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MIDDLEWICH DIARY MASTHEAD FOR NOVEMBER 2026
Original Middlewich Diary post from 2011: WHEELOCK STREET, EARLY 20c
Saturday, 8 August 2026
50 YEARS ON - THE BERTIE WILKINSON MURDER
This account of the circumstances surrounding the murder of Herbert Wilkinson was first published in 2017, fifty years after the event - Ed
The Middlewich of fifty years ago was very different from the town we know today. The days of open-pan salt production were coming to an end and the canals which had carried the fuel for the pans and the salt which they produced were also falling into disuse and disrepair.
But at the same time the canals were finding a new use as part of a growing leisure industry and Middlewich, like other towns on the network, began to see more and more pleasure boats taking the place of the old working narrowboats.
In the Summer of 1967 - now forever immortalised as the 'Summer of Love' - a schoolfriend from Sir John Deane's Grammar School and I travelled by canoe from Seddon's Salt Works in Pepper Street to the Anderton Lift.
One of the highlights of the journey was the passing of the Lion Salt Works at Marston, long before its days as a museum and tourist attraction. Unlike the open pan works in Middlewich the Lion works had no plans for closure - despite its characteristic tumble-down, almost semi-derelict appearance - and would continue making salt in the traditional way until the 1980s by which time, as the only remaining open pan works in the country, it had a chance of being earmarked for preservation.
Another highlight was the Anderton Lift itself which was also, by then, in a state of semi-dereliction. It was still working and some of the rapidly dwindling fleet of working boats were clustered around it waiting to take the last of the output from the Cheshire salt works down the River Weaver towards Weston Point.
The lift was built in 1875 and served the area well for many years, linking the local salt industry with the Weaver, Liverpool and salt markets all over the world.
However, by the time of our visit it was suffering from heavy corrosion due to the salt and chemical works in the area and suffered frequent breakdowns.
By 1983 it had become inoperable.
Restoration began in 2001 and the lift re-opened in 2002.
All in all it was an interesting trip, taking in the last of the traditional Cheshire salt industry and the canals which served it.
If only we'd thought to take a camera with us!
What we could not have known, and only discovered later in the year, was that our valedictory trip up the canal had also taken us close to the site of a gruesome discovery which was to be made in the October of 1967.
Our canoe journey took us through Whatcroft, which lies on the Trent & Mersey Canal between Middlewich and Northwich.
On June 2nd he left a 'hastily scribbled' note with his housekeeper, walked out of his house and was never seen alive again.
There is no record of what this note might have said, so we have to assume
that it gave no clue at all to the police in the subsequent investigation.
'Bertie' Wilkinson was a well-known figure in Middlewich for many years, and was often to be seen walking along Nantwich Road from his home to his office in Wheelock Street.
We lived in Nantwich Road until 1959 and my mother, who kept tabs on everyone walking past our house, used to say 'there's Bertie', in a mysteriously 'knowing' sort of way, as if there was something we should all realise about him and what he was doing, but then again she kept up a running commentary on all the comings and goings in the street and nothing escaped her eagle eye. In this, of course, she was no different from any other woman in the street, or the rest of the town.
I never really took much notice of Bertie. I was,after all, a very young lad at the time and knew little of the world.
There were many people walking past the house all day long - going to work and coming home from work; going for a drink and coming home again slightly (or much) the worse for wear....
There was nothing exceptional about 'Bertie'.
Except for one thing, apparently.
Bertie, my mother used to say darkly, 'liked men'.
And what's wrong with that? you might well ask.
I certainly did. In my innocence (and please remember, this was when I was very young) I couldn't see anything wrong with Bertie liking men.
When Mum elaborated, it still didn't mean an awful lot.
'There are some,' she said, 'who think Bertie likes men a bit too much'.
What innocent times we lived in then!
In 1967 Herbert Wilkinson was 54 years old and unmarried.
His solicitor's practice in Middlewich had run into serious trouble, leading to his being struck off by the Law Society.
The poor man must have been at the end of his tether and by this time, by all accounts, was 'sick in both mind and body'.
Who can say what kind of life he had been leading up to that time? We don't know and, I'd like to think that even in these prurient times most of us wouldn't really want to.
A few months after our little trip to Anderton, two young men were searching for fox earths alongside the canal at Whatcroft when they came across a shallow grave containing the decomposing remains of a man. One of these young men, Billy Grey, has been in touch since this Diary entry was first published. He still has vivid memories of that day.
This was long before the barbaric 'sport' of fox hunting was officially banned and Billy and his mate were doing some work on behalf of the local hunt. Billy remembers that there were actually two 'graves' rather than just one and was surmising that the first one was too close to a hedge to fit the body in and a second one had to be dug further away.
Apparently it was difficult to make a positive identification of the body but the police came to the conclusion that it had to be that of Herbert Wilkinson who they had been searching for since his disappearance five months earlier. A pair of shoes and some fragments of clothing helped in the identification.
Cheshire Police's missing person's enquiry was about to turn into a murder hunt.
And no ordinary murder hunt, either.
According to The Cheshire Magazine, writing in 2002, it was one of the biggest murder investigations ever mounted in Britain and was headed by Arthur Benfield who had, a couple of years earlier, been in charge of the team which investigated the horrendous Moors murders. There have, of course, been many major murder investigations over the last fifty years, and it's possible that what the magazine means is that it was one of the biggest such investigations up to that time.
One other factor which hampered the investigating team was the Foot & Mouth disease outbreak which came along at the end of the summer and decimated the cattle population, bringing severe restrictions on any movements throughout the county. The outbreak lasted through the autumn and winter and well into 1968.
More than sixty detectives were involved in the investigation, which took over six months to complete. They questioned every male in the town over a certain age, including me.
As I recall the 'interview' was very short indeed. All they wanted to know was whether or not I knew Herbert Wilkinson.
I said that I knew of him, but hadn't ever spoken to him.
I told them that I used to mix up this particular Bertie with another one - Bertie Maddock, the town's rating officer at that time and, ironically, someone who I would end up working with at Middlewich UDC a couple of years later.
Some instinct told me not to mention Mum's oft-repeated assertion about Bertie Wilkinson 'liking men'.
Looking back over all those fifty years, that might well have caused complications...
The investigation involved detectives taking eight-hundred written statements and talking to eight-thousand people - at that time a fair proportion of the population of Middlewich.
They also talked to nine thousand other people across the country- people who might have, or were known to have, used the canal system in June that year.
This was because the investigating team were making the not unnatural assumption that as the body was buried close to the canal bank in a location quite remote from Middlewich, it was likely that it had been taken there by canal boat.
So keen was the interest in the murder case that Granada TV's Scene At Six-Thirty programme (the fore-runner to Granada Reports) sent a camera team to Middlewich and we were able for the first, but not the last, time to see our town on TV.
The inquest into Bertie's death took place in Northwich in 1968 and the jury returned a verdict of 'murder by person or persons unknown'.
Strangely, the detectives involved in the case could only say that Herbert Wilkinson had 'either been killed with a blow to the head, or strangled'.
Even allowing for the fact that forensic techniques were not as advanced fifty years ago as they are now, this still sounds a little odd. Surely, there's a world of difference between being strangled and being hit over the head?
Update: 9th May 2020. Paul Williams, a former Middlewich resident who now lives in Bunbury, Australia, has an eminently plausible explanation for this apparent anomaly.
He points out that if there were two assailants using different methods of attack, there could indeed have been a dispute over how poor Bertie had died. Alternatively, of course, a single attacker could have employed both methods to achieve his, or her ends. A horrible thought but, as we say, still eminently plausible.*
*Editor's note: Sadly, shortly after making this contribution Paul Williams was taken ill and died at the start of June 2020. Paul was a very intelligent and highly talented man and, despite his having made a successful new life in Australia, remained very interested in Middlewich. His knowledge of, and enthusiasm for, his home town was immense. We were so sorry to hear of Paul death's and offer our sincere condolences to Paul's family and many friends. DR.
Of course in a small town like Middlewich, rumours abounded about the identity of Herbert Wilkinson's killer, or killers, and the way he was killed.
For many years it was 'common knowledge' that the murder weapon was a windlass of the type used on canal locks.
This, of course, ties in with the police investigators' theory about a canal boat being used to move the body and with the 'blow to the head' theory for the cause of death but there seems to be no mention of a windlass in any police reports.
It's long been assumed that the police were well aware of the identity of the killer but were unable to gather enough evidence to convict him or her.
After fifty years, the sad case of the murder of Bertie Wilkinson remains on police files as 'unsolved'.
It's all a long time ago now, in any case.
Poor Herbert Wilkinson might, in these more enlightened times, have been able to gain more sympathy and get some help for the problems which beset him.
Whatever the ins and out of the case, he surely didn't deserve to die as he did.
May he rest in peace.
Dave Roberts
October 2017
Acknowledgments:
The Cheshire Magazine (Cheshire County Publishing 2002)
Cheshire Constabulary
Granada TV
The Middlewich of fifty years ago was very different from the town we know today. The days of open-pan salt production were coming to an end and the canals which had carried the fuel for the pans and the salt which they produced were also falling into disuse and disrepair.
 |
| Salt Works and Canal: Middlewich in 1967. This was the spot where we launched our canoe ready for the trip to the Anderton Lift. The site of the Pepper Street works, seen on the right, has now been re-developed as The Moorings. |
But at the same time the canals were finding a new use as part of a growing leisure industry and Middlewich, like other towns on the network, began to see more and more pleasure boats taking the place of the old working narrowboats.
In the Summer of 1967 - now forever immortalised as the 'Summer of Love' - a schoolfriend from Sir John Deane's Grammar School and I travelled by canoe from Seddon's Salt Works in Pepper Street to the Anderton Lift.
One of the highlights of the journey was the passing of the Lion Salt Works at Marston, long before its days as a museum and tourist attraction. Unlike the open pan works in Middlewich the Lion works had no plans for closure - despite its characteristic tumble-down, almost semi-derelict appearance - and would continue making salt in the traditional way until the 1980s by which time, as the only remaining open pan works in the country, it had a chance of being earmarked for preservation.
Another highlight was the Anderton Lift itself which was also, by then, in a state of semi-dereliction. It was still working and some of the rapidly dwindling fleet of working boats were clustered around it waiting to take the last of the output from the Cheshire salt works down the River Weaver towards Weston Point.
The lift was built in 1875 and served the area well for many years, linking the local salt industry with the Weaver, Liverpool and salt markets all over the world.
However, by the time of our visit it was suffering from heavy corrosion due to the salt and chemical works in the area and suffered frequent breakdowns.
By 1983 it had become inoperable.
Restoration began in 2001 and the lift re-opened in 2002.
If only we'd thought to take a camera with us!
What we could not have known, and only discovered later in the year, was that our valedictory trip up the canal had also taken us close to the site of a gruesome discovery which was to be made in the October of 1967.
Our canoe journey took us through Whatcroft, which lies on the Trent & Mersey Canal between Middlewich and Northwich.
 |
A Google Map showing the Whatcroft area. The large areas of blue are 'flashes' - lakes created by subsidence caused by 'wild' brine pumping in former years. 'Flashes' can be found all over Mid-Cheshire, notably in nearby Winsford. You'll notice that the Trent & Mersey Canal itself has also been affected and has its own 'flashes' (these areas, which are also to be found in other parts of the canal network, are usually referred to as 'wides'). Davenham Road connects King Street with the village of Davenham, just off the map to the left, and the thin diagonal dark blue line which is just discernible running from bottom right to top left is the Sandbach, Middlewich & Northwich Railway.
|
Whatcroft is a mysterious and rather sombre place. In the 1960s this wide area of the canal was used by British Waterways as a kind of Scapa Flow for narrowboats. After the virtual collapse of the canal carrying industry in the early 1960s many working boats deemed surplus to requirements were brought here and deliberately scuppered, just to get them out of the way. It was a depressing and slightly surreal experience to walk this way and see rows of perfectly serviceable boats just left to rot and slowly sinking deeper and deeper into the water.
Middlewich soliciter Herbert 'Bertie' Wilkinson had, by October 1967, been missing from his home for over five months. |
| Nearby is Whatcroft Hall, a very desirable property. It was close to Whatcroft Hall, on the banks of the Trent & Mersey Canal, that a gruesome discovery was made in October 1967 |
On June 2nd he left a 'hastily scribbled' note with his housekeeper, walked out of his house and was never seen alive again.
There is no record of what this note might have said, so we have to assume
that it gave no clue at all to the police in the subsequent investigation.
'Bertie' Wilkinson was a well-known figure in Middlewich for many years, and was often to be seen walking along Nantwich Road from his home to his office in Wheelock Street.
Photo: Blain, Boland & Co
The Solicitors' office in Wheelock Street once used by Herbert Wilkinson
We lived in Nantwich Road until 1959 and my mother, who kept tabs on everyone walking past our house, used to say 'there's Bertie', in a mysteriously 'knowing' sort of way, as if there was something we should all realise about him and what he was doing, but then again she kept up a running commentary on all the comings and goings in the street and nothing escaped her eagle eye. In this, of course, she was no different from any other woman in the street, or the rest of the town.
I never really took much notice of Bertie. I was,after all, a very young lad at the time and knew little of the world.
There were many people walking past the house all day long - going to work and coming home from work; going for a drink and coming home again slightly (or much) the worse for wear....
There was nothing exceptional about 'Bertie'.
Except for one thing, apparently.
Bertie, my mother used to say darkly, 'liked men'.
And what's wrong with that? you might well ask.
I certainly did. In my innocence (and please remember, this was when I was very young) I couldn't see anything wrong with Bertie liking men.
When Mum elaborated, it still didn't mean an awful lot.
'There are some,' she said, 'who think Bertie likes men a bit too much'.
What innocent times we lived in then!
In 1967 Herbert Wilkinson was 54 years old and unmarried.
His solicitor's practice in Middlewich had run into serious trouble, leading to his being struck off by the Law Society.
The poor man must have been at the end of his tether and by this time, by all accounts, was 'sick in both mind and body'.
Who can say what kind of life he had been leading up to that time? We don't know and, I'd like to think that even in these prurient times most of us wouldn't really want to.
A few months after our little trip to Anderton, two young men were searching for fox earths alongside the canal at Whatcroft when they came across a shallow grave containing the decomposing remains of a man. One of these young men, Billy Grey, has been in touch since this Diary entry was first published. He still has vivid memories of that day.
This was long before the barbaric 'sport' of fox hunting was officially banned and Billy and his mate were doing some work on behalf of the local hunt. Billy remembers that there were actually two 'graves' rather than just one and was surmising that the first one was too close to a hedge to fit the body in and a second one had to be dug further away.
Apparently it was difficult to make a positive identification of the body but the police came to the conclusion that it had to be that of Herbert Wilkinson who they had been searching for since his disappearance five months earlier. A pair of shoes and some fragments of clothing helped in the identification.
Cheshire Police's missing person's enquiry was about to turn into a murder hunt.
And no ordinary murder hunt, either.
According to The Cheshire Magazine, writing in 2002, it was one of the biggest murder investigations ever mounted in Britain and was headed by Arthur Benfield who had, a couple of years earlier, been in charge of the team which investigated the horrendous Moors murders. There have, of course, been many major murder investigations over the last fifty years, and it's possible that what the magazine means is that it was one of the biggest such investigations up to that time.
One other factor which hampered the investigating team was the Foot & Mouth disease outbreak which came along at the end of the summer and decimated the cattle population, bringing severe restrictions on any movements throughout the county. The outbreak lasted through the autumn and winter and well into 1968.
More than sixty detectives were involved in the investigation, which took over six months to complete. They questioned every male in the town over a certain age, including me.
As I recall the 'interview' was very short indeed. All they wanted to know was whether or not I knew Herbert Wilkinson.
I said that I knew of him, but hadn't ever spoken to him.
I told them that I used to mix up this particular Bertie with another one - Bertie Maddock, the town's rating officer at that time and, ironically, someone who I would end up working with at Middlewich UDC a couple of years later.
Some instinct told me not to mention Mum's oft-repeated assertion about Bertie Wilkinson 'liking men'.
Looking back over all those fifty years, that might well have caused complications...
The investigation involved detectives taking eight-hundred written statements and talking to eight-thousand people - at that time a fair proportion of the population of Middlewich.
They also talked to nine thousand other people across the country- people who might have, or were known to have, used the canal system in June that year.
This was because the investigating team were making the not unnatural assumption that as the body was buried close to the canal bank in a location quite remote from Middlewich, it was likely that it had been taken there by canal boat.
So keen was the interest in the murder case that Granada TV's Scene At Six-Thirty programme (the fore-runner to Granada Reports) sent a camera team to Middlewich and we were able for the first, but not the last, time to see our town on TV.
The inquest into Bertie's death took place in Northwich in 1968 and the jury returned a verdict of 'murder by person or persons unknown'.
Strangely, the detectives involved in the case could only say that Herbert Wilkinson had 'either been killed with a blow to the head, or strangled'.
Even allowing for the fact that forensic techniques were not as advanced fifty years ago as they are now, this still sounds a little odd. Surely, there's a world of difference between being strangled and being hit over the head?
Update: 9th May 2020. Paul Williams, a former Middlewich resident who now lives in Bunbury, Australia, has an eminently plausible explanation for this apparent anomaly.
He points out that if there were two assailants using different methods of attack, there could indeed have been a dispute over how poor Bertie had died. Alternatively, of course, a single attacker could have employed both methods to achieve his, or her ends. A horrible thought but, as we say, still eminently plausible.*
*Editor's note: Sadly, shortly after making this contribution Paul Williams was taken ill and died at the start of June 2020. Paul was a very intelligent and highly talented man and, despite his having made a successful new life in Australia, remained very interested in Middlewich. His knowledge of, and enthusiasm for, his home town was immense. We were so sorry to hear of Paul death's and offer our sincere condolences to Paul's family and many friends. DR.
Of course in a small town like Middlewich, rumours abounded about the identity of Herbert Wilkinson's killer, or killers, and the way he was killed.
For many years it was 'common knowledge' that the murder weapon was a windlass of the type used on canal locks.
It's long been assumed that the police were well aware of the identity of the killer but were unable to gather enough evidence to convict him or her.
After fifty years, the sad case of the murder of Bertie Wilkinson remains on police files as 'unsolved'.
It's all a long time ago now, in any case.
Poor Herbert Wilkinson might, in these more enlightened times, have been able to gain more sympathy and get some help for the problems which beset him.
Whatever the ins and out of the case, he surely didn't deserve to die as he did.
May he rest in peace.
Dave Roberts
October 2017
Acknowledgments:
The Cheshire Magazine (Cheshire County Publishing 2002)
Cheshire Constabulary
Granada TV
Originally published 23rd October 2017
Re-formatted and re-published 8th August 2026
Facebook Feedback (from 6th May 2020, when this entry featured in our 'Middlewich Diary Revisited' series during the coronavirus outbreak)
Jane Walker My Nan was Mr Wilkinson’s housekeeper and his sister gave his piano and books to my Nan which we still have. He used to play the organ at church. I wonder if the men who killed him are still alive!
Paul Williams Fascinating stuff. 1967 truly a different world. It didn’t have me for a start.
Andrew Tomlinson Massive police operation, for the day. I remember my dad - and every man of a certain age in town, being interviewed by the police.
Susan Johnson I remember this, wasnt very old at time, policeman interviewed me as i had been down canal & seen some blokes acting strange on a canal barge & told my mum about it. Dont know if they had owt do with it though, they could have been inocent but they may have seen somat. Blimey a lot of years ago.
Elizabeth Royle We lived in Nantwich Road the same a. Bertie and we were interviewed by the police like everyone else in the street. I remember it like yesterday.
Betty Williams We were interviewed by the police. The policeman who came to our house went to school with my brother. Did they ever find who killed him ?
(Officially, no - Ed)
Re-formatted and re-published 8th August 2026
Facebook Feedback (from 6th May 2020, when this entry featured in our 'Middlewich Diary Revisited' series during the coronavirus outbreak)
Jane Walker My Nan was Mr Wilkinson’s housekeeper and his sister gave his piano and books to my Nan which we still have. He used to play the organ at church. I wonder if the men who killed him are still alive!
Paul Williams Fascinating stuff. 1967 truly a different world. It didn’t have me for a start.
Andrew Tomlinson Massive police operation, for the day. I remember my dad - and every man of a certain age in town, being interviewed by the police.
Susan Johnson I remember this, wasnt very old at time, policeman interviewed me as i had been down canal & seen some blokes acting strange on a canal barge & told my mum about it. Dont know if they had owt do with it though, they could have been inocent but they may have seen somat. Blimey a lot of years ago.
Elizabeth Royle We lived in Nantwich Road the same a. Bertie and we were interviewed by the police like everyone else in the street. I remember it like yesterday.
Betty Williams We were interviewed by the police. The policeman who came to our house went to school with my brother. Did they ever find who killed him ?
(Officially, no - Ed)
Middlewich Diary entry © 2017 Salt Town Productions
Tuesday, 14 July 2026
MEMORIES OF MIDDLEWICH CIVIC HALL
Memories of Middlewich Civic Hall
By Dave Roberts
Adapted from ‘Middlewich Civic Hall – the first twenty five years’ as published in the Middlewich Heritage Society Newsletter, October 1994.
 |
| MIDDLEWICH CIVIC HALL - Photo CHESHIRE EAST COUNCIL |
Author’s note:
When this article first appeared in the Heritage Society Newsletter I gave it the title ‘Middlewich Civic Hall – the first twenty-five years’, which might well have led people to expect a detailed account of EVERYTHING which happened there between September 1969 and October 1994.
Although people have, as we have proved with the ‘Middlewich Diary’. a high tolerance for Middlewich trivia, that would have been too much for even the most avid Middlewich fan to take.
The article was really just a first-hand eye-witness account of the Hall’s opening on September 12th 1969 with a few details of the slightly fraught pre-opening period (kindly supplied by Albert Robinson, by the way) and a couple of other memories of occasions when I was there as MC of a rock concert and the first Middlewich Folk & Boat Festival, and so I have edited and re-written it accordingly.
The Civic Hall will be in the news again during 2012 as the Town Council gets involved in taking over its running from Cheshire East, and I thought it would be appropriate, for our last Middlewich Diary entry of 2011, to go back to the beginning.
The article is also appropriate for New Year’s Eve because it mentions the fight between the Young Farmers and the Cerebos Foods Transport Social Club (won, as you’ll see, by the Cerebos faction) for the honour of hosting the very first New Year Party at Middlewich Civic Hall forty-two years ago tonight on the 31st December 1969.
I was at the Civic Hall on the day it opened in 1969, and twenty-one years later, in 1990, had the privilege of presenting the main concert at the town’s brand-new Folk & Boat Festival at the same venue.
Even before it opened, Middlewich’s new ‘showpiece’ was causing controversy.
Cerebos Foods Transport Social Club was at daggers drawn with the Young Farmer’s Club over the booking of the Hall for New Year’s Eve 1969.
The Cerebos faction were insisting that Clerk to the Council, Mr Joseph Alcock, had confirmed the booking, whereas the Establishment Committee were determined that the Hall should be let to the YFC who intended to hold a public dance.
Eventually, Cerebos won the day. They had, after all, splashed out £40 to hire a band, and this was ‘not refundable’.
And as if all this were not enough the sink unit chosen for the hall was the subject of heated debate.
Councillor Fred Stallard described the sink as ‘paltry’ and implied that, as council surveyor Donald Stubbs, who had ordered the sink, was a bachelor, he was ‘not well-versed in the field of washing up’.
Mr Stubbs retorted that even a bachelor could be interested in cooking.
Acting Deputy Clerk Terry Fitton was instructed to advertise the fact that the MUDC was offering free use of the hall to local organisations during its first week.
Meanwhile, probably oblivious to all the small town politics surrounding the Civic Hall, contractors Lanner Ltd of Wakefield
A firm of signwriters were asked to make a commemorative plaque to be unveiled by Council Chairman Wilfrid Faulkner – a plaque which, as it turned out, contained an unfortunate spelling error which was to cause red faces at the opening ceremony.
In what would nowadays be called the ‘run up’ to the opening of the hall, fresh controversy erupted.
Why, asked the Chamber of Trade & Commerce, had local shopkeepers not been asked to tender for the equipping and decorating of the hall? Even the flowers for the opening ceremony had been obtained from Winsford.
Why, asked the Chamber of Trade & Commerce, had local shopkeepers not been asked to tender for the equipping and decorating of the hall? Even the flowers for the opening ceremony had been obtained from Winsford.
The Council replied that local traders had been asked to supply flowers and had been unable to do so – a reply which could have been predicted.
Despite all this wrangling, plans went ahead for the grand opening, which was to take place on Friday September 12th 1969.
I was working in the Rates Office at Middlewich UDC at the time (starting salary at 16 £330 per annum) and I have good reason to remember the day the Civic Hall opened.. It was my 17th birthday, and this meant I was in line for a pay rise (salary at 17 £380 per annum in accordance with Clerical Division Grade 1).
We were all given the afternoon off to attend the grand opening. There were plates of ham and salmon sandwiches and some little puff pastry things which, we were assured, were ‘vol-au-vents’.
Small glasses of sherry were proffered, and we all stood around eagerly awaiting the opening ceremony.
I have been unable to find any written evidence for this, but I am pretty sure that the music in the afternoon was supplied by Percy Bailey and His Band, in what must have been one of their last appearances. Contemporary reports say that the afternoon music was provided by the Secondary School Band, but I don’t remember them, just the Percy Bailey Band. I even remember talking to Percy and one of the councillors patting him on the back and saying, ‘well done. Percy!’
Bailey’s Band was the mainstay of Middlewich music for many years and Percy himself was famous for his habit of propping his copy of the Evening Sentinel on the music stand of his piano and reading it intently throughout every dance session.
As we know, our minds can play tricks as we get older, but this is such a vivid memory that there’s no doubt in my mind that Percy and his Band were there and, if that fact is not recorded elsewhere, I’m glad to do it here.
When it came to the unveiling of the commemorative plaque, to the consternation of council officials and the amusement of Mr Faulkner, his name had been spelt WILFRED instead of WILFRID, something that, he said, had happened to him all his life.
A council spokesman said later that the mistake had been noticed but it had been too late to get the wording altered in time.
Update (October 2019) A recent inspection of that very same commemorative plaque fifty years on shows that the correction promised at the time is still yet to be done!
Update (October 2019) A recent inspection of that very same commemorative plaque fifty years on shows that the correction promised at the time is still yet to be done!
Mr Malcolm Bowden, chairman of the Establishment Committee, paid tribute to Councillor Clarence Costello who, he said, had fathered the whole project.
The new Civic Hall was now well and truly open and, in the evening, there was a special Celebration Dance featuring ‘the Ray Douglas Music’ (tickets fifteen shillings including refreshments).
This was, remember, September 1969.
By February 1970 Mr Bowden was accusing the public of ‘letting the council down’.
The Hall had been let on only a ‘tiny’ number of occasions and this was ‘heartbreaking’.
Perhaps the high charges were to blame? To hire the Hall for a whole day on a Friday or a Saturday would set you back £20.
A series of ‘beat dances’ came to an abrupt halt in January 1970 after ‘rowdyism’ and, for most of its first twenty-five years of existence the Hall was under-used, though Middlewich's representative on the old Cheshire County Council, Derek Millington, organised a series of under-18s discos at the hall in the late seventies/early eighties.
Kevin Birchall writes: 'I will always remember the under-18s discos, late 70s early 80s. Always packed, thanks to Derek'
And Julie-Ann Goryl says, 'I remember (probably prompted more by photos) a Silver Jubilee Party in 1977 where the children all dressed up. Then many happy memories of the youth club there, followed by the Friday night disco in the 1980s, which was a 'must attend' event every week.'
Kevin Birchall writes: 'I will always remember the under-18s discos, late 70s early 80s. Always packed, thanks to Derek'
And Julie-Ann Goryl says, 'I remember (probably prompted more by photos) a Silver Jubilee Party in 1977 where the children all dressed up. Then many happy memories of the youth club there, followed by the Friday night disco in the 1980s, which was a 'must attend' event every week.'
Over that twenty-five years I made several appearances at the Civic Hall, as disc-jockey, compere and MC.
One memorable occasion was the night I introduced a Rock Concert in aid of the CND, featuring a band with the cheerful name of Death Wish.
The highlight of this strange (and deafening) evening came when the band decided to let off a ‘thunderflash’ – a kind of detonator affair which made a terrifyingly loud band, a bright blue flash and a vast amount of smoke.
I was about six inches away from the thing at the time and, although I had been warned about it, I was still very nearly thrown off the stage by the explosion.
And when the first Middlewich Folk & Boat Festival took place in 1990 I was there, along with Bernard Wrigley to present the first of many mainstage concerts for a festival which helped kick off the long, slow and laborious process of putting our town back on the map.
© Dave Roberts/Salt Town Productions 2011/2026
31st December 2011
UPDATE - 19th March 2013: Ownership of the Middlewich Civic Hall passed into the hands of Congleton Borough Council on the 1st April 1974. Thirty-five years later, on the 1st April 2009, it became the property of Cheshire East Council. Finally (we hope) it was taken over by Middlewich Town Council, successor council to the Middlewich UDC which had had it built in 1969. This was in March 2013 and rather fittingly, the 'Civic Hall' then became the Town Hall Function Suite. At the same time the Victoria Building, home for many years to Middlewich's council offices was officially given the name it should have had for all those years, the Town Hall.
UPDATE - 12TH October 2016: By 2016 the running of the hall had been taken over by the Middlewich Community Trust* and the hall was renamed the Victoria Hall, a pleasing reference to its links with the Victoria Building and the former Victoria Square, the name given to the land between the building and Lewin Street.
*not 'Middlewich Heritage Trust' as we erroneously said earlier. Many thanks to Ken
Kingston for pointing this out.
First published New Years Eve 2011
Re-published New Years Eve 2014
Re-formatted and updated 12th October 2016
Re-published New Years Eve 2017, New Years Eve 2018
12th September 2019 (the hall's fiftieth anniversary)
Updated and re-published 14th July 2026
UPDATE - 12TH October 2016: By 2016 the running of the hall had been taken over by the Middlewich Community Trust* and the hall was renamed the Victoria Hall, a pleasing reference to its links with the Victoria Building and the former Victoria Square, the name given to the land between the building and Lewin Street.
*not 'Middlewich Heritage Trust' as we erroneously said earlier. Many thanks to Ken
Kingston for pointing this out.
First published New Years Eve 2011
Re-published New Years Eve 2014
Re-formatted and updated 12th October 2016
Re-published New Years Eve 2017, New Years Eve 2018
12th September 2019 (the hall's fiftieth anniversary)
Updated and re-published 14th July 2026
Sunday, 21 June 2026
DAD AT WORK AT CEREBOS (LATE 40s/EARLY 50s)
by Dave Roberts
This photo first appeared on Facebook, not as part of the regular 'Middlewich' series, but on Father's Day 2011 as a tribute to my Dad, Arthur Roberts, who was a foreman electrician at Cerebos Salt Ltd (later to become part of RHM Foods) from the late 30s until his retirement through ill health around 1969. Dad is pictured here in the generator room at Cerebos in (we think) the late 40s/early 50s. He had an encyclopaedic knowledge of the generator plant and its controls and, when he had to retire, was retained as a consultant and driven up to the works at weekends by Percy Wrench in the works van to check that everything was OK. The Cerebos generating plant was very efficient for its day, as the steam used to run the generators was not released into the atmosphere but recycled to provide heating and hot water for the whole factory, as well as for a very unusual salt pan which can best be described as a giant 'electric kettle'. The steam heated a giant element in the pan which, unlike the coal fired pans at Seddons and Murgatroyds, could be kept going for days and weeks on end, making it far more productive than most salt pans. A lot of the power produced, went to run the vacuum salt plant, fore-runner of the one now in use at British Salt which produces the over half of the country's salt requirements.
Salt plants and electrical generators are, of course, run with the help of computers these days, but in Dad's day, all the knowledge was, literally, in his head. He taught himself electrical engineering in his spare time by correspondence course.
see also QUEEN MUM
First published on Facebook, Father's Day, July 11th 2011
Republished June 15th (Fathers Day) 2014
Republished June 19th (Fathers Day) 2016
Republished June 18th (Fathers Day) 2017
Also June 17th (Father's Day) 2018
June 16th (Father's Day) 2019
June 21st (Father's Day) 2020
June 20th (Father's Day) 2021
June 19th (Father's Day) 2022
June 18th (Father's Day) 2023
June 16th (Father's Day) 2024
June 14th (Father's Day) 2025
June 21st (Father's Day) 2026
June 21st (Father's Day) 2026
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