Tuesday 19 June 2012

CHESHIRE BUILDING SOCIETY and POOLE ALCOCK & CO 1987

Here's another one of Carole Hughes' collection from 1987 which we're featuring this year, twenty-five years after it was taken by Carole's friend, Diane Parr.
The basic shape of the town hasn't altered a lot in those twenty-five years, but the fascination is in the way the shops and buildings have changed owners and  uses.
This pair is a case in point.
Go up to the 'toppender' Wheelock Street today and in place of the Cheshire Building Society and Poole Alcock & Co, Solicitors, you'll find, on the left, a charity shop belonging to St Luke's Hospice and, on the right, empty premises recently vacated by Cakes By Coulson (now known as 'Le Pattisier').
The sight of these two businesses cheek by jowl all those years ago will have great ironic significance for some.
There are quite a few who made the journey to the top end of town to 'see about a mortgage' and again a few years later 'to see about a divorce'.
The Cheshire Building Society still has a presence in Middlewich, further down Wheelock Street in what was once the MANWEB electricity showroom.
Poole Alcock & Co obviously want no one to be in any doubt as to the ownership of their office, and have their name emblazoned on the front no less than three times (it might even have been featured a fourth time, in the out of shot top window, but we'll probably never know).
Poole Alcock & Co have been in business for 120 years, and still retain their name (unlike other local solicitors who spun themselves off into all kinds of different permutations of names).
There are Poole Alcock offices in Chester, Crewe, Congleton, Nantwich, Northwich. Alsager and Sandbach but, like so many branches of so many other firms, the Middlewich branch has gone.
In fact there probably isn't a single  solicitor practising in our town any more. Can anyone confirm this?

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Geraldine Williams In a previous life these properties included Harry Dale's Decorator's Shop and Bertie Wilkinson's Solicitor's Office.

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