's Farm? There's no mention of it in The History of Hyde, and it's not in an old A-Z I've got dating back (I think) to the 1960s or early 1970s. There is though a Holly Farm shown in the A-Z on the opposite side of Matley Lane to Shaw Hall Avenue (or Lane, as it appears to have been then named). This farm is mentioned in The History of Hyde: "At Shaw Hall there are two farms. Holly Farm stands on the left of the road to Mottram, almost in front of Shaw Hall Factory, and Barnfield Farm is in the fields behind the mill."

I'll send you a scan of the details in the A-Z.

Tom said...

I'm glad you've had a check on this Dave.. we hav the grandchildren here today and I've not had chance to have a good look... I think this is Holly Farm and more than likely known locally as Cheethams after the family that farmed it... Uplands Farm in Gee Cross is known as Cheethams farm after the family. I did have a quick look on the Tithe Maps for Cheshire and came across the 'Cheetham' name many times. The Cheetham family name along with the Ashton's, and the Booths are an important part of this areas history.

Isla... said...

There used to be an old row of terraced houses there too Tom, between the Farm & Bay Horse called 'Well Row' - my Mum grew up there.

Martin said...

I can confirm that the farms was known as Cheethams because that was the name of the family that farmed it. The old farmer was a really scary chap who used to shout at us if we were caught in the woods! After he died, the farming was carried on by two old ladies, his wife and another relative? We used to get eggs and milk from there. I used to live in Well Row whe I was very young in the early sixties. I could probably still find the site of the old well. There were visible signs even in the seventies. The unmarked road from the bottom of Well Row to Talbot Rd was called Well Lane.
Martin

Tom said...

Thank you Martin... great information backing up others as well... and thank you for your memories.

Optymystic said...

My Great Great Grandfather William Bradbury, from Hartshead, and his wife Elizabeth Hall, from Droylesden, raised nine children at Cheethams Fold Farm between 1870 and 1890. But that was what is now the cattery on Harrop Edge road and is not to be confused with a farm lower down the hill.

Despite the fact that all these Bradburys married and had families, several of them working in quarries, I can find no trace of any other descendants.

Tom said...

Optymystic:
Thank you for commenting.. and very interesting it was too. I will get a picture of the farm/cattery that you mention and if you can send me some information I will do a post on your behalf. There's still a quarry near the farm and another much smaller older one which is no over grown and disused..
Do you have any Booths in your family tree... as I have been asked about the farm before.

Optymystic said...

Tom
What I need to get out are the census sheets showing my ancestors at Harrop Edge in the late nineteenth century. I need to stick them on a web site and provide a link. Meanwhile my photos are here.
https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/102217234371966269099/albums/5508517013244752257

They used to be in Picasa but Google has absorbed this into its Google + suite. There are no Booths in my family tree identified to date.

Optymystic said...

Tom
Have now added the 1871 and 1881 Census images for Harrop Edge Lane to the folder of photos of Cheetham Fold above. The middle Bradbury sister Elizabeth born in 1871 was my great grandmother. Her older sister Maria born 1869 became Maria Pailthorp and was the mother of Frank who appears on Carl's Cam having died towards the end of WW1.

Tom said...

Excellent set of pictures and great to see the forms together..