How do you tell the story of a house?
You could start with the simple facts of when it was built, the additions over the years and its change of use from perhaps family home to multi occupancy to care home and somewhere along the way its conversion into a block of offices.
Or do you focus on the people who lived there trying to weave a set of stories out of the historic record and pitching their lives against the big events of the last few centuries.
Which ever approach you adopt it is as true for the council house, or semi as it is for the palaces of the people of plenty.
And that brings me to the final story of Vernon Lodge which has stood on Marsland Road since 1851.
It was built for Peter and Mariana Royle who made it their home with a brief interruption for the next forty years.
So completely had they made it their own that they had their initials placed high up on the outside wall and again in a beautiful stained glass window above the entrance door.
He was a surgeon with a practice in the centre of Manchester on Lever Street where they had first set home after their marriage in 1843.
But it would be Vernon Lodge which would be where their children grew up and no doubt would continue to think of as home long after they had all moved on.
And moved on they eventually did.
I can’t be sure when they finally gave up Vernon Lodge but while they were there in 1891 they had gone a decade later when the place was home to Mr and Mrs Cunnigham their three young children and two servants.
By 1911 they too had moved on and the Lodge was the residence of Mr Heath who described himself as an employer and whole sale druggist his wife of 21 years and their children.
After which at present I know only that a C.G. Spence lived there because in the December of 1944 he was elected as a member of the Historical Society of Lancashire and Cheshire.
It is not much so far but there are other forms of records which will help tell the story of those that lived there, and in time I will chart the changes to the area and the Lodges’ transformation into a the guest house it has now become. Today it is Brooklands Lodge.
Pictures; Vernon Lodge, circa 1880 and stained glass window courtesy of Mr and Mrs Vernon owners of the Lodge
Painting; Vernon Lodge © 2016 Peter Topping
Web:www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk
Facebook: Paintings from Pictures https://www.facebook.com/paintingsfrompictures
*Transactions of the Historical Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 1944, Vol 96.
**Brooklands Lodge, http://www.brooklandslodge.co.uk/208 Marsland Rd, Sale, Manchester M33 3NE
0161 973 3283
 |
| Vernon Lodge, circa 1880s |
Or do you focus on the people who lived there trying to weave a set of stories out of the historic record and pitching their lives against the big events of the last few centuries.
Which ever approach you adopt it is as true for the council house, or semi as it is for the palaces of the people of plenty.
And that brings me to the final story of Vernon Lodge which has stood on Marsland Road since 1851.
It was built for Peter and Mariana Royle who made it their home with a brief interruption for the next forty years.
 |
| Peter and Mariana remembered in glass, circa 1851 |
He was a surgeon with a practice in the centre of Manchester on Lever Street where they had first set home after their marriage in 1843.
But it would be Vernon Lodge which would be where their children grew up and no doubt would continue to think of as home long after they had all moved on.
And moved on they eventually did.
I can’t be sure when they finally gave up Vernon Lodge but while they were there in 1891 they had gone a decade later when the place was home to Mr and Mrs Cunnigham their three young children and two servants.
By 1911 they too had moved on and the Lodge was the residence of Mr Heath who described himself as an employer and whole sale druggist his wife of 21 years and their children.
 |
| Vernon Lodge, 2016 |
It is not much so far but there are other forms of records which will help tell the story of those that lived there, and in time I will chart the changes to the area and the Lodges’ transformation into a the guest house it has now become. Today it is Brooklands Lodge.
Pictures; Vernon Lodge, circa 1880 and stained glass window courtesy of Mr and Mrs Vernon owners of the Lodge
Painting; Vernon Lodge © 2016 Peter Topping
Web:www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk
Facebook: Paintings from Pictures https://www.facebook.com/paintingsfrompictures
*Transactions of the Historical Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 1944, Vol 96.
**Brooklands Lodge, http://www.brooklandslodge.co.uk/208 Marsland Rd, Sale, Manchester M33 3NE
0161 973 3283