Question 1

What sort of driveways do Macclesfield houses have?

Accepted Answer

It depends enormously on which part of town, and the contrast is sharper here than in most places. The silk-era centre was built before private cars and largely has no frontage to park on at all. The postwar estates are where the driveways are — and those drives are now forty to eighty years old, on thin or non-existent sub-bases. The housing age data makes the point better than an impression does. VOA council tax stock records central Macclesfield as 54.1% pre-1919 against 20.1% for England as a whole, while Tytherington is 1.5% pre-1919 and Weston is 80.3% built between 1945 and 1982. The town average is unremarkable; the story is the contrast between neighbourhoods a mile and a half apart. In the centre, that means houses built before private car ownership. The Macclesfield Character Assessment describes the silk-era workers' cottages and three-storey weavers' garrets as built hard up against the pavement edge — so there is frequently no front garden to convert and nowhere for a crossover to lead. Work on those streets is rear yards, shared entries and back lanes rather than front driveways. The postwar estates — Hurdsfield, Tytherington, Broken Cross, Upton Priory, Weston, Moss Rose, Bollinbrook, Hollins and Sutton among them — are where most driveway work happens, and they share a common problem. Drives laid in the fifties, sixties and seventies were typically thin concrete or a single skim of tarmac over very little, and they are now at or well past the end of that. Cracked, sunken and edge-crumbling drives on those streets are not a mystery; they are a construction from a different era reaching its limit. The newer estates are a different conversation again. Block paving has been the developer default for thirty years, and a fair share of those drives are now at the point where the joints have emptied, the edge restraint is showing its quality, and the surface has faded. Most of them need restoring or relaying rather than replacing — the blocks are fine. Then the villages and the higher ground — Bollington, Prestbury, Gawsworth, Sutton and Henbury and out to the hills — where the drives are longer, the gradients are real and the exposure is greater. Long gravel and stone approaches, farm entrances and steep drives are common, and there the failures are about water and washout more than about traffic.

Question 2

Driveways in Macclesfield

Accepted Answer

It depends enormously on which part of town, and the contrast is sharper here than in most places. The silk-era centre was built before private cars and largely has no frontage to park on at all. The postwar estates are where the driveways are — and those drives are now forty to eighty years old, on thin or non-existent sub-bases. The housing age data makes the point better than an impression does. VOA council tax stock records central Macclesfield as 54.1% pre-1919 against 20.1% for England as a whole, while Tytherington is 1.5% pre-1919 and Weston is 80.3% built between 1945 and 1982. The town average is unremarkable; the story is the contrast between neighbourhoods a mile and a half apart. In the centre, that means houses built before private car ownership. The Macclesfield Character Assessment describes the silk-era workers' cottages and three-storey weavers' garrets as built hard up against the pavement edge — so there is frequently no front garden to convert and nowhere for a crossover to lead. Work on those streets is rear yards, shared entries and back lanes rather than front driveways. The postwar estates — Hurdsfield, Tytherington, Broken Cross, Upton Priory, Weston, Moss Rose, Bollinbrook, Hollins and Sutton among them — are where most driveway work happens, and they share a common problem. Drives laid in the fifties, sixties and seventies were typically thin concrete or a single skim of tarmac over very little, and they are now at or well past the end of that. Cracked, sunken and edge-crumbling drives on those streets are not a mystery; they are a construction from a different era reaching its limit. The newer estates are a different conversation again. Block paving has been the developer default for thirty years, and a fair share of those drives are now at the point where the joints have emptied, the edge restraint is showing its quality, and the surface has faded. Most of them need restoring or relaying rather than replacing — the blocks are fine. Then the villages and the higher ground — Bollington, Prestbury, Gawsworth, Sutton and Henbury and out to the hills — where the drives are longer, the gradients are real and the exposure is greater. Long gravel and stone approaches, farm entrances and steep drives are common, and there the failures are about water and washout more than about traffic.

Question 3

What are Macclesfield drives made of?

Accepted Answer

It depends enormously on which part of town, and the contrast is sharper here than in most places. The silk-era centre was built before private cars and largely has no frontage to park on at all. The postwar estates are where the driveways are — and those drives are now forty to eighty years old, on thin or non-existent sub-bases. The housing age data makes the point better than an impression does. VOA council tax stock records central Macclesfield as 54.1% pre-1919 against 20.1% for England as a whole, while Tytherington is 1.5% pre-1919 and Weston is 80.3% built between 1945 and 1982. The town average is unremarkable; the story is the contrast between neighbourhoods a mile and a half apart. In the centre, that means houses built before private car ownership. The Macclesfield Character Assessment describes the silk-era workers' cottages and three-storey weavers' garrets as built hard up against the pavement edge — so there is frequently no front garden to convert and nowhere for a crossover to lead. Work on those streets is rear yards, shared entries and back lanes rather than front driveways. The postwar estates — Hurdsfield, Tytherington, Broken Cross, Upton Priory, Weston, Moss Rose, Bollinbrook, Hollins and Sutton among them — are where most driveway work happens, and they share a common problem. Drives laid in the fifties, sixties and seventies were typically thin concrete or a single skim of tarmac over very little, and they are now at or well past the end of that. Cracked, sunken and edge-crumbling drives on those streets are not a mystery; they are a construction from a different era reaching its limit. The newer estates are a different conversation again. Block paving has been the developer default for thirty years, and a fair share of those drives are now at the point where the joints have emptied, the edge restraint is showing its quality, and the surface has faded. Most of them need restoring or relaying rather than replacing — the blocks are fine. Then the villages and the higher ground — Bollington, Prestbury, Gawsworth, Sutton and Henbury and out to the hills — where the drives are longer, the gradients are real and the exposure is greater. Long gravel and stone approaches, farm entrances and steep drives are common, and there the failures are about water and washout more than about traffic.

What sort of driveways do Macclesfield houses have?

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