Whalley Range is an area of Manchester, England, south-west of the city centre. The population at the 2011 census was 15,430. Historically in Lancashire, it was one of the earliest of the city's suburbs, built by local businessman Samuel Brooks.

History Whalley Range, formally known as Whalley in the Range, was one of Manchester's first suburbs; it was built by Manchester banker and businessman Samuel Brooks as "a desirable estate for gentlemen and their families."

In September 1834, Brooks bought 39 Lancashire acres of land from Robert Fielden, called Oak Farm in Moss Side, also known locally as Barber's Farm; he also bought 42 Lancashire acres from the Egerton Estate. This land is described in the deeds as being part of Hough Moss, but in the Egerton Estate's records as Fletcher's Moss. It was also known locally as Jackson's, Plant's or Woodall's Moss, and was part of the Manor of Withington. In 1867, the area was given its own postcode by the post office: 'Manchester SW 16'. In 1894, the area north of the Black Brook was incorporated into the newly formed Stretford Urban District.

Upon the sale of Manley Hall in 1905, a contiguous strip of land was added to the south and west of the estate for house building, formerly being a part of the township of Chorlton-cum-Hardy. Brooks drained it because all of this land was covered in peat from a thickness of eighteen inches to three feet; he built villas initially for wealthy businessmen such as himself.

Brooks was born near Whalley, Lancashire, after which he named his own home Whalley House, which may be the origin of the area's name. A toll gate guarded this exclusive area and the place where Chorlton Road and Withington Road meet is still known as Brooks's Bar. The toll gate was first removed to the junction with Wood Road and the charging of tolls came to an end on 10 June 1896.

The residents never tried to incorporate the area as a separate local authority, as in the age of light-touch government they saw no need. The area was more or less equally divided between the Moss Side and Withington Urban Districts (some existing street furniture remains from that period). The urban district councils in turn sub-contracted some functions to Lancashire County Council, notably policing (see 'Murder most foul' below). Additionally the residents paid for a private police force, to collect tolls and protect property. This arrangement seemed to be quite effective, as the area rarely appears in Victorian and Edwardian crime reports, with the one exception below. The private police survived the elimination of toll-charging and incorporation into the City, only becoming defunct with the manpower shortages of the First World War. Residents to the south of the area could also call on the Cheshire Lines Committee Police and Manchester City Council maintained a park police.

The unusual nature of the area has given rise to some myths, notably that no alcohol could be sold within it. Brooks was a High Church Anglican, so there was no religious reason for any restrictive covenants, rather a desire to keep up the tone of the area. Whalley Range had several private members' clubs (see the Carlton Club below), as well as a public hall and a cinema in Withington Road, at the end of Dudley Road. Also in Withington Road was the Caught on the Hop pub on Withington Road, as well as the much older Whalley Hotel, at the Brooks' Bar corner of Upper Chorlton Road, and the Seymour at the other end; all have now been either demolished or sold for other uses.

The original plans for the area envisaged it as much larger; for instance, Hough End Crescent was meant to be an arc of very large houses, linking the ends of Alexandra and Withington Roads. This idea was made impossible by the difficulty of draining the area and the later building of the railway. Drainage difficulties are a feature of the area, as it was crossed by a large number of streams, some being notable as open sewers. Many roads are in fact built over culverts, notably Upper Chorlton Road and Brantingham Road. As late as the 1930s, significant drainage work had to be carried out in the Manley Road area. Clarendon Road was built on the site of clay pits and needed remedial work on gable-ends due to subsidence in the 1980s. Even today, the remaining open brooks are regularly worked on to prevent flooding.

Incorporation shrank the area considerably, thanks to ward and constituency boundary changes. West Point was lost to Chorlton and Darley Park to Old Trafford, as well as the eastern side at the north end of Withington Road. Postcode changes, made necessary by the inter-war development of the Egerton Estate, meant that the southern end of the area was lost.

Whalley Range has had a large Polish community since the late 1940s.Burgess, Marissa "Sto lat!" (Barbakan delicatessen): The Big Issue in the North; no. 505, Feb. 23–29, 2004; pp. 18–19

By the 1960s, the area became synonymous with bedsit-land; the encroachment of property developers and gained a poor reputation as a red-light district. There has been a recent return of this phenomenon.Manchester Evening News, 17 January 2012 Estate agents took to describing it as Chorlton Borders and the City Council made a short-lived attempt to rename it as East Chorlton. However, the area had two redoubtable female defenders: one of these was Ingeborg Tipping, the Chair of the Residents' Association, who made great efforts to ensure the area was properly policed, among many other matters; the other was Kath Fry, the late City Councillor, who was a highly proactive champion of the area.

In 1930, a cinema in Withington Road was opened as the West End; in 1937, it became part of the Odeon cinema chain. In 1962, it was converted into a bingo hall, but this closed in the late 1970s; it was once billed as "the largest luxury talkie theatre in Europe." After a period of dereliction, it was demolished in 1986.AM Weekend (Manchester); 15 August 1986

On 24 June 2012, the Olympic Torch passed along the full length of Upper Chorlton Road on its nationwide tour.

Transport Public transport was resisted until the whole area became incorporated into the City of Manchester. No railway line was allowed through it; the nearest railway station was , located at the southern end of Alexandra Road South, designed to serve the Alexandra Park Aerodrome at Hough End. The aerodrome ran a scheduled service to Croydon Airport. The travel agent, Robinson's on Withington Road, would reassure nervous passengers' relatives, by sending round a messenger boy once news of a safe landing had been received telegraphically. The aerodrome, along with its ancillary landing-field at Turn Moss in Stretford, closed in 1924. The station was closed in July 1958, although it had a one day reprieve on 7 May 1964 as Chorltonville station, for a Granada TV showcase of Blues musicians staged at the site.

Stretford horse-drawn trams had to terminate at their stables at the corner of Cornbrook Road and Chorlton Road, until Stretford built up to Brooks's Bar, when they were allowed to terminate at the Withington Road side of the Whalley Hotel. Manchester trams ended at the Prince of Wales Hotel, at the corner of Moss Lane West and Upper Moss Lane, in Moss Side. As Alexandra Road became an important shopping street, the trams terminated at their stables at the end of Range Road. By the 1920s, however, Whalley Range was fully served and the Clarendon Road/Manley Park development had its own eccentric no. 86 motorbus route. The area also had its own ghost bus, which served the above station, timed to meet trains, for at least a decade after passenger services stopped. Taxi ranks were established outside the shops on Withington Road, as well as outside the Whalley and Seymour Hotels, which were at the southern end of Upper Chorlton Road.

Manley Hall Manley Hall was built by the wealthy businessman Samuel Mendel, near to the present-day Manley Park, in the 1860s. It was very grand and contained a fine art collection; the gardens were extensive and the cost of building was £120,000. After Lord Egerton, the lord of the manor, and William Cunliffe Brooks, Mendel was one of the richer residents. He converted from Judaism to High Church Anglicanism and, with the above two grandees, worshipped at the Old Church of St Clement, Chorlton. Along with Brooks and Egerton, he opposed the building of a new church for the expanding population;Lloyd (1972); p. 100-02 however, the opening of the Suez Canal caused such problems for the Mendel trading business that he became a bankrupt and the hall was put up for sale. No buyer for something so grand could be found, (cf. the fate of nearby Longford Park, bought by the local authority) and it fell into disrepair.Manchester Local Images Collection Until it was demolished in about 1905, it was used as a pleasure garden, its most famous visitor being Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show.Manchester Evening News; dateLloyd, John (1985) Looking Back at Chorlton-cum-Hardy. Altrincham: Willow; p.

PC Nicholas Cock

An infamous murder in the area occurred when it was at the height of its fashionable status in the 1870s. PC Nicholas Cock was a Lancashire Constabulary beat officer for the then sparsely populated Chorlton-cum-Hardy and Firs Farm areas. At around midnight on 1 August 1876, he was talking to a Whalley Range private policeman at the corner of Rye Bank Road and Trafford Road (now Seymour Grove). They heard a suspicious noise coming from the house of Samuel Gratrix, a wealthy member of the Manchester Exchange. They separated to investigate the outside of the property and PC Cock was fatally shot; the bullet embedded itself in the boundary wall. The building, West Point, was later substantially extended on its eastern side to become the Seymour Hotel, but the place in the wall where the bullet lodged was marked, and was visible on Woodside Road. The wall has since been demolished with the rest of the building. PC Cock died on 2 August 1876 and was buried in Chorlton's Old Churchyard, although his elaborate gravestone, paid for by public subscription, was removed in 1956 to the Lancashire Constabulary HQ at Hutton near Preston.

Two local farm labourers living at nearby Firs Farm Cottages, the Habron brothers, were suspected; William Habron (aged 18) was tried and condemned for the murder, although there must have been some doubt, as the sentence was commuted. Some years later, an infamous criminal, Charles Peace, confessed to the murder before he was due for execution; because of this, Habron was released and given £1,000, held in trust by his former employer at Firs Farm, and the Roman Catholic Bishop of Salford, Herbert Vaughan. The intention was for Habron to buy a farm locally, which would have cost around £250, but he chose to return to County Mayo in Ireland, where he ran a beer shop for many years.Lloyd (1972); pp. 95–97Lloyd, John (1985) Looking Back at Chorlton-cum-Hardy. Altrincham: Willow; p.

Votes for Women Whalley Range had another unusual feature for Victorian times: enfranchised women. The Poor Law Unions linked representation with taxation; anyone with an interest in real property above a certain rateable value could vote on local matters, irrespective of gender. The successor urban district councils continued this rule. In Moss Side, for instance, of the 55,000 approximate population, about 3,300 could vote. Married women could not vote, their property interests were subordinate to their husbands, but wealthy widows and single women (spinsters) could. This period of enfranchisement appears to end with incorporation. Women graduates of Oxbridge and, from 1918, seven other universities as the Combined English Universities could vote in both local and national elections, in the constituencies specifically set aside for those institutions.

Governance