Ashmores Lane
This road was known locally as Sandy Lane both before and after its formal renaming, though it bears its present name (official since 1899) on the early 19th century enclosure map. The name derives from the Ashmore family of local landowners. The buildings in the middle section of the road probably date from the 1860s onwards: half of the brick terraced houses were here by 1875, and most of the rest by 1881, though part (including the site of the ‘old sandpit’, of which some evidence remains) was unbuilt until well after WW2. At a mid-point in this road you can look round and get some sense of 19th century Alsager, with its large villas with high walls built at some distance from one another.
An area north of Heath House (21 Sandbach Road), originally called Heath Field, including the site of Parville, came on the market in 1877, the year when Andrew Balmain left Field House on Fields Road. It was offered for sale in lots, most with a frontage of nearly 45 feet to the road. One of these contained Balmain’s stable, coach-house and piggeries, and on the most southerly plots Parville was built in 1881.
The bowling club pavilion behind was first built in 1909, with access provided from Ashmores Lane; but the southern part of the site remained unbuilt until William Millward got permission for the drainage of at least 2 substantial houses, at least one of which, Milverton, was in existence by 1927. As well as the Greenbank estate at Church Lawton, the two detached inter-war houses at 43 and 47 Ashmore’s Lane, which he called Millanholme and Milverton respectively, are his, though difficult to date precisely. He died at Milverton.
