Church Street (5)
Church Street ahead was called Turnpike Road to the late 19th century and was renamed Church Street after the rebuilding of St. George’s Church. Until 1935 it was a narrow lane when old cottages on the west side were pulled down to widen it. Lord Stamford insisted that the trees now in the central reservation of Church Street be preserved.
The Cresta Court Hotel and the offices to the north were built in 1973 on the site of the large posting house called the Stamford Arms & Bowling Green Hotel that was listed in directories of 1828 but went back to at least the 1720s. Advertisements of the 1820s indicated that the hotel had ‘apartments for private families, saddle and harness horses on the shortest notice, and a billiard room’. The bowling green was the only one in the district until the 1830s. The hotel was converted to Stamford House in the 1880s to become the home of the international architect George Armitage and was used by the Home Guard in the last war.
Going south up Church Street back towards Old Market Place, number 16 Old Market Place on the east side was built in the early 19th century and is listed. Numbers 8/10/12 are each one third of a burgage plot. Number 6 was four bays deep, was probably 15th century on a half burgage plot and was the oldest building in Altrincham. It had to be demolished in early 2004 after failing to save the structure in the redevelopment of Kingsway. The owners are known back to the 15th century including Sir William Brereton, the Cheshire Civil War General and the son-in-law of Sir George Booth of Dunham. Nine mayors of Altrincham have owned the building and it was a grocer's shop for 230 years until 1982. The vaulted cellars extended under number 8 and were used as an air raid shelter during the war.
To its south was the original Horse & Jockey and one of the public bakehouses, both probably demolished in the mid 19th century to build Kingsway. It is said that Robert Boardman, who also bred horses for the Earl of Stamford including The Bay Malton from which the pub in Oldfield Brow took its name, kept the original Horse & Jockey. What is now the George & Dragon pub at the north end of Church Street took that name for a while, afterwards becoming St. George & Dragon. A new inn in Old Market Place then used the Horse & Jockey name.
The spectacular bank in Old Market Place is listed and was formerly Cunliffe Brooks’ Bank. It was built in 1870 in sandstone for W C Brooks, has a 32-foot high banking hall window with houses to the left and right for senior employees. Originally there was a weather vane with ‘WCB’ in it and his initials are on the left-hand chimney. The bank was taken over by Lloyds about 1900. Brooks bought several hundred acres of land between Hale Barns and Sale from the Earl of Stamford in 1856. He lived at Prospect House in Hale Barns and in 1862 created Brooks’ Drive from Prospect House to Brooklands Station during the cotton famine. Until the 1920s tolls were collected at a bar at Wythenshawe, the tollhouse being still there at the roundabout.
The Wagon & Horses coaching inn was at the end of Market Street opposite to Brooks Bank and was pulled down in the 1850s to link Old Market Place directly to the Dunham Road. Beyond the bank down the Dunham Road the offices were built in the late 1860s and are listed. Just beyond, the Unitarian Chapel was opened in 1872 by The Reverend William Gaskell, husband of Elizabeth Gaskell. Sylvan Grove and Groby Place to its left were built on the narrow strips which made up one of the Town Fields and which pre-dated the Dunham Road. The old police station opposite was built in 1866 and was used until 1981. It included a Magistrates Court used until 1986.