EAW002518 ENGLAND (1946). Baguley Sanatorium and environs, Baguley, 1946

Despite post-war shortages of materials and restrictions on building, work on the Wythenshawe estate housing project quickly resumed after the end of the war. At its top right corner, this 1946 photograph catches the laying out of roads (Floatshall and Bowland Roads and their sideshoots) in readiness for new housing on Baguley farmland between Floats Road and Hall Lane, across the railway from the pre-war Royal Oak estate; and, further north, the construction of temporary prefab bungalows on the land of Sycamore Farm, between the A560 Altrincham Road and the wooded western fringes of Wythenshawe Park. Image EPW017426 shows much of the same tract of country as it was twenty years earlier, before any significant development had taken place.



The post-war council houses that would be built on these new roads perhaps lacked the charm and variety in design of Barry Parker's pre-war estates, but the policy of tree-planting and creating abundant green space was continued. Amenities, however, were for long in distinctly short supply: other than small local shopping parades, pubs, clubs and churches, there was little to break up or give shape to the miles of remarkably similar and rather featureless streets and houses. And the absence of good rail links and Manchester Corporation Transport's almost total monopoly of local bus services meant that it was impossible to travel conveniently and easily by public transport to anywhere other than central Manchester - even though that involved a twenty mile round trip from Wythenshawe's southernmost estates.



But the environment was at least open, pleasant, and considerably cleaner than the packed terraced housing of the 19th century inner-city suburbs which it replaced, and the Wythenshawe estate was pretty much complete by the time the 1960s fashion for municipal architectural brutalism came in. However Wythenshawe hasn't been entirely spared. In particular, parts of the industrial areas have been developed and redeveloped several times, not always with attractive results. And Southmoor Road - which roughly follows the course of the now vanished northern section of Floats Road around Floats Hall on this shot - is as hideous a bit of modern roadscape as you could find anywhere, with charmless geometrical industrial units on its western side and, currently under construction on the former grass verges of its eastern side, the bleak steel and concrete of the Metrolink tramway to the airport.