A Dog's Life — Stop 6
Shirley Visits The Big Houses
Shirley had always wondered who lived in the enormous houses on Stamford Road - they were so different to the usual terraces in Mossley.
Illustration by children of St. Joseph’s School
She had heard from the butcher’s dog that the Mayall family lived in lots of them but a newly built house at the bottom of Jacob’s Ladder had a new family living in it.
The Beswicks had arrived from Australia on the other side of world where they had founded a new town called Mount Gambier. They made a lot of money by selling their farm and then came to live in Mossley and helped to build and furnish St George’s church.
The other residents on Stamford Road were mostly mill owners and they had built a private school on the row to educate their children in. The biggest house in Mossley was Whitehall which even had two lodges, one at each gate, and was built by George Mayall.
The fine Wesleyan Methodist Chapel opened in 1867 with seating for about 600 people and closed in the 1950s, probably because of the costs of maintenance and dwindling numbers.
The pipe organ and some of the congregation moved to Abney Church rather than the less ‘middle-class’ Primitive Methodist Church on Waggon Road. The building was demolished in 1967 and a dental surgery stands in its place.
The Wesleyans built a separate Sunday school in 1913. From 1940 it was used as an Employment Exchange with separate entrances for males and females until it became a printers and latterly apartments.