Beating the Bounds


St Faith's parish boundaries, and the streets within them,
in the year of our church's consecration and today.





St Faith's in 1900


The parish was carved out of surrounding parishes, but in the early years the only concentrated urban building was to the
SW of the church (the 'Tree' roads and the 'Dales')
and the houses around Merchant Taylors' School.
To the east lay open fields, although the line of Stuart Road existed, as did Marldon and Grosvenor Avenues.
Crosby House Farm and Carrfield Dairy are shown to the N.E.
The fields merge into what is now
the Rimrose Valley country park, and the Leeds-Liverpool canal may be seen bottom right.

This 'old' map, our sleuth John Woodley says,  is in fact a cobbled together version of two maps from different periods.
The northern section is fom 1907 and the southern area (Waterloo) is 1925. He has taken cartographer's licence to remove
several streets in the parish to take it back to 1900.  Victoria Park was built in 1902 and the roads to the north
of Myers Road West weren't laid out until much later (1925 onwards).





St Faith's in 2014

Today, as Google's aerial mapping shows, the houses are crammed tight into the parish boundaries. Victoria Park is prominent, as are the Merchant Taylors' grounds,
complete with the new Sports Hall (pale blur roof) and the cricket squares visible. Across Liverpool Road, Sacred Heart Catholic College is now fully established.
Houses have eaten up most of the empty land, leaving a strip of green at the edge of Rimrose Valley Country Park, with the canal beyond.

Population growth

“Why on earth do you want to build a church miles from anywhere?”
“It will not always be miles from anywhere.”
Squire Myers (as in Myers Road) reply to Howard Douglas Horsfall, our founder and benfactor.

Population changes in St Faith’s Parish – 1900 to 2011


Year


No. of roads


Approximate Parish Population


Notes

1901

15

2196

Data gathered from 1901 census, street by street summary.

1911

33

4454

Data gathered from 1911 census summary books, (includes 91 occupants of Nazareth House, 16 adults and 75 children).

2011

56

5300

Data derived from Census Output Areas by the Diocese


Between 1901 and 1911 the population of the parish increased by 203%

and between 1901 and 2011 the population increased by almost 241%.

We reckon that in 2014 a more realistic estimate of our parish's population would puit it well over 6,000


Thanks to John Woodley for research.

Click HERE for Denis Griffiths's parish maps.
Click HERE to return to the church history index page.