MIDDLEWICH TUG OF WAR THEN AND NOW

 

L to R: Bob?, Frank Burrows, Alan Bourne, John Smith, IWA Lady, Mike McCrystal, Alan Betley, ?, ?

by Dave Roberts

There's long been a tradition of Tug of War competitions in Middlewich, fostered by years of Middlewich Carnivals and other events in the town.

The photo above shows the Kings Arms team in 1975 at a rally organised by the Inland Waterways Association on the site of Seddon's Pepper Street salt works (now the site of The Moorings off St Michael's Way).

You'll note a few question marks in the caption. On the extreme left is someone we're sure was called Bob (or Robert) but  can't recall his surname.  He lived in King Street and died tragically young while working abroad. On the right hand side of the line-up are two other familiar faces. Can anyone put names to them?

And if we've got any of these names wrong, or misidentified anyone, please don't hesitate to put us right.

We're calling it the IWA Rally of 1975 although the Association's Wikipedia page says that their main rally that year was in York. Whatever the truth of the matter, there most certainly was a boat rally in Middlewich that year and it was under the auspices of the IWA. Somewhere in our archives we have the official programme of events and this diary entry will be updated when it comes to light.

This boat rally was one of the inspirations for the Folk & Boat Festival fifteen years later.

L to R. Henry Barnet, Mike McCrystal, Cllr Derek Millington, Alan Betley, Bob ?, IWA Lady, Frank Burrows, John Smith, Alan Bourne, Alan 'Tud' Burrows, pub landlord Derek Williams

Our second photo shows members of what was obviously the winning team being congratulated by the lady we've dubbed 'IWA Lady'. Possibly back in those unenlightened days she may have been given the title 'Miss Waterways 1975' or somthing similar. She certainly appears to be wearing a sash indicating some distinction of that sort. Standing behind her is the elusive Bob (or Robert) again. We'd love to be able to record his full name for posterity.

And now, fifty years on in 2025, we can bring you news of a proposed revival of Tug of War in Middlewich, courtesy of the Middlewich Folk & Boat Festival.

Festival organisers have been approached by Bosley Tug of War Club with a view to Middlewich, with its much-expanded facilities at Kinderton, next year becoming a training venue for the National Championships. Hopefully this will lead, in future years, to Middlewich itself hosting the National Championships.

This year the Festival hopes to stage a 'taster' event at Kinderton Lodge as a way of re-introducing  this much loved sport to the town, and is hoping that organisations such as the Young Farmers might like to get involved.

Organisers would like to hear from you if you're interested in getting involved.

You can email them at:

mfabfestival@gmail.com

BOSLEY TUG OF WAR CLUB ON FACEBOOK

THE TUG OF WAR ASSOCIATION

Acknowledgments:

Many thanks to:

ELAINE CARLIN

JOHN WILLIAMS

for the photographs.

THE REBUILDING OF KINDERTON STREET 1975

Looked at thirty-six years after it was taken, this picture by Jack Stanier comes as something of a shock as we realise just how extensive were the alterations to Kinderton Street at that time. If you followed our pontifications earlier this year about Kinderton Street, you'll know that we have gradually revised our assumed dates for this transformation from around 1972 (when St Michael's Way was built) to a couple of  years later, which is why we've dated this slide at 1975.

In those days panoramic views of Middlewich could be
obtained by paying 5p for a trip up the Church tower

Jack was taking advantage of one of the occasional Church Tower open days which happened in those days on a regular basis. This one was in September (according to the inscription on the slide). We have already published my shot of the same view  before demolition began in earnest and a direct comparison of the two shots is very interesting. 

Kinderton Street before demolition began in earnest.

The two photos, for comparison

When you look at Kinderton Street today, it's hard to imagine that it was ever any different, but Jack's picture shows just how narrow the original road was, particularly at the top end. Quite a large proportion of that huge swathe of cleared ground in the middle of the picture is now given over not to traffic, but to a wide footpath and landscaping, and the actual usable carriageway seems only to have been widened sufficiently to bring it in line with the width of the road at Town Bridge and Station Bridge at either end.
The' black stripe' running along the left hand edge of that huge area is the temporary and rather precarious footpath which was placed high on the top of the bank to  maintain pedestrian access to King Street. Just how precarious this path was can be seen here.

The precarious pavement. A joy to negotiate on a pitch black winter evening.
Note in the background the huge bulk of (left to right) The Wesleyan Chapel, the CofE Infants School (now the site of Salinae) in Lewin Street and The Congregational Church in Queen Street

Ashleys, the contractors building the new carriageway, have established a base on part of the Seabank car park.
And on the extreme right of the picture, you can see that the cottages on the right hand side of Seabank are yet to be demolished.
Some of the features seen before in our in-depth examinations of Kinderton Street are present and correct.
On the right, the jumble of offices and houses which now make up the Kinderton Hotel can be seen, below the Boar's Head, and close by is another of those old GPO red phone boxes.
At  the top of all that cleared ground, Moreton's old farmhouse has disappeared and its modern and boring replacement can be seen just to the left.
Way out on the horizon, that white dot is the Jodrell Bank radio telescope near Chelford and, closer to home, we can just see the little wooden boat, peeping into shot bottom right, which became almost a part of the Town Wharf as she was moored there for many years. Her name was, I think, Tilley, and she was owned by Tommy Williams who worked all his life on the canals, eventually settling down to live in a cottage in Canal Terrace close to Middlewich Narrowboats.

Facebook Feedback (2016)

This diary entry's second outing on Facebook, in February 2016, brought this interesting crop of comments:

Peter Wakefield I was about nine years old and going to St Mary's RC Primary School in King Street, just around the corner, when this photograph was taken in 1975. On the town bridge there always used to be a crossing patrol managed by a local policeman. Outside the school in King Street there was a 'lollipop' crossing. The location of Middlewich Railway Station was just below the 'J' and to the left. That red telephone box used to take 2p and 10p pieces. Then Harold Wilson put the 2p price up to 5p. 'Don't forget to dial 100 and tell the operator to get off the line - there's a train coming!' or 'Can we ask the fire brigade if we can put some coal on the fire until they get there?' The white disc in the background is the parabolic dish of the Lovell Telescope at Jodrell Bank, which is owned by the University of Manchester. To the right are the Pennine Hills, Mow Cop, The Cloud, Macclesfield and Congleton. Further right still lies Derbyshire...

Paul Williams I remember that copper all too well. He kicked me up the arse for crossing town bridge when there was a car coming!

Geraldine Williams 1975? It took a long time for the re-development to take place then! Our home was on the right hand side of Kinderton Street - just opposite the digger on the photographe - and we had to vacate 1n 1967 when our house chimney collapsed. By that time, most of the adjacent properties were already empty.

Kevin Birchall Hard to believe how big the bend in the road was!

Facebook Feedback (2017)

Kevin Birchall I'm sure there used to be another phone box outside Chris Earl's at some point.

Geraldine Williams Yes, there was.

Helen Stanley What were those big brick archways that stood on the land where the factory shop now is? I used to think they were air raid shelter, but was told they were bread ovens. Anyone remember?

Geraldine Williams We lived for at while at 18 Kinderton Street in the 1960s and, to our left, was a deserted shop which I understood was formerly a bakery (Clewes?)

EDITOR'S NOTE, DECEMBER 2011: When we first published this photo we dated it as 1974 and argued that it was probably a couple of years later than its companion shot, also taken from the church tower which we estimated as being taken around 1972. Close examination of both pictures, however, seems to indicate that they were both taken in the same year, as so much in each shot is the same. And comparison with other pictures of the area show that the date of both is more likely to be 1975.  We have therefore revised the date of both slides to that year. This is the later, September, shot.

First published 3rd December 2011
Re-published with additional (2016) Feedback 6th February 2017
Revised and re-published  5th February 2018

C of E INFANTS SCHOOL, LEWIN STREET, 1975

by Dave Roberts

Lingering surprisingly late on the Lewin Street scene in 1975 is the Church of England Infants School, at one time presided over by Mrs McCullough (don't quote me on the spelling) who was the sister of Miss Mason, the headmistress at Wimboldsley. Notice the steel bracing on the outer walls, a sign of the subsidence which would eventually see the end of this and other large buildings in Lewin Street. Next door is 'Square One', a one-time rival for Samuels in the town centre which was, in the sixties, a branch of Dawsons Record Shops. This site is now occupied by gardens which are part of the environs of the Salinae Centre.
On the left, next to the lamp post and actually in Leadsmithy Street is Les Gibbin's (previously Challinor's) Newsagents, a building which still exists. It later became home to J&M Print, and, in 2013, extensive work was carried out to convert the shop into new premises for Forshaw Funeral Services (formerly of Wheelock Street).
I have a vivid memory of this school. It was used by St Michael's as a Sunday School (never popular with me, as it clashed with Sergeant Bilko) and one Sunday during a flu epidemic I was the only child to turn up.
Instead of cancelling, the Revd. L.R. Ridley insisted on going through the whole thing, including hymns and prayers, giving me no chance of adopting my usual policy of hiding behind something and pretending I wasn't there.

This photo was first published on Facebook on the 18th April 2011. The original feedback is below:

Colin Derek Appleton I remember this place. I used to creep in there in the early 80s to catch pigeons! If I remember rightly every classroom had its own fireplace, something I thought was well cool at the time!
I also have a vague memory of Square One becoming a very short-lived youth centre.

First published 6th July 2011

Re-formatted and re-published 18th November 2016

Facebook Feedback (November 2016):

Geraldine Williams re: Square One. That shop used to be a haberdashery when I was at Primary school. I remember Miss Barry sending two of us down there to buy embroidery silks (imagine a school daring to send 9 year-olds out on such a mission these days!). Was it also once an electrical shop? We definitely bought an oil-filled radiator from there in 1963. Or was the haberdashery attached to the newsagent shop?

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POCHIN CONCRETE PUMP IN KINDERTON STREET 1975

                                                                                                                             

Yes. It's Kinderton Street once again, this time in the early part of 1975.

One of Pochin's concrete pumps negotiates the Brooks Lane junction.

All traffic, at this time, was still using the old road formation and we can see from this shot that this was noticeably higher than the new formation (between the kerbstones and the flimsy wire 'fence' with red and white markers, approximately where Whittaker's shop once stood, with Costello's to its right).

It's interesting to note that the piece of road where the concrete pump and the van are standing was once the total width of the Kinderton Street carriageway, taking large volumes of traffic to and from the M6 Motorway.

Presumably, once the new roadway was able to accommodate traffic, the old formation was closed and lowered to make both sides level. Or, alternatively, was the new formation built up to be level with the old one?

In the background, of course, looking a little beleaguered in the wintry weather, is the Boar's Head Hotel. Some alterations must have been made to the carriageway outside this esteemed hostelry, in order to create the small parking area and grass verge, along with re-modelled entrance to Seabank and its carpark, which we see today.

Although it is not too apparent from this photo, the exterior of the pub was looking a little sorry for itself at the time and has since been brightened up considerably. The original Victorian detail has been restored and hanging baskets decorate the front of the pub, regularly winning the establishment prizes in the 'Middlewich In Bloom' competition.

It's also bigger, with an extension, built in sympathetic style, to the left of the building as shown in this picture.

Out of shot to the left is a piece of waste-ground, formerly the location of houses fronting onto Kinderton Street and many years later to be the site of the 'Factory Shop'.

First published 6th October 2011

Re-formatted and re-published 6th October 2016

OLD BUFFERS IN KING STREET, 1975 (BUILDING THE MIDDLEWICH LOOP)

Well, apologies if the title of this entry caught your eye and you're taking a look to see if it's anyone you might know. These are the buffers in question, lying discarded by the side of the Sandbach-Middlewich-Northwich line near King Street. Work was going on on the line to create a long 'passing loop' stretching all the way from the Holmes Chapel Road (or 'Station') Bridge to the King Street Bridge, where that road moves from one side of the line to the other. Previously, trains had crossed over onto the single line to Northwich just a few yards from the station, and the second line was merely a long siding (a 'headshunt' in railway terms) which enabled trains to gain access to the station goods yards and also get out of the way if a following train needed to overtake them for any reason by drawing forward along this siding. A very time consuming and cumbersome way of working, of course, as the trains in question would then have to reverse in order to reach the crossover onto the Northwich line.
The simple, and obvious, solution once the station yard had closed was to take out the crossover near the station and create one at the end of the long siding, which necessitated the removal of these buffers, which had been in situ for many years.
Oddly, this wasn't done as part of any resignalling scheme (resignalling with colour lights only happened five years later, in 1980), and meant that the old mechanical signalling system had to be modified, because the end of the loop was quite a distance away from the signal box, out of sight of the signalman. 
The viaduct taking the line over the River Dane can be seen on the extreme right and the sign with a white 'T' on a black background signifies the end of a temporary speed restriction, in place while the work went on.

The two photographs above were taken at the same time and show the old track panels which were replaced to form the new 'Middlewich Loop'.
At this stage the points connecting the loop to the Northwich line had yet to be installed.
Remarkably, the two photographs above were replicated thirty-three years later when Robert Avery photographed the Cheshire Gardens Express in 2008

This was the first steam train to travel over the Middlewich line for forty years. The Middlewich Rail Link Campaign's parent organisation, the Mid-Cheshire Rail Users' Association, hoped to run steam trains via this route again this year (2012) but, at the time of publication, it appears doubtful that this will happen. However, given the popularity of the line for rail tours, there's always the possibility that one of the other rail tour companies may stage another steam comeback on the line before too long.
See also
STEAMING THROUGH MIDDLEWICH
and
STEAM ON THE MIDDLEWICH LINE

KINGS ARMS HOTEL 1975

by Dave Roberts

The Kings Arms Hotel, on the corner of Queen Street and Hightown and, as can be seen from the photo, within a few feet of St Michael's church tower. Like all the town's pubs the 'Kings' has had mixed fortunes over the years. The building is reputed to have started life as a churchwarden's house and has been much altered over the years. It was my local for ten years from the early 70s to the early 80s and was forever in need of a lick of paint and some basic repair work. I would spend hours listening to the ramblings of the 'early doors' crowd, an education which stood me in good stead when it came to writing 'comic verse'.  The place always seemed to be full of 'characters', a status which, in my ignorance, I aspired to myself until I realised, with horror, just what an insult the term was.
There are many tales to be told about the Kings Arms in the 70s, but here is not the place to do it. Suffice it to say that it was a rough and ready sort of place. The name 'hotel' was a misnomer - it had been a hotel at one time but, in the 70s,  the upstairs rooms were mostly given over to accomodation for the landlord and his family (although there was a 'function room' which, in 1974, was the birthplace of  'Dees Disco' ). In fact the original hotel room doors had been cut up to construct the downstairs bar and, if you ever ventured behind it, you could find the metal room numbers still affixed in various places.
One abiding memory is of the landlord of the Kings Arms decribing a rival pub as 'a dive' - as clear a case of the pot calling the kettle black as I've ever heard.
Things looked up a little in 1993 when the pub was taken over, extended, and refurbished by Frank Steed, an experienced pub manager who was succeeded by John Chapman, the current owner of what is now a free house.
Recently John spent a lot of money restoring the pub to something of its former glory, and he is to be congratulated on the way the pub looks now.

ALL ROADS LEAD TO KINDERTON STREET JUNE 1975

by Dave Roberts

Well at least they seem to for us. Here we are back on our old stamping ground as it 
was in the summer of 1975 (a long, hot summer it was too).

This slide shows the Kinderton Street we know today taking shape (although the scene today has been considerably softened by the planting of numerous trees). Notice the Town Wharf in the background (the whitewashed buildings in the centre of the shot) which, contrary to what you might expect, seems to be in a much smarter and better condition than it is today. Behind the fence, high up on the bank to the right, is the much curtailed Moreton's farm where a new, modern-style and utterly bland and boring farmhouse was built to replace the old one. If, that is, one can replace the irreplaceable.



Facebook Feedback:

Geraldine Williams What I like about all these pictures is the way that the Parish Church sits there benignly over the years, solid as a rock, no matter what mayhem, in the name of progress, is taking place all around it. However, can I just say that after all the angst over the years about demolitions and moving the Cenotaph, etc. it has all been worthwhile because the view of the Church, amphitheatre etc, when seen from St Michael's Way is spectacular and must give a terrific first impression to visitors to the town.

Re-formatted 19th April 2020

30 June 2011 13:36