The Avenue
4 acres of land east of the Mere and farmed by Mayer of the Lodge appears to have been sold soon after the 1876 auction to George Plant. At its northern end stood two old timber-framed cottages on a track which ran down to the Mere.
Plant disposed of the site which was to become St Mary’s church, and started building two houses in January 1887. By 1891 there were four, three of them occupied; these appear to have been on the west side. A gate controlled access. Development was interrupted by Plant’s death in 1890. Much of the land was bought by William Candland, manager at an unknown pottery. Mrs Candland obtained permission to build three more houses in this road in 1890; this is likely to account at least in part for the east side, and houses formerly known as Rosstrevor and Shortlands. In 1895, the local builder George Edwards was granted permission to drain and build a ‘villa residence’ in the Avenue, probably on the eastern side.
The Candlands lived at no. 1, which they called Lyncroft; ‘Lyn’ was probably an allusion to the ancient Welsh word for lake or mere. Nos. 2 and 4 they called Lynwood (one of several in Alsager) and Lynmere. From 1891 Candland promoted houses in Lynton Place, off Sandbach Road North, behind Lyncroft. His son and heir Colin eventually lived opposite these, at 57 Sandbach Road, which he called – following the pattern – Newlyn.
Coniston Lodge and its semi-detached counterpart were built about 1892 by another of the Mere trustees, Edward Fox Leek. The main building proudly bears a large name plaque, and both it and its conjoined neighbour on Sandbach Road, once known as Norbreck, also bear the monogram ‘EFL’ in two places.
The other pre-WW2 building in the Avenue, from 1901, is a pair of large semi’s at the north-west angle, backing on to the Mere, on land undeveloped at Plant’s death. Their developer, James Maddock, was not from the large family of potters of that name, but the son of a miner from Audley, who had himself become a mining engineer. As so often happened, Maddock was owner-occupier of one house and let the other, Kingsmere; in this case to a local schoolmaster.
