Church Road and Station Road
Together Church Road and Station Road have defined the character of this part of Alsager since the late 1890s, though only part is included in a conservation area. Station Road wasn’t known as such much before 1890. They are both likely to have been from an early date tracks leading from the ‘back lane’ from Audley towards Hassall. From the north the track crossed the present Lodge Road and Chancery Lane at the Lodge farm. Christ Church itself was ‘modernised’ at its first centenary in 1897. The churchyard, extended by Samuel Davies, remains the town’s only burial space.
Both roads are lined with villas which are largely the product of two substantial builders, David Chilton and Thomas Gratton.
Top of Station Road
Station Road grew in importance after the railway came, its crossroads soon signalled by the Lodge Inn. The triangular field bordered by Crewe Road, Station Road and Cross Street was called Three Nooks and became the focus of early shops. The long leases granted for building up round the inn, mostly from the late 1860s, extended some way down Station Road on the west side.
Part of the top of the road, sometimes known as ‘Back Lane’, is likely to have been developed around 1870 by George Plant. After the Primitive Wesleyan chapel was built on Crewe Road, the incumbent was housed in a manse behind, now no. 89. The semi-detached houses nos. 80-82, at the top of Well Lane, are probably those built by George Edwards, then of Crewe Road, one of the builder brothers, in early 1897. He also owned the cottages numbered 77 and 75, opposite, and added a pair of houses in 1899 (possibly nos. 83 and 85). The present name of Station Road is first found in 1880 as ‘Station New Road’, in an advertisement for 2 new semis – almost certainly nos. 71 and 73, Fern Villa and Clyde Villa – with a frontage of 45 feet, along with the shop and yard on Crewe Road behind, formerly belonging to the builder Henry Watson. He was probably the contractor for George Plant, who had applied for permission for drainage in 1878, and in 1880 advertised a ‘handsome villa residence’ for sale, presumably no. 65, Mayfield. It had 3 reception rooms, bedrooms, bathroom, large garden and grounds. ‘Mayfield villas’, three carcasses in all, were all unoccupied in 1881, suggesting a failure to sell quickly, though Mayfield villa itself bears a building date of 1879.
Rosedale, no. 78 Station Road, was in the early 1870s a substantial villa facing Well Lane, from which it was approached by a drive. It has been enlarged more than once: in its centre an older, smaller house remains detectable. There was a smallholding with outbuildings here in the early 19th century. Its present appearance (before more recent building on the Well Lane side) dates from 1896, when the mid-century house was enlarged by a new owner, Thomas Paxton Barrett; and from 1933, when approval was given for subdivision. This crossroads was built up before land nearer the station, and a house in this neighbourhood formerly called Rye Bank (the name referencing the field alongside, occupied with it as a croft) is likely to be part of today’s Rosedale.
Spring Villa, no. 76 Station Road, was around 1900 the home of the major builder in this road, David Chilton from Wolverhampton, and also of his mother and sister. It seems to have attracted enterprising builders, as J. H. Weatherby rented this house while he was building Parkholme.
In the years before 1896 Chilton built a mix of large detached and semi-detached villas, no two the same, and with names rather than numbers. Nos 60 and 66, respectively Hillesden and Hill View (separated by Ingleside, no. 62, and Fernleigh, no. 64) seem to have been named for the view to the south. Ardsley House was no. 58, Parkside no. 56, Greenheys no. 68. Donnington, no. 70, belonged to the Wesleyan circuit and was usually occupied by one of its ministers. It is not known what Scottish connection led to no. 72 becoming known for a time as Glencoe.
With Station Road becoming known by its present name, Springfield Terrace went out of use as a name for a group of houses further down, probably no. 50 Station Road and beyond. The name appears to have its origin in the villa on Cedar Avenue behind, which was then and is now known as Springfields. Joseph Eardley came to this house (which he may have built) in the late 1860s, on his retirement from a partnership with Ralph Hammersley at the Church Bank pottery works in Tunstall. The children of Eardley and his wife Lucy included (among others) Louisa, who married W. H. Bratt; Elizabeth, who married George Hammersley (not himself a direct relation of Ralph, though he owned a business milling and supplying flint to the pottery trade) and Eliza, who married Edwin Meir, another pottery manufacturer. The three households (all of whom were, with other Eardsley connections, involved about 1874 in setting up the Brownhills pottery company) had homes subsequently in ‘Springfield terrace’. One inference is that nos. 42-48 Station Road were built in the early 1880s, after Eardley’s death. They are noticeably unlike their neighbours but similar to, and presumably broadly contemporary with, nos. 10 and 12 Church Road. Others nearby are not found before the mid-1890s, and their building may stem from a final re-ordering of Eardley finances – and the view north from Springfields – after Lucy Eardley’s death in 1887. No. 40 Station Road, Woodlee, the home of William Halliday, a Scot who was one of Alsager’s small army of ‘travelling drapers’, was built for him by Chilton from 1894; and visual similarity would lead to the others being attributed to the same builder. No. 38 Station Road was in the early 20th century the home of Lucy Hawthorn, another Eardley daughter, who was left trust income but no capital (the family clearly did not trust her husband). No. 32 Station Road, Rosebery House, is likely to be broadly contemporary with the Earl of that name being Prime Minister (1894-5). No. 30 Station Road, Hampton House, was from 1894 the home of Robert Sudlow, who had factories (specialising in teapots) in Burslem; and which in the early days of WW1, after his tenure, was designated for occupation for a time by Belgian refugees.
Parkholme, diagonally opposite, was built in 1910 for himself and his wife by the pottery factory owner John Henry Weatherby, whose sons Samuel and John Henry junior had earlier been established in large semi-detached houses on the Sandbach Road South frontage of the same plot.
Wollaston, on the other side of Station Road, was built about 1903 by Henry Buckley King, who named it after his native part of Worcestershire. It was built on land behind houses associated with his wife Jane’s family, the Dudsons. It is one of the town’s most opulent mansions and cost £1500 to build, reflecting King’s wealth (he built up a business which owned flour mills at Ellesmere Port).
Church Road
The road obviously takes its name from Christ Church. The church schools of 1855 are now houses, called Charles Tryon Court after the incumbent at that time. Though designed by the prolific architect (Sir) George Gilbert Scott, there is no evidence he ever visited the site. An early schoolmaster was Francis Stonehewer, who was soon running his own school at Grove House in Hassall Road.
The first recorded reference to house-building in Church Road as such is to an application in 1887, but by this time the two houses (originally known as Church Villas) on the west side had already been there for several years. They are nos. 10 and 12, and probably date to about 1880, when their respective chatelaines advertised for servants. Later they became known as Church Villa and Church View. Early occupants moved on. Among them, Francis Creed Mayer, the solicitor who was the UDC’s first clerk, who had been brought up on the Lodge farm opposite, lived in one but in 1888 built the Gables.
The remainder of the west side of the Road was built up by Chilton, the main builder in Station Road, from 1898. He used the same patterns as Station Road, a similar mix of semis and detached villas with half-timbering, brick and rendering, porches and stained glass, no two being exactly the same.
Soon after the estate sale, most of the east side became the property of Thomas Gratton, who made in 1887 the first known application to build. He eventually owned nos. 1 to 15. Of his houses on this east side, only two were occupied by 1891. More followed in mid-1893, and by 1898 there were houses southwards on the same side, up to and including no.3.
The pattern of Gratton’s first houses on the east side (nos. 9-15) reflect on a slightly smaller scale those on the west side of the Avenue, indeed Gratton may well have been the contractor for these. They are also similar to some on the Leek road at Stockton Brook, though no link has been proved.
The later four, nos. 1-7, look very like Chilton’s, but there seems here also to be no clear connection. The last to be built was no. 1, as from 1895 Gratton had a long-drawn out battle with the UDC over the corner plot on Crewe Road, resolved about 1905, when he built shops on the main road as well as the corner house. Gratton’s houses on the east side now mostly have a name with either ‘west’ or ‘mere’ in it, though the names have changed over time. Gratton lived until his death at Westmere, no. 15, and his use of this name is recorded at much the same time its neighbour came to be known as Westmere Lodge instead of just ‘the Lodge’. At his death Gratton still owned nos. 9 to 15, some of which were lived in by members of his family.
No. 17 Church Road is not as old as it looks, having been built by Frank and Elizabeth Rigby about 1899, on the edge of their Westmere Lodge grounds. They retained it when in 1906 they sold the Lodge to Huntley Goss and moved to Groundslow, near Stone. No. 17 was in the early 20th century the last residence of the three Misses Poole. The interest in photography of the youngest, Margaret Ellen Poole, may stem from her having been the subject of a childhood portrait by Lewis Carroll, her father’s cousin; this underscores the likelihood that this photograph (right) is of the three sisters. Later the house became a parsonage for a time.
