[Retlaw]

Originally Posted by JoanR

This is my first post to the forum although I've been reading the entries for some time. I'm very interested in the Broad Oak Fold thread as we lived in the top part of Barnfield St., near Sandy Lane, when I was a child in the forties, until 1946. When I started school, St. Paul's, I had a friend, Marlene Newsham, who visited a relative, maybe her grandmother, in Broad Oak Fold, and I went with her. The photo in Post #4 is more or less as I remember it, although the photo must be much older. I remember the tree in the centre.

We walked up Sandy Lane to Leemings Pad, along past the farm, and over to Plantation Lane.

Some years ago the staff of Accrington Library sent me copies of the relevant parts, about Broad Oak Fold, of Richard Ainsworth's book, Old Homesteads of Accrington. I've seen this discussed in another thread, with varying opinions, but I found it interesting. There's no mention of a coach house, though.

Welcome to the debate JoanR..
As you say, there is no mention of a coach house, some of those buildings date back to the mid 1700's, and Broad Oak Fold itself is even older.
Why every one thinks that just because one of the buildings has the name Coach House stuck on it, that it was a coach house beats me, who would the coach be for, all those buildings were there long before the Hargreaves's built Broad Oak House, and they kept their transport in a building on Sandy Lane, which faced the front Garden of the house where the Crowe's lived.
A lot of people have been taken in by a bit of fancy stone masonry, another few grand on the sale price.
Retlaw