Alsager Farms
The pattern established in Alsager was often for the owner of land not to farm it themselves but to let it, by the year, to someone who would. Many of the names associated with farms are therefore those of the actual farmers. This list does not include every farm; many were small, or short-lived, or had no specific name. Most have been eaten into by house-building. Nor does it include every farmer: they tended to move from farm to farm, sometimes the actual farm being unidentifiable. The extent of any given farm might also change on re-letting.
Dunnocksfold Road
Land north of Dunnocksfold road, and such land to its south as was not tree plantation, was divided until relatively recent times into a series of modest farms. Daisybank farm (like so much in this area) has been built over. The farmhouse appears on the Ordnance Survey map of 1875, and was offered for sale along with 22 acres in 1881. No. 60 opposite represents the centre of a farm known as Lady Farm, offered for sale with 7 acres in 1940. The name of Sunnyside Farm, which has a surviving farmhouse, is first found around 1880, when the farm had about 11 acres; though of course it is likely to have been farmed earlier. Latterly at least it was a poultry farm. The other building found on early maps near Close Lane may be the Beech Tree House and small farm occupied by Nathaniel Holdcroft in 1881.
Audley Road
Town House and Town End farms, each with a fluctuating extent of between 100 and 170 acres, are on opposite sides of Audley Road, the former being now part of a children’s nursery school and the remains of the latter being incorporated into the Manor House hotel. Several generations of Barkers farmed here during the later 19th and early 20th centuries, at least one of whom also exploited the land for building material.
Bank Farm, beside the golf course, though much altered, has elements dating from the 17th century.
Ash Bank Farm and Oak Farm further south both appear on early 19th century maps, and were part of the Caldwell estate, based at Linley Hall. Oak Farm, which supplied brick earth for building, was tenanted by one of the several farming families called Barker, then by Alfred Morris and his descendants. It formerly had a projection – since removed – which, like the Town House’s, was older than the remaining building.
Brookhouse and Bankhouse farms (the latter of about 50 acres) – on hilly land between Audley Road and Alsager Hall farm – have a history which emerges, and in part dates to the medieval and Civil War periods, in The Place and its People. Brookhouse suffered some bomb damage in WW2, not unconnected with its proximity to the ordnance factory at Radway Green.
Crewe Road
The hundred or so acres of Lane End Farm remained from 1850 in the Lowe and then the Ford families who were probably owners as well as occupiers. The former farmhouse, now extended as the Holly Trees Hotel, was built from 1896 by Thomas Lowe.
The Plough Inn, like the original Lodge, was the centre of farming operations on land neighbouring the inn business.
Hall Farm is, at 200 acres, one of the largest farms in the area, and at or near the site of the original Alsager Hall. The farmhouse was described in 1876 as ‘recently built’. It was in the hands of the Bailey family between at least 1871 and 1914. The freehold was put up for sale in 1889. Land attached to the neighbouring Mill was sometimes farmed separately, the miller from the early 1890s to 1939 being Henry Fynney. Hole House farm, like its neighbour the Hall, underwent a change of name in the early 20th century, coming to be known as Home Farm.
Cranberry Moss farm, originally part of the Alsager estate, was sold in the late 1870s to Walter Hook of Kidsgrove, who built the farmhouse at 247 Crewe Road. In the 1930s it was farmed by Thomas Gater.
Hassall Road
The remnants of Manor Farm, west of Hassall Road, include the farmhouse, which was rebuilt in 1885, bearing this date and the initials of its then owner, Thomas Twemlow, though its long-standing farmer was at the time John Heler. In mid-century the farm was known as ‘Manor house’ and the Twemlows had been long-standing owners.
Heath End Farm north of Manor Farm also formed part of the Alsager estate, its core some 45 acres in 1876. At one time it extended to some 75 or so acres. It is to be distinguished from Heath Farm nearby, on the site of which the University campus was built, and which was farmed (until requisitioned in 1940) by Charles Henry Bennion, who was also a contractor to the council. He is the only Alsager farmer to be commemorated in a street name.
Lawton Road
The Brunds farm between Lawton Road and the railway may have been a discrete entity earlier than a sale in 1859 by the Alsager estate of fields known as the Brunds. The fields’ proximity to the station was exploited, and the estate saw the land as suitable for ‘market gardens or sites for private residences’, though most of those built here came after WW2. Part came to be used for friendly societies’ galas and such events, and in part the dry soil was exploited as a sand quarry by James Barker, farmer and builder, but the farm is associated mainly with the Foden family, who ran it for several decades and are commemorated in a street name at Linley.
Moorhouse Farm lay at the north end of Shady Grove, and though it may have been recognisable as a farm earlier, it appears to have acquired its name in the mid-19th century from the farmer. George Moore, formerly of Brookhouse, certainly farmed here in 1871, and may have taken it over from his elder brother John. He had a sideline as a potato merchant. Like other farms, it gradually reduced in size, being 11 acres in 1917.
Longview, on the north side of Lawton Road, is best known now for housing estates both public and private. It, was in the previous century the centre of a modest farm, still some 19 acres in 1941.
Fairview was never very extensive. It was acquired by the local authority and is now the centre of the village. The library replaces the farmhouse built by the Barnetts in the mid-19th century. By the end of the century it was the centre of William Band’s carrier’s business, from where he also supplied horses. For a time the local (horse-drawn) fire engine was housed here.
Sandbach Road North
Mere Farm and Foundry Farm lying north-east of Sandbach Road North were enhanced with farm buildings in the 19th century. Land was sold off piecemeal for housing, beginning with 3 large post-railway villas in the 1850s. Belonging to various farmers called Edwards, both farms were eventually developed by others of the same name.
The Edwardses also farmed about 150 acres belonging to the Wilbrahams, large local landowners who owned Cresswellshawe farm to the north, and built their mansion of Cresswellshawe there. The farm was replaced by the Wilbraham Arms.
The Lodge Farm extended from the original Lodge along Lodge Road, and towards the Crewe Road along Church Road. John Fox and his successor John Mayer also farmed land between the Mere and Crewe Road, not built up until after the Alsager estate was sold. Mayer also farmed land on the triangle formed between Crewe Road and Chancery Lane. At its height, the land farmed extended to over 50 acres.
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