MIDDLEWICH AERIAL VIEW 1960s

MIDDLEWICH AERIAL VIEW circa 1967 Photo courtesy of MIDDLEWICH TOWN COUNCIL(used with permission)

by Dave Roberts
This astonishing aerial view of our town has been supplied by Dave Thompson of Middlewich Town Council with the information that it was taken in 1968.
So the first thing we have to do is correct the date, on the grounds that, as can be seen, Seddon's Salt Works in Pepper Street was still in operation at the time of the photograph, so the very latest the picture can be dated is 1967, which was the year that the Pepper Street works, along with the Brooks Lane and Wych House Lane works, closed.
This is just one of the aerial views which the council has let us borrow, and we'll be considering earlier and later ones in future Diary entries.
But, for now, let's concentrate on this one.
Of all the birds-eye views of Middlewich I've seen, this one is by far my favourite because it shows the town at the very end of what I like to call our Salt Town Days, just before the open-pan works closed and production was concentrated at the new British Salt Works in Booth Lane, built in 1969 and still going strong.
(In truth, our Salt Town Days, aren't really over, but the time when the works were a part of the fabric of the town are long gone.)
This is the town I and my contemporaries grew up in.
A dirty, grimy, workaday town with no pretensions to be anything else.
It was in 1967 that the terminally snooty Cheshire Life magazine published a very patronising and sneery  article about Middlewich, wondering where all the up-market antique shops, bistros and posh clothes shops their readers would expect in a Cheshire town were, for all the world as if we'd been offered these things and turned them down in favour of dirty, smoky factories.
It didn't go down well.
In the 1980s, in my capacity of editor of the Heritage Society's Newsletter I took a look back at this notorious article and marvelled at the writer's apparent inability to grasp the concept of a town which worked for its living.
Middlewich has featured in the Cheshire Life a few more times since the 1960s, and our progress from slatternly working class manufacturing town to bustling, lively 'town of festivals' can be charted by reading some of those articles.
The Church of St Michael & All Angels, dominates the sixties scene, as it has always done and still does today.
At this time the Churchyard had not been tidied up and the gravestones which now form pathways around the building are still in their original places.
To the right of the Church is the old Town Hall which, along with adjacent buildings, was demolished in the early 1970s to make way for first the nightmarish 'piazza' and then the much more stylish and attractive 'amphitheatre'.
To the right of the church, and just across Lower Street (now absorbed into St Michael's Way) sprawls Seddon's Pepper Street works. Clouds of white steam from the salt pans show that the works is still in operation.
There has long been speculation as to why the salt works should be in Pepper Street. The general consensus is that when the Council came to name the road they were in 'playful mood', which is as good an explanation as any.
'The Moorings' now occupies most of this site.
Across the Trent & Mersey canal is Middlewich gas works. The two round structures are the main and subsidiary gas-holders, still containing coal gas in those pre-North Sea Gas days.
The pipe bridge taking the gas supply into Middlewich can be seen crossing the canal.
Below the Church in the photograph is Middlewich Town Wharf, still awaiting its rebirth as 'the Gateway to Middlewich', but in those days witnessing the last days of commercial canal traffic and the first glimmerings of the tourist trade which, among other things, has helped put Middlewich back on the map.
To the left of the wharf are those huge buildings in Lewin Street, the Church of England Infants School and the Wesleyan Chapel.
Across Lewin Street from the Chapel is a building we haven't looked at yet - the Centenary Sunday School, by this time in use as the local Valuation Office. Middlewich Library now occupies the site.
Below the vast bulk of the Wesleyan Chapel can be seen part of Seddon's Wych House Lane Salt Works and, to its left the old Seddon's waggon repair shop, with its ramshackle collection of sheds and workshops incorporating Middlewich's first Catholic Church and School.
Moving upwards, just above the Sunday School is the Victorian police-station in Queen Street, now replaced by a small box-like brick building.
Above this, on the extreme left of the picture we can just see part of the bowling green at Fountain Fields.
Above that is the present site of Tesco's main Middlewich store, and above that the wooded area is the land between Southway and Darlington Street which Tesco bought up as part of their now-abandoned expansion plans.
Also notable is the Town Bridge which looks in this picture like some kind of motorway flyover, flung across the Trent & Mersey on a huge concrete raft.
It must have looked very strange indeed in 1931 when it was first built, replacing the original little bridge which had been there since the late 18th Century.
To make the picture easier to understand, here it is again with a key and explanatory notes:

Courtesy of  MIDDLEWICH TOWN COUNCIL

1: St Michael & All Angels Church

2: The Churchyard before alteration. Part of the Churchyard was removed in 1931 to widen Lower Street when the new Town Bridge was built.

3: Middlewich Town Hall. In the same way, one end of the Town Hall was demolished to make room for a wider Lower Street.

4: Seddon's Salt Works in Pepper Street

5: Middlewich Gas Works. Originally built by the Middlewich Gas Light and Coke Company. Most of the original works had gone by this time, but the two gas-holders were still in use.

6: The gas-pipe bridge which carried gas from the works into Middlewich. The offices of the North-Western Gas Board were in Lower Street close to the salt works yard.

7: The Town Wharf with its large warehouse building, wharfinger's cottage and wash-house for the boaties. Fronting onto Leadsmithy Street above are the public conveniences, built on stilts to bring them up to road level, which Cheshire East are currently (May 2013) trying to close.
UPDATE: This Middlewich Guardian item sheds more light on the Town Wharf and Public Conveniences issue

8: The Talbot Hotel in Kinderton Street. Behind the pub, and running at right angles to the main road, is a small terrace of cottages called Flag Alley.

9: The Town Bridge. Built by Cheshire County Council in 1931.

10: The CofE Infants School. The land occupied by this building, the Wesleyan Chapel (11) and Seddon's Salt Works and workshops (13,14) are now the site of the Salinae Centre and associated lawns and gardens.

11: The Wesleyan Chapel.

12: The Centenary Sunday School (Valuation Office). The library stands on this site now. To the left of this enormous building is a long, low building. This was the Conservative Club. The access road to the car park behind the library now occupies the site.

13: Seddon's Wych House Lane Salt Works.

14: The first Catholic Church and School, incorporated into Seddon's Workshops.

15: The Police Station in Queen Street.

16: Fountain Fields bowling green

17: Site of Tesco store in Southway.

18: Land between Southway and Darlington Street, home to several beautiful houses, including Barclay House. Now gone to rack and ruin. The future of this site is uncertain.

19: Webb's Lane - a continuation then, as now, of Pepper Street.

20: St Ann's Road.

21: The White Bear in Wheelock Street.

22: Pepper Street. Now just a short row of houses (where our '22' is) but once linking Webb's Lane with the town centre. The large building at the end of the terrace is Seddon's offices.
23:  Seabank car park.

So that was Middlewich in the late 1960s.
As those days recede further and further in time, it gets harder and harder to believe that our town once looked like this.
It's fascinating to look back on the way Middlewich used to be, but this is the grim reality of that 'lovely little town' which everyone thinks they can remember.
Once the works were closed and  demolition started in earnest, poor old Middlewich was a sorry sight indeed to behold.
Truly the past is a nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there.

© Dave Roberts 2013

P.S. (January 2018) This occurred to me when revisiting this entry in January 2018. On the annotated version of the picture look at the Town Hall (now the approximate site of the 'amphitheatre') (3) Now look at Pepper Street (22). There seems to be a lot of space between the two. The next time you find yourself at the 'amphitheatre', look across at Pepper Street. How far away does Pepper Street seem now? All a matter of perception, of course -Ed

UPDATE: JANUARY 14th 2018:

Photo courtesy of Elaine Carlin.                                        Reproduced with permission

Our thanks are due to Elaine Carlin who kindly sent us this additional aerial view which we think was taken at the same time as our main photo (i.e. circa 1967) as once again steam can be seen coming from at least one of the salt pans in Pepper Street. Elaine dates it as 1969. From this slightly different viewpoint we can see the shops in Lower Street (Vernon Coopers, Woodbines etc) and how Pepper Street linked the town centre with Webbs Lane. In the bottom left hand corner you can see the humble row of cottages in Queen Street, one of which is now the HQ of the Middlewich Diary.  In this photo there are many clues to the way 1960s Middlewich developed into the town of today, and we'll shortly be adding an annotated version to show exactly how the coming of the  'Middlewich Inner Relief Road'- aka St Michael's Way - altered the old street layout. For example, the telephone exchange which now fronts onto St Michael's Way is already there in this photo. Can you spot it?

Facebook Feedback 
(in our introduction to the Facebook link to this entry, we suggested that people who lived in Middlewich in 1967 might 'sigh with nostalgia' when they saw this picture)

Geraldine Williams OK, I'm sighing - but nostalgia ain't wot it used to be! The photograph doesn't show much of Kinderton Street, but we had to leave in 1967 as the house was being compulsorily purchased for the widening of the road.
However, it clearly shows the much-discussed cottages, and their gardens, which ran at right angles to the road at the side of the Talbot. Great picture, and it shows what an industrial place Middlewich was, and how short of greenery we were......!

Michelle Game This is great. I spent ages trying to work out where I live. It's amazing how a town can change over the years. Thanks for this.

Geraldine Williams I've just been revisiting this Diary entry, and in your excellent commentary you mention the Centenary Sunday School (no 12 on your plan). I can't picture the building, but I do remember there being a Conservative Club on that site. Was it in the same building, or adjacent to it?

Dave Roberts The Conservative Club was a long low building to the left of the Sunday School. It was where the road leading to the car park behind the library is now. It's featured in the Coronation 1937 film with an illuminated sign saying 'Long Live  Our King And Queen' Look out for it at 01:48. There are day time and night time shots, and in the day time one you can just make out the roof of the Sunday School on the extreme right.

Geraldine Williams That's Brilliant. Thank you

First published 17th May 2013
Revised and re-published 14th January 2018

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50 YEARS ON - THE BERTIE WILKINSON MURDER

by Dave Roberts

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.

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.

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.

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

Middlewich soliciter Herbert 'Bertie' Wilkinson had, by October 1967, been missing from his home for over five months.

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. We hope to bring you a fuller account of Billy's memories of that fateful day in due course.

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

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