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Dunkerley Avenue, Failsworth

This is an account of how a road that runs through a 1930s private housing estate in Failsworth came to be called after my grandfather, William Dunkerley, who was usually called ‘Billy’.

The Lord Lane housing development

In England the early years of the 1930’s saw a boom in the construction of houses for the lower middle classes.

“The ‘white-collar’ worker was about to enjoy his finest hour, and with him would arise a new phenomenon – the burgeoning social order of the lower middle class. The engine of change was the building society mortgage. Before 1930 the societies had expected mortgagors – the borrowers – to lay down a deposit of 25 per cent of the agreed price of their homes. In 1930, adjusting to the shallower financial waters of the slump, they trimmed their demands to 5 or 10 per cent. The result was the heaviest deluge of bricks and mortar history had ever seen. Houses would never be so cheap again, nor readily available”[1].  “Anyone with an income of £200 a year – well within the expectations of skilled manual or white-collar workers – could qualify for a mortgage, with repayments as low as 9s a week. The building boom accelerated, and by 1933 the developers were aiming their products, and their advertising, directly at the lower end of the market. Suburban streets lined with three bedroom semis grew and multiplied”[2].

As it turned out, Failsworth Urban District Council (FUDC) was to take part in this building boom, but not before a struggle had been taken place among its members. My grandfather, Billy Dunkerley, was a senior member of FUDC at the time and took an active part in the proceedings. Using the annual volumes of the council’s Proceedings that are available at Oldham Local Archives, it is possible to trace in detail the developments that took place between 1931 and 1934.

It appears that the council had agreed that new urban development should take place in the south of the community along the route of Lord Lane , an old thoroughfare that gave access to the valley of the River Medlock and by 1931 Lord Lane was undergoing widening. Some of the land in the area was owned by the council and at a meeting of  the Housing and Town Planning Committee on 29^th September 1931 the following letter was read out:

H. C. Broome Esq.,                                                                                                      Monsall Road, 

 The Town Clerk,                                                                                                               Newton Heath,

    Town Hall, Failsworth.                                                                                                       Manchester,

                                                                                                                                          29^th September, 1931

Dear Sir,

Re LAND IN LORD LANE, FAILSWORTH

 

  We are desirous of utilising this land for building dwelling-houses for sale to private owners, so we would therefore be pleased to know if your Council are willing to consider selling the land. If they are agreeable, we will be pleased to enter into negotiations without delay.

 

Yours faithfully,

 

For H. W. & G. T. FROGGATT.

(Signed) J. L. DUNKERLEY

 

It was resolved at the meeting that the Council be recommended ‘to offer the surplus land situate in Lord Lane …, no longer required for Council purposes, for sale or lease under the provisions of … the Housing Act, 1925, to persons proposing to build dwelling-houses suitable for the working classes in accordance with Plans approved by the District Council, the value of such land to be fixed and determined on the basis of a valuation by the Inland Revenue District Valuer, and the land to be sold or leased subject to the consent of the Minister of Health being given thereto’.  

The principle owner of the firm of Froggatts, Harry Watson Froggatt, had become a member of the council for the Conservatives in the elections of April 1931, but he was not present at the meeting. J. L. Dunkerley, whose signature the letter bore, was my father and he had joined the firm the month before, on his return to the Failsworth area from Leeds, to run its administration and accounts.

It appears that Harry Froggatt had also been a school friend of Billy Dunkerley’s oldest son, Albert, and he was at Albert’s wedding in July of 1931[3]. In addition, Harry Froggatt, like Billy Dunkerley, was a member of the Ben Brierley Masonic Lodge and both he and Billy were to become candidates to join the Ben Brierley Masonic Chapter in March 1936.

There were thus close links between the firm of Froggatts and the controlling Conservative members of the council and today a council would presumably offer any land that it wanted to sell at a public auction to ensure that it obtained the best price. I do not know how Froggatts’ offer for the land came about, and in any case it is difficult to know if a public auction would have been the best way to realize value during the lean years of the 1930s. In view of the safeguards to sell the land at a valuation to be approved by the Inland Revenue and with the consent of the Minister of Health, it would appear that the value to be paid for the land must have been considered fair and the procedure normal for the time.

At a meeting of the Housing and Town Planning Sub-Committee of the FUDC before 26^th January 1932 the value of the land on Lord Lane was discussed. It appears that offers had been made by Froggatts and by a Mr. Massey, but that the latter had subsequently withdrawn. Councillor Garlick was unhappy with the situation and it was agreed that the council Surveyor should provide details of prices paid by the council for land required for public purposes in the preceding years. It was also agreed to invite Froggatts to a meeting of the sub-committee, held later that same day, to see if they would be ‘prepared to make a more substantial offer for the land’.

Clearly, then, Garlick’s concerns were being listened to and a fair price was being sought for the land. At the meeting, attended by Harry Froggatt and his architect (sic) Mr. J. L. Dunkerley[4], Froggatts agreed to increase their offer for six acres of land at Bardsley Fold to £225 per acre, which was the actual cost to the council of the land, making allowance for the strip that had been taken for widening Lord Lane. Thus the original offer made by Froggatts was below the council’s purchase price, suggesting a deflationary period of land prices and a shortage of money, such as is occurring at the present time (2009).

When the sub-committee’s report was considered by the full Housing and Town Planning Committee it ‘gave rise to considerable discussion’. Garlick proposed that ‘in view of the inadequate price offered for the purchase’  the minutes of the sub-committee be not accepted and that no further action be taken in the matter, which would have favoured dropping the Lord Lane housing project. The amendment was put to the vote, which was carried on the casting vote of the Chairman[5].

On 17^th February 1932 a full meeting of the Council took place. Froggatt retired from the meeting and it was then proposed that the minutes of the meeting of the Housing and Planning Committee of 26^th January be approved. An amendment was proposed by Barlow to the effect that the minutes be approved, minus the amendment to block the sale of the land in Lord Lane to Froggatts, which should be referred back to the Housing and Planning Committee for re-consideration. The amendment carried the day by five votes to three (Andrews, Barlow, Dunkerley, Hilton and Stott against Garlick, Holland and Pyrah). The possibility of allowing the council land at Lord Lane to be developed was thus kept alive.

It is curious that Garlick does not propose either an auction, or advertising the land more widely to try and obtain a better price. The houses to be built were aimed specifically at working men, of whom he, as a Labour councillor, should have been a representative. It is impossible to judge if he was merely playing party politics to try to frustrate the plans of the Conservative council majority, or if there were other motives.

The next meeting of the Housing and Town Planning Committee took place on 23rd February 1932. Councillor Froggatt absented himself from the proceedings and it was then proposed ‘That the Council be recommended to provisionally accept the amended offer of Messrs. H. W. and G. T. Froggatt of £1,350 for the purchase from the Council of the six acres (approximately) of land at Bardsley Fold; and that such offer be submitted in due course to the Inland Revenue District Valuer, with a view, if approved of by him as being a fair and reasonable price, to the same being submitted to the Minister of Health for his consent, under the Housing Act, 1925, Section 59, to the sale of land by the Council at such price.’ Councillor Garlick once again proposed an amendment that no action be taken on the matter, but this was not carried, and the main proposal, by a majority of five to four (Andrews, Barlow, Dunkerley, Hilton and Stott versus Garlick, Hibbert, Holland and Pyrah), was then carried.

On 16^th March 1932, following further discussion, the Council approved by five votes to four the minutes of the Housing and Town Planning Committee. Thus the proposal for a housing project for Lord Lane was eventually allowed to go forward for further consideration.

At a meeting of the Council on 5^th October 1932 a letter from the Ministry of Health was read agreeing to the sale of the land at Lord Lane. Therefore by this date the District Valuer of the Inland Revenue must have approved the sale price[6]. A vote was taken to proceed with the sale and resulted in a tie of four votes each; Councillor Froggatt was present and voted in favour. The proposal was passed on the deciding vote of the Chairman, Councillor Dunkerley.

On 21st February 1933 the Housing and Town Planning Committee approved Froggatts development proposals for Bardsley Fold (Lord Lane). Completion of the sale to Froggatts and payment for the land ultimately took place on 24th May 1933, as recorded by the council's solicitors in a letter to the council. Froggatts advised the council in a letter of 20th June 1933 that they had arranged for the Cotton Queen of Great Britain to open the Exhibition Houses on Saturday 22nd July. Clearly they were not hanging about! It is important to understand that there was a great deal of unemployment in the economy at this time.

‘By August 1930 the green shoots of economic recovery had been trampled back into the barren earth. Unemployment passed 2 million, the worst figure since 1921, and would go on climbing. By the middle of the decade, joblessness was so deeply woven into the fabric of life that people had come to regard it as normal. Complacency was supplanted by its more corrosive cousin, apathy. Young men in their twenties had never had a job, saw no possibility of getting one, and could not visualise what life would be like if they did. For them, the Labour Exchange was hardly less a temple of dreams than the cinema. Poverty was beyond anything that later generations would be able to imagine[7].’

There was therefore a lot of labour available for new building, and in fact the house-building boom that was proceeding nationally was likely to have been, effectively, a make-work programme stimulated by the government through the 1925 Housing Act, low interest rates and easy credit from the building societies. In much the same way government funds had been made available to build the dual carriageway of Broadway through the meadowlands between Failsworth and Chadderton in 1922.[8]

Later Froggatt wanted to delay completion of the houses to two years from the date of conveyance of the land (to 24^th May 1935 therefore), and permission to build some shops. The former proposal was accepted by the council, the latter was not.

Dunkerley Avenue

On 27^th June 1933 the council received an application to extend Fairbrother Street, a road that ran into the Lord Lane estate area. On 28^th June 1933 the council minutes noted that ‘The question of the names to be given to the new Streets on the Bardsley Fold Estate of Messrs. H. W. and G. T. Froggatt was adjourned for consideration at the next Meeting of the Finance and General Purposes Committee.’

At a meeting of the Finance and General Purposes Committee on 5^th July 1933 it was proposed that the names of Burgess Drive and Wrigley Crescent be adopted for use at Bardsley Fold ‘and that the name of  Fairbrother Street be altered to  Dunkerley Avenue, which will include the length of Street from  Ashton Road West to Lord Lane’. Due notice of this proposal was to be given. ‘Wrigley’ is a local place-name in Failsworth (as in ‘Wrigley Head’) and ‘Burgess’ was probably named for Joseph Burgess, a son of Failsworth who distinguished himself as a radical labour politician and Lancashire dialect poet. I was told by my father that the proposal to change the name of Fairbrother Street to Dunkerley Avenue was an acknowledgement of the service given by his father, William Dunkerley, to Failsworth Council, of which he was Chairman a record four times (1920, 1921, 1925 and 1931).

At a meeting of the Surveyor's Committee on 22nd August 1933 'The Surveryor reported that having duly posted Notice of the intention of the Council to make an Order altering the name of Fairbrother Streeet to Dunkerley Avenue; that the Notice was posted on the 25th July, and that no objections to the proposal had been received. "It was therefore resolved 'That the Council be hereby recommended to make an Order altering the name of Fairbrother Street to Dunkerley Avenue, and that Notice of the new name of the Street be duly affixed by the Surveryor in due course." 

At a meeting of the Council on 20^th September 1933 the following Memo was recorded: ‘Notice having been duly given in pursuance of Section 18 of the Public Health Act, 1925, of the intention of the Council to make an Order altering the name of Fairbrother Street to Dunkerley Avenue, and no objections having been received to the said proposal, Resolved and Ordered – That this Council hereby, in pursuance of the Public Health Act, 1925 do alter the name of Fairbrother Street to Dunkerley Avenue.

Froggatts was still building houses in the area on 28^th February 1934, as on that date they requested permission to modify some of the types of houses being built, the better to fit the market.

It appears that by October 1934 Billy Dunkerley bought the house at 28, Lord Lane, on the estate he had done so much to champion. The house was not built by Froggatts, but apparently by Jos Van Gelderen[9] and it was probably bought with a mortgage from the Halifax Building Society. Billy’s son Albert and his wife Muriel bought the house at 54, Dunkerley Avenue, and his daughter Gladys and her husband Bob Stott bought the one at 16, Lord Lane[10]. Thus did they and a considerable number of other Failsworth families of the lower middle classes benefit from the release of land at Bardsley Fold to the builders during the slump of the 1930s.

Filename: Dunkerley Avenue A.doc

This page was last modified on 17 Jul 2009