Burnage Garden Village

Burnage Garden Village, a residential development off the western side of Burnage Lane. The site is situated approximately four miles south of the city centre and is arranged on a broadly hexagonal layout with two storey semi-detached and quasi detached dwelling houses situated on either side of a continuous-loop highway. The highway is named after each corresponding compass point with two spurs off at the east and west named Main Avenue and West Place respectively. Main Avenue represents the only access and egress point into the estate whilst West Place leads into a resident's parking area. The layout was designed by J Horner Hargreaves. Houses are loosely designed to Arts and Crafts principles, chiefly on account of being low set and having catslide roofs. At the centre of the garden village and accessed by a network of pedestrian footpaths, is a resident's recreational area comprising a bowling green, club house and tennis courts. The estate was laid out in the manner of a garden suburb with characteristic hedging, front gardens, grass verges and trees on every street. Approximately 89 trees were planted on the grass verges on both sides of the highway network. The majority of these are small to medium size species.

Hargreaves prepared a plan for the estate in 1907, but this scheme was not progressed. The plans used (subject to later modification) were all unsigned, as were the plans deposited with the City Architect's department. Architects associated with the scheme included Hargreaves, Frank Dunkerley ( a member of the first committee) and Raymond Unwin. [Michael Harrison : The Garden Suburbs of Manchester 1895-1915]

MANCHESTER HOUSING PROJECT FOR CLERKS AND ARTISANS - A company has been formed under the title of the Manchester Tenants, Limited, for an enterprise which has some features in common with the Garden City movement. Its purpose is to promote better housing accommodation for the clerks and artisans of Manchester. Every house is to have its own garden patch, and each is to be arranged with a due regard to the general appearance of the whole. The Society has been formed under the auspices of the Co-partnership Tenants' Housing Council, of which the Earl of Stamford is president, Mr Henry Vivian, M.P., chairman, and the recently appointed Judge Neville hon. legal adviser. It was started as the outcome of the recent visit of Miss Sybella Gurney the hon. secretary, to the Lord Mayor's Parlour meetings, and will be worked on identical lines to those tenant societies which have proved so successful around London and at Garden City. The oldest of these societies, the Tenant Co-operators, which was started in 1888, has now properties in five different London suburbs; the latest, the Garden City Tenants, has already dealt with six acres at Letchworth, and has now undertaken a further six acres. The Ealing Tenants, which was commenced by three or four joiners and bricklayers with a capital of £300, is now worth £36,000. They have erected over eighty houses, and have taken land for 300 to 400 more. [Manchester Guardian 18 August 1906 page 9]

THE BURNAGE SUBURB - The Lord Mayor of Manchester has notified the Labour Co-partnership Association here that he will perform the opening ceremony of the Manchester Co-partnership Tenants' Estate at Burnage on Saturday, September 24. The houses are almost complete, the total cost being about £50,000. A very large portion of the loan stock, which was provided by the Central Housing Council, has been redeemed. This is particularly remarkable when it is remembered that the people who occupy these cottages are mainly artisans. [Manchester Guardian 3 September 1910 page 6]

THE LORD MAYOR AT BURNAGE - The "Garden Village" at Burnage which has been built by the Manchester Tenants Limited, was formally opened on Saturday by the Lord Mayor of Manchester (Mr Charles Behrens). Mr T. R. Marr, the chairman of the Company, before calling on the Lord Mayor, said something about the aims of the partnership housing movement. The Burnage village he described as a modest contribution towards the solution of the housing problem in the Manchester district. Very little but a certain amount of patching could be done in the town itself. In the suburbs, however, the housing problem was of a different kind; it was to take care to retain in the expanding town some of the existing rural conditions. They had not done in Burnage all they would have liked to do, but they had, at any rate, given to the residents of the village rather more of country conditions than most town residents were able to enjoy. It was an example not of town planning but of site planning, and it showed how to lay out an estate so as to provide for every house an adequate amount of air and light. Every house in the village possessed some garden, and for the enjoyment of all the residents there were facilities for reasonable recreation. Any good landlord might develop an estate in exactly the same way, but the peculiar thing about this village was that the tenants were joint owners of the village, and had therefore an interest in maintaining the property in a state of good repair. [Manchester Guardian 26 September 1910 page 4]

Burnage Garden Village was declared open by The Lord Mayor in September 1910, the eleven-acre site, said the local paper, had been laid out as an object lesson in town planning with wide and clean roads and grass plots and trees, each house had a garden and there was a central open space with bowling and tennis courts along with a village hall and post office. A village association had been formed for the 136 houses. [Building News 17 September 1909 Page 418]

BURNAGE - Manchester Tenants Ltd. have completed their Burnage estate of eleven acres, their 136 houses giving accommodation to 500 people. Rents vary from 5s. 3d. to 11s 6d., the rates, which are extra, being 8s 4d in the £. The society has made its roads of twenty-two feet and eighteen feet, and has planted the whole of these with trees and provided grass margins. Application is now being made to the local authority for them to take over the roads. [Ewart G Culpin: The Garden City Movement Up to Date. 1913 page 53]

MANCHESTER TENANT LIMITED - There are in the Manchester district several examples of the Public Utility Societies. The oldest is the Manchester Tenants Limited, in Burnage Lane Levenshulme, which as the first experiment of the kind in the north of England received a great deal of attention when it was established twelve years ago. It has altogether 144 houses on 12 acres of ground, so that it established in this district the principle of 12 houses to the acre, since accepted under the present Government proposals as a desirable standard for urban districts. Another admirable innovation was the break from the flagged and setted streets so dear to our city authorities, which now are dubbed undesirable in the new housing propositions. The grass plotted and tree-lined roads formed another agreeable break from the traditions of the past, and make the little estate a favoured promenade for many of the inhabitants of the surrounding districts, who treat it as a little park. The social life of the place is well catered for by a special committee, and there is an established clubhouse with choral, dramatic and other societies, and tennis and recreation grounds. These little items are paid for out of the weekly rent payment and still leave sufficient balance to pay a 5 per cent divided on rents. A society was stared in Oldham a little later, which has, however, still some portion of its scheme to complete. Two small societies were also started at Didsbury, and later the idea travelled to Stoke, Chester, Liverpool, etc. The largest venture of the kind in the Manchester district is the Alkrington Garden Village, between Blackley and Middleton, which started about seven years ago. This estate is 700 acres in extent, and at ten houses to the acre will ultimately provide for 7,000 houses, all on garden city lines, with the usual amenities of tree-lined macadam roads, open spaces, large gardens and the rest. A new society has been formed in order to conform to the new Government conditions, and a 400 house scheme is being prepares. – Jas Rowbottom, The Estate Office, Alkrington. [Manchester Guardian 30 August 1919 page 6]

Reference    Manchester Guardian 18 August 1906 page 9]
Reference    Manchester Guardian 3 September 1910 page 6]
Reference    Manchester Guardian 26 September 1910 page 4
Reference    Building News 17 September 1909 Page 418 - MSA Visit
Reference    Ewart G Culpin: The Garden City Movement Up to Date. 1913 page 53
Reference    Manchester Guardian 30 August 1919 page 6 - correspondence