Boggart Hole Clough

[ozdude]

G’day folks

This is a real long shot… I have been trying to find information on a prefab estate, it was located in Boggart Hole Clough Charlestown Rd. Blackley, Manchester

I lived there with my grandmother until mid 1960 I was about 8 years old at the time.
I contacted Manchester council and have searched their image collection as well all they could tell me was it was demolished by early 1970 I know my grandmother had moved around 1963
I have searched the net for photos and info for a long time.

So my question is: would anybody know when it was built…
When it was demolished…
Or the big one…. Any photos

Cheers…George

[Barbara.H]

This estate is even harder to track down than the Heaton Park one was!

The Manchester Guardian digital archive (pay to view or through a Manchester library card) had 6 hits on a search for Blackley Prefabs or  Prefabricated Boggart (!), but the only photos I have found so far are of the demolished sites at Blackley and Heaton Park. They are alongside a Guardian article dated 4 Jan 1967 (discussing the future of the sites, and whether they should be returned to parkland or have permanent houses built on them). It describes the Heaton Park and Blackley estates as 'recently demolished' so if that is correct, they had come down before 1967.

An earlier article dated 15 May 1964 suggests that the prefabs had been cleared, or were being cleared in that year:
"The Parks Committee [of Manchester Corporation] has prepared plans for a sports centre on the site at Heaton Park, where prefabricated houses, built just after the war, were demolished recently, and a nine-hole golf course at Boggart Hole Clough on the former temporary housing site.."
so your grandmother probably left just before the demolition programme started.

Another article dated 1953 states that they were only intended to have a 10-year lifespan  and that "..in Manchester alone, a thousand permanent homes would have to be found for the prefab-dwellers in 1955-56, when the 10 years end..."
meaning they were constructed between 1945-6. This seems to fit with people's recollections on the rootschat Heaton Park threads.

http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php/topic,278711.0.html

I did find out that the Heaton Park prefabs were built by the Manchester architects Fairhursts, so possibly that firm had the contract for all Manchester's prefab estates.

Hope someone can turn up a photo for you

  Barbara

[Stephen Nulty]

The area in 1935...

[Barbara.H]

Do these street names sound right for the prefab estate?
Boggart Hole Crescent
Pevensey Close
Pollen Close

If so they were built in that white area on Stephen's map section, top right hand corner of Boggart Hole Clough park - area known as Charlestown

  Barbara

[ozdude]

Barbara

They are the names of the streets, and yes they were in the white area of the map Stephen posted
The one I lived in was just opposite the main entrance to Booth Hall children’s hospital when it was still standing (Boggart hole crescent) it ran parallel to Charlestown road

I think I only have two photos of the house I lived in, one of them you can just see the hospital in the background
Thank you so much for that information, it’s more than the council could provide me. I was hoping someone may have had a photo or two   I will keep searching

Cheers

George 

[ozdude]

The area in 1935...

Thanks Stephen that's one map i have not seen

Cheers
George

[RonOne]

Another map - Click here - then select the 1952 map from the list on the right.

[Gillg]

For anyone wondering where this strange mainly Northern name comes from, a boggart is a a mischievous goblin or fairy, who makes the milk go sour or the cow go lame, etc.  The name is related to "bogeyman".  Some boggarts lived under bridges, like trolls in Scandinavian legends.  I guess this boggart was believed to live in some kind of a cave or hole on a hillside, which is what "clough" means.

Probably the golfers at Boggart Hole Clough Golf Club sometimes wonder whether there's a boggart at work ruining their stroke.

We Lancastrians used to have a saying, "He's off at t'boggart!", meaning running away at speed, as if escaping from one of these sprites.

Gillg

[ozdude]

For anyone wondering where this strange mainly Northern name comes from, a boggart is a a mischievous goblin or fairy, who makes the milk go sour or the cow go lame, etc.  The name is related to "bogeyman".  Some boggarts lived under bridges, like trolls in Scandinavian legends.  I guess this boggart was believed to live in some kind of a cave or hole on a hillside, which is what "clough" means.

Probably the golfers at Boggart Hole Clough Golf Club sometimes wonder whether there's a boggart at work ruining their stroke.

We Lancastrians used to have a saying, "He's off at t'boggart!", meaning running away at speed, as if escaping from one of these sprites.

Gillg

Gillg

I lived in the Clough till I was 8 yrs old and never heard of a Boggart until much later in life

Cheers