Bramhall & District Books and Maps, a short guide The following is a selection of books, booklets and maps about Bramhall, Woodford, Hazel Grove & Poynton. (For many years until the local government reorganisation of 1974 Bramhall & Hazel Grove were part of the same Urban District Council.) If you know of others, please send us details. Regrettably, apart from the admirable Alan Godfrey maps, most of them are out of print, but second-hand copies of some can readily be found on websites such as eBay, AbeBooks and Amazon. Books Bramall Hall, by E. Barbara Dean pub. Stockport MBC & the Friends of Bramall Hall, 1999. Bramall Hall, a room-by-room guide to the Hall i) booklet pub. Hazel Grove & Bramhall Urban District Council, undated ii) booklet pub. Stockport MBC, 1981 Bygone Bramhall, by E. Barbara Dean Three editions, 1980, 1990 & 2002, the last published by Stockport MBC 40 page A4 booklet, well worth obtaining. The Diary of Peter Pownall, a Bramhall Farmer, 1765-1858: an Introduction to Local History, by Peter Pownall, edited by Heather Coutie pub. Old Vicarage Publications, 1989 Hazel Grove & Bramhall, compiled by Heather Coutie pub. Chalford 1997, one of the publisher’s Archive Photographs Series The History of Hazel Grove, by D.H. Trowsdale pub. D.H. Trowsdale, 1976 This 100 page A4 booklet seems to have been home-printed and bound. It identified itself as vol.1 of a history of Hazel Grove & Bramhall, so, if vol.2 was ever published, it presumably covered Bramhall. Memories of Bramhall, ed. Mrs. G. Wilsdon A project undertaken by 4th year pupils (Year 6) at Pownall Green Junior School, 1981, and printed for the benefit of them and their parents – reference copies in Bramhall Library, Stockport Local History Library and our own library for members of the Group. First Davenport of Bramhall, by Joseph Bradbury A novel first published in 1894 which has been OCR scanned and made available again as a print-on-demand book. The Official Guide In the 1950s and ’60s Hazel Grove & Bramhall Urban District Council published The Official Guide in at least four editions, a small booklet containing several photos and supported by advertisements from local businesses. The Story of Hazel Grove and Bramhall, by Robert Speake pub. Crescent Press, Stockport , 1964 Speake was a History Master at Hazel Grove High School. Methodism in Bramhall, by Andrew Corrie pub. Bramhall Methodist Church, 1st ed. 1971, 2nd revised ed. 1996 Bramhall Through Time, by Simon Crossley & Paul Chrystal pub. Amberley, 2016 A frankly disappointing, unsatisfactory and inappropriately named publication which ranges far and wide away from Bramhall. The five chapters are Bramhall, Cheadle Hulme & Cheadle, Gatley(!), Hazel Grove, and Manchester Airport (!). It has captions that are inaccurate or plain wrong and uses badly chosen modern photos in its comparisons, but it does include some very good historic images, printed more brightly than in Heather Coutie’s 1997 book. The glued binding of the copy we examined, known as perfect binding, was very imperfect, and pages had started to come loose. It appeared in many Christmas stockings, to very much mixed reviews. Hazel Grove or Bullock Smithy? A village history trail, by the HG Local History Group, pub. Stockport MBC, 1982. 22 page booklet A Short History of Hazel Grove from olden times by R.J. Fletcher Facsimile reprint of the 1901 original, pub. M.T.D. Rigg 1994, 64pp Woodford, Glimpses into the Past, by Heather F. Braddock pub. not identified, 2004, 60pp As the dates suggest, the following three books amount to a trilogy: Poynton, a Coalmining Village, 1700-1939, by Shercliff, Kitching & Ryan pub. Shercliff, 1983, 90 page double column A4 booklet Poynton, a Village at War, 1939-1945, by the Poynton Local History Society pub. PLHS, 1999. 68 page A4 booklet Poynton, a Thriving Community 1946-83, by W.H. Shercliff pub. Shercliff, 1996, 130 page double column A4 paperback [Henry James’s 1897 novel The Spoils of Poynton does not belong here: it was set in England rather than his native USA, but down in the south, and Poynton was the name of a house.] Reprinted Maps Bramhall & Bramall Hall, 1910-11, a Stockport Heritage Map no.7 pub. Stockport Libraries Cheadle Hulme & District, 1882, a Stockport Heritage Map no.9 pub. Stockport Libraries Hazel Grove, 1875, a Stockport Heritage Map no.2 pub. Stockport Libraries (Stockport Libraries may still have for sale copies of some or all the maps they have printed.) The Alan Godfrey series of very large scale reprinted maps is huge, over 3,000, and hugely valuable if you are fortunate and they have covered a part of the country you are interested in. On some inner city maps the scale is big enough to show pavements and steps into buildings and to distinguish glass conservatories from the buildings they are attached to. The following are the most local maps, but there are many more only a little further afield: Bramhall (North) 1907 Bramhall Grange 1907 Bredbury (West) & Brinnington 1907 Cheadle (North) 1916 Cheadle Hulme (South) 1907 Hazel Grove, 1897 Poynton (East) 1907 Poynton (West) 1896 Romiley 1897 Stockport (South) 1907 Woodley 1897 Tithe Map of Bramhall, 1842 pub. by Frank & Teretta Mitchell in four sheets, N.W., N.E., S.E. & S.W., 1976/7 They published many more maps than these four, covering much of greater Stockport, some of which (in 2017) were still available to purchase in the Stockport Local History Library on Wellington Road South. IRC November 2017 .