Private Art Gallery: Oak Bank and Gallery House, Ashton-on-Mersey

About 1907 James Gresham, engineer and art collector, added a private art gallery to the north-east corner of Oak Bank which he subsequently renamed Gallery House. The single storey gallery was built to the designs of W and G Higginbottom to house his extensive picture collection. Following Gresham’s death in 1914 the collection was sold off and the gallery demolished, probably in the 1920s when the upper floors of the existing house were demolished to create a bungalow.

Louisa Jane, the wife of James Gresham died in 1876. By the 1881 census the family was comfortably established at Oak Bank, 656 Chester Road, Old Trafford, In 1887 James announced that he had had married, in London, Helen Amelia Myers, an “attractive mature woman ... very different from his first wife.” With whom he had a daughter. The new Mrs. Gresham had no desire to move ‘up north' and a second household developed at Radnor House, 1 Bolton Gardens, South Kensington, London. Around 1905 James moved his first family into a larger house, Ashleigh or Ash Lea, in Woodheys Park, later called The Avenue, in Ashton-upon-Mersey, which he renamed ‘Oak Bank,'