Rose Cottage January 2011

Rose Cottage is a most attractive building on the north side of Broughton Road as one leaves the village. The Rating and Valuation Act 1925 specified that every building and piece of land in the country was to be assessed to determine its rateable value. Like much of the county, Salford was assessed in 1927. The valuer visiting Rose Cottage [DV1/C57/1] found it owned by All Souls College, Oxford which, as Lord of the Manor since the early 15th century, owned a considerable part of the village.

The cottage was in the occupation of William Summerford who paid £18 per annum for it, the rent before the Great War having been about £13. The valuer commented: "Rent very low. Pretty place".

The cottage comprised a hall, two living rooms, a kitchen, scullery and pantry on the ground floor with five bedrooms above. A coal barn, wood shed and earth closet stood outside. Water came from a well and there was no electricity, the cottage being lit by lamps.

There was also a brick and corrugated iron smithy and a barn as well as a wood and slated carpenter's shop, w wood and corrugated iron wood shed, a wood and corrugated iron engine shed containing a disused 4½ horsepower engine and a lumber store. Kelly's Directory for 1914 notes that William Summerford was then the village blacksmith but he had clearly given this up by the 1920s as he is not listed as such in the directories for 1920, 1924 or 1928.

Directories reveal that previous blacksmiths had been: Frederick Summerford, listed in 1906 and 1910; Thomas Boon, listed in 1903 and George Lane listed in 1877, 1885, 1890 and 1894. The smithy stood north of Broughton Road but some way west of Rose Cottage, separated from it by a nine and a half acre grass field also rented by William Summerford for £19 per annum [DV1/C57/2].