THE VIEW FROM 1987 ('CHURCH and CHIMNEY')

Author's note: This article was first published in the Middlewich Chronicle in October 1987. To set the article in its period: it was twenty years since the open pan salt works had closed and fifteen years since the coming of St Michael's Way; the first Folk & Boat Festival was still three years away and the Heritage Society had been founded, by myself among others, only two years previously. The start of the Mid Cheshire Rail Users' Association's campaign to re-open Middlewich Station was five years in the future (although efforts to start such a campaign had already been made in the 60s and 70s). We were all still tickled to death that Middlewich could boast a wine bar and an Indian Restaurant (in fact there must have been more than one, even then) and we were getting annoyed at newcomers who tried to boost their social status by referring to our town as 'the village'. We were, of course, administratively still part of Congleton Borough, a fact which still sounds strange, even today. It is,  remember,  twenty-four years since this was written. I think it still stands up quite well, though bits of it are rather embarrassing. But isn't it odd how things taken for granted will change almost without us noticing? That 'tall, slender, metal chimney-stack' at British Salt, for example, has gone and been replaced by another chimney of a different design. We must be vigilant if we want to keep up with things.
UPDATE (28th April 2020): And now, in 2020, things have moved on once more. During 2019. its fiftieth year, British Salt started work on a new boiler house at the factory, with new state-of-the art boilers and a new and much shorter flue. So that tall 'smoke-stack' (actually a gas flue) will soon be disappearing from the Middlewich skyline. 

'Church and Chimney' was the name I originally gave to this piece, and I'm glad to be able to restore it here. As you'll know if you've ever had dealings with newspapers, it is a matter of honour among sub-editors that, however perfect and fitting a title might be, they must change it. In the original newspaper, the title is 'Some dim and distant dream-time a mere twenty or thirty years ago'. Perhaps they were thinking of entering a 'clunkiest title for a newspaper article' competition? Those same sub-editors also inserted the sub-headings, which I've kept intact. So here we go, with a double nostalgia whammy - the nostalgia for 1987 when Middlewich was emerging as a pleasant 'dormitory town' and the nostalgia for the time twenty or thirty years before that when smoking chimneys were the order of the day - Dave Roberts July 2011

CHURCH and CHIMNEY

A nostalgic look at the recent past 

by Dave Roberts

Let me take you back to a time when Middlewich was something more than a massive housing estate with a church and a few shops in the middle.

A time before the great gash of the dual carriageway disfigured the town centre; a time before piazzas, Indian restaurants and Wine Bars; a time when Middlewich and its natural allies Winsford and Northwich formed a kind of mini Black Country dumped into the middle of lush, green, ever-so-posh Cheshire like some kind of joke.

I am not talking about some dim and distant dream-time, but a mere twenty or thirty years ago.

Field Day

Middlewich, then, was a very different place. L.S. Lowry would have had a field day. There were enough dreary, smoky vistas for a hundred sombre and dramatic paintings.

Just a few yards away from the very heart of the town sprawled the Pepper Street works of Henry Seddon & Sons, salt manufacturers. The square, brick-built chimneys of these works dominated the town centre and belched clouds of grey-black smoke over everything.

Keeping your washing clean was murder, but no one ever complained. This was a salt town, you see, and smoke and dirt were a part of life.

Venice had its bell-towers, Clydeside its cranes, Kent its oast-houses and Middlewich its salt works chimneys.

This was the natural order of things; the way things had always been and, we used to think, the way they always would be.

You could never accuse Middlewich of being a beautiful town but it had a certain style all its own; a character and atmosphere which largely disappeared in the early 1970s along with those gaunt, forbidding chimneys.

Some people are pleased to refer to this ancient Royal Borough as a ‘village’. Pardon me while I snort derisively. Let me tell you that when I was a little lad I thought that Middlewich was nothing less than a city.

Awe and Wonder

Filled with awe and wonder, I was trundled around its post-war austere little shops and might have been in Manchester or Liverpool for all I knew. I was perched on the railway bridge in Holmes Chapel Road to watch the black steam engines shunting wagons full of coal or salt, and concluded that Middlewich must be a great railway centre, like Crewe or Clapham Junction.

And I was taken once to Seddon Street to watch the only football match I have ever seen, and thought myself at Old Trafford.

The game was between Middlewich and, of all places, Congleton and all the days of my life I will remember the catchy little jingle the Middlewich Athletic supporters were singing:

Congleton Down The Drain,

Middlewich Pull The Chain!

Not exactly Shakespeare, of course, but it still has the power to cheer me up when the rates bill arrives from Congleton.

At that time, of course, we didn’t really know where Congleton was. It was just a town near Macclesfield, as far as we knew. We’d heard some talk about a bible and a new bear, but events on the other side of the county held no fascination for us. Certainly no one we knew had ever actually been to Congleton. After all, why should they?

pseudo-Borough

In those far-off days, long before the creation of the pseudo-Borough of ‘Congleton’ our civic affairs were looked after by the Middlewich Urban District Council, which boasted a Chairman with a greater aura of Municipal Majesty than any mere Lord Mayor. Contrast the present pallid name ‘Town Mayor’ with the resounding title, ‘Chairman Of The Urban District Council’ and you get some inkling of our sense of lost glories.

You could see the council’s initials everywhere. Even the grid-covers in the streets had M.U.D.C. stamped on them and, when I was really tiny, someone told me that the letters stood for ‘Mud Company’ and that there were men down the grids whose job it was to stir the mud all day long. It all seemed perfectly logical to me.

We were never sure what precisely the M.U.D.C. was for, but it was part of the town and part of our lives.

Two or three decades ago it was still possible to get an idea of Middlewich’s former importance from the smoke-blackened buildings and the general air of workmanlike and unglamorous efficiency.

The whole atmosphere of Middlewich shouted ‘THIS IS A WORKING TOWN’ at the top of its voice and there was an air of drab self-confidence about the place before the bulldozers moved in to rip its heart out.

Another tower

If you stood in Lewin Street and looked down towards the Town Bridge you could see a sight which no one in this world will ever see again. From this angle the Parish Church appeared to have sprouted another tower.

This tower smoked. In fact, it wasn’t really a part of the church at all; it just seemed so from that particular viewpoint. What it actually was, of course, was another of those tokens of Middlewich prosperity, a salt works chimney, looming over the heart of the town. If anyone tried to spoil the townscape in this fashion today, hands would be thrown up in horror, but then it seemed perfectly natural – the town’s two symbols side by side, church and chimney.

So much of dirty, old-fashioned Middlewich has gone, and quite right too. A lot of it deserved to be consigned to oblivion. The air is cleaner now, and so is the washing. Much has been gained but, in the process, many things have been lost; among them a sense of continuity and history.

The Urban District Council was abolished in 1974 and we are now governed from that obscure little town near Macclesfield. What was it called again?

Many of the little tumbledown shops and houses are gone. Some to make way for new developments but many – too many – to create those weed-filled, rubble-strewn waste grounds which no self-respecting town should have to put up with.

We are becoming a ‘dormitory’ town where the new breed of commuters can while away the evenings on the new estates after a hard day’s work in Crewe or Manchester.

Undoubtedly, Middlewich is fast becoming a more pleasant place to live in. In time the waste grounds will be built on; the wine bars, restaurants and bright new shops will spread and that other, older Middlewich will be just a memory.

I was walking around the town the other day reflecting on the changes of the last few years when, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed something which made me think that, maybe, the more things change the more they stay the same.

It was the tall, slender, metal chimney-stack of the British Salt works. Wherever you go in Middlewich you can see it, standing out on the skyline, a sort of modern, high-tech version of those old brick chimneys of former days.

Middlewich is still making salt, after all. A new generation of wallers is carrying on the old tradition up there in Cledford Lane.

Who know, there may even be a few ex-M.U.D.C. mud-stirrers still lurking in the dank darkness under Wheelock Street.
If you see one, give him my regards.

First published in The Middlewich Chronicle

Thursday October 8^th 1987

© Dave Roberts 2011 

First published in 'The Middlewich Diary' 11th July 2011

Re-published 16th July 2017 to mark 30 years since first publication in the 'Chronicle' and fifty years since the end of open-pan salt making in Middlewich.

Reformatted and re-published 16th July 2019.

Editor's note: Looking at this in 2011 I find it interesting to note the deliberately provocative language which I occasionally used: 'A massive housing estate with a church and a few shops in the middle' was never actually how I thought of Middlewich, but it would have been a good starting point for a discussion should anyone have wanted to take me up on it. And the digs at the old CBC were also a Roberts trademark of the time; a one-man campaign which later included the 'Nigel and Bill' sketches, also published by 'The Chronicle' (albeit in the 'Letters To The Editor' section)*. It never made the slightest difference to anyone, but, if nothing else, it gave everyone a bit of a laugh

*Actually it appears that the Nigel & Bill saga actually started earlier than this, in 1985 -Ed

SOUTHWAY 1987 and 2018

Southway in 1987 (photo by Diane Parr). The dirt track (with rudimentary pavement ) leads to the rear of the buildings to the left, including the Alhambra Cinema (or Bingo Hall as it was at the time the photo was taken). This area was mostly used for car parking. The original Southway (or 'Tannery Alley' to give it its time-honoured name) is the footpath to the right which leads from Wheelock Street to St Ann's Road.

Middlewich's first real supermarket, Gateway, is being built in the background.

Thirty-one years later and the scene is still recognisable, though much smartened up. Southway still runs up the right hand side of the photo, on its way to St Ann's Road but the buildings to the left have been incorporated into Wheelock Street's shopping area, with a hairdresser and florist where that rather grim looking industrial building, at one time a workshop for Vernon's furniture shop, once was. The recently refurbished and hugely successful Drinks & Bites At No 35 which was, until the 1970s, Vernon's shop, is on the left. The grim-looking oversized 'lamp post' is one of the town's CCTV facilities, forever looking for trouble in Wheelock Street, and the 'pagoda' in the middle distance  welcomes Wheelock Street shoppers to what has now become Tesco's 'superstore' - or, in Middlewich parlance, 'Big Tesco'. (MD Photo)

Update: Once again the changing Middlewich shopping scene renders our information out of date. From October 2018 the sign on the 'pagoda' (and the signs on the store) read 'JACK'S', a low-cost supermarket which is, we're assured, 'part of the TESCO family'.

First published 1st April 2018

Updated and re-published 12th November 2018

MAKING WAY FOR GATEWAY 1987 (1)

by Dave Roberts

At the beginning of March 2012 Cheshire East Council gave the go-ahead for a  much-enlarged Tesco supermarket on the company's existing Middlewich site between Wheelock Street and St Ann's Road and taking in a lot more of the adjacent land between Darlington Street and  Southway, which is currently given over to housing.

It's fair to say that these plans have caused a lot of controversy in the town, with many people saying that the development is far too large and out of keeping with the character of the town centre and others claiming that expansion of shopping facilities in Middlewich is vitally important for the town's survival and that the new store will be a big boost to existing traders in Wheelock Street, who will benefit from the increased numbers of shoppers in the town.

UPDATE(Dec 2014): In the event, all this proved to be useless speculation, as Tesco later withdrew their plans for the giant supermarket, leaving a huge amount of blighted land right in the middle of town, with no indication of what would, or could, be done with it. As at December 2014 nothing seems to have been decided. The existing Tesco store continues to trade, with empty houses and derelict land in the place where the new store was to have been - Ed

We thought now might be an opportune time to look at the area before it was developed as a Supermarket site in the late 1980s, and, quite fortuitously,  Mike Jennings has sent us a wonderful set of photographs taken in 1987, just as work was beginning to transform  an old industrial site into what has become, for better or worse, the hub of Middlewich's shopping facilities.

In the 1980s the site was more or less just a field with F Coupe & Sons' Orchard Works 

and a few other industrial buildings at the top (Southway) end.

The site had long been earmarked as a suitable site for a supermarket and the Co-operative Wholesale Society (Co-op) had submitted plans on several occasions, only to have them rejected by the Middlewich Urban District Council's Planning Committee who 'wanted to protect local traders'.

Eventually the Co-op reached a compromise and built their 'Co-operative Superstore' not on this site but in the Bull Ring.

That 'superstore' (or part of it at least) has, somewhat ironically, now become one of two Tesco Express shops in the town.

This left the Southway site ripe for development and finally, when the 1980s were more than halfway through, the Gateway store and its associated car park were built on the site.

(I have a niggling feeling at the back of my mind that the 'Gateway' brand was used alongside another name at the time, but can find no trace of this anywhere on the internet. Does anyone remember this elusive 'other brand', or am I imagining things?

UPDATE: Having asked umpteen people and drawn a blank, I've come to the conclusion that I'm probably getting confused with the time when Gateway changed its name to Somerfield and the two names were used side by side for a while. But, as Mike Jennings said when he sent the original photos on which this entry is based, and as we've repeated below, many people in Middlewich still use the name 'Gateway' for this supermarket, whatever its official name might be.)

This was the first supermarket ever to open in Middlewich and it made quite an impact - so much so that, even after all these years, many local people still refer to it as 'Gateway', whatever it says on the building itself.

Gateway was beset by financial difficulties in the early 1990s and began a major re-organisation which included re-branding of the company, and all its stores, as 'Somerfields'.

Thus, in 1994, Gateway Middlewich became Somerfields Middlewich.

Fourteen years later, in 2008, The Co-op (ironically) took over Somerfields and, for a short time, it looked like the Co-op Supermarket which should have been built there in the early 1970s was going to become a reality on the Southway site.

It never happened, as the Co-op sold on the site, together with others, to Tesco, beginning that company's association with Middlewich which, like it or not, looks like becoming even stronger in the future.

The Somerfield store became Tesco in 2009, according to the information we have.

Can that really be right? Is it only three years since Tesco took over the site? It certainly seems a lot longer.

The date of this Office of Fair Trading  document seems to confirm the year:

OFT ADJUDICATION 2009

Mike's picture shows what is now the Southway end of the Tesco car park, with the rear of the Alhambra Chinese Restaurant (at that time a bingo hall) to the right. The tall building above it is Barclays Bank. Southway itself is behind the trees on the left.

UPDATE 1st AUGUST 2018): In July 2018 Tesco announced that it's main store in Middlewich would be closing in August, making the existing staff redundant.
After much speculation it transpired that the firm were creating a chain of cut-price, no-frills stores to compete with the likes of Aldi and Lidl. It seems likely that the Middlewich store will become one of these stores, the provisional name for which is 'Jack's', supposedly commemorating one of the firm's founders, Jack Cohen.

SEE ALSO MAKING WAY FOR GATEWAY 1987 (2)

First published 9th March 2012

Updated and re-published 9th March 2018

Updated and re-published 1st August 2018

MAKING WAY FOR GATEWAY 1987 (2)

The second in this series of photos from Mike Jenning's Classic Collection shows another part of what is now Tesco's Car Park, its approximate location indicated, as on so many occasions in our Middlewich Diary, by the tower of St Michael & All Angels Church.
The building of Wallcroft Gardens, which runs down from Tesco's access road to Wheelock Street, along a narrow strip of land adjacent to Fountain Fields, has obscured the view of the church from some angles, but it's still visible if you stand in the right place.
The top part of that little strip of land, for those who don't know, was at one time a children's play area, complete with paddling pool.
This little bit of a former scruffy looking field, with its  long-gone industrial buildings, is now the preserve of motor cars and shopping trolleys.
And soon, if everything goes according to plan, it will all change again.
This picture could be slightly misleading, as it looks like it ought to be the bottom right-hand corner of the present Tesco car park (looking towards Wheelock Street).
Actually it's a few yards higher up, round about where the  wide car park becomes narrower, in front of the current store entrance.
The houses of Wallcroft Gardens would dominate the same shot today.
A recent 'field test' showed that, because of those new houses, the church tower can now only be seen from the upper part of the car park, alongside the store itself.

SEE ALSO: MAKING WAY FOR GATEWAY 1987 (1)

First published 16th March 2012
Re-formatted and re-published 9th March 2018

WHEELOCK STREET 1987

(First published 4th January 2013, updated with additional information 5th January 2013)

by Dave Roberts

Our forays into Middlewich 'twenty-five years ago', with material supplied by Carole Hughes and Diane Parr, have taken longer than was anticipated. So technically we're talking about twenty-six years ago now, but I don't suppose anyone will mind too much. 

The photo above poses something of a puzzle.

That shop, tucked away at the back of what is now Gallery Finance towards the top end of Wheelock Street, seems to be selling all kinds of things from cardboard boxes and plastic tubs out in the sunshine. Can anyone remember what that shop actually sold? Or is that outdoor display of goods perhaps independent of the shop itself? Can anyone enlighten us?

When I first saw this picture I couldn't recall whether the shop we are talking about was still there. Our modern-day shot (below), taken in the Autumn of 2012, shows that it is, though it seems to be empty.

On the other side of Wheelock Street can be seen two shops (although I think they were linked together and were both dedicated to the sale of greengroceries).

They've both since been incorporated into that fascinating shop called Temptations which seems to have grown a little bit bigger every time you visit it. To the right of these shops, the house with the green windows was, at the time, being used as a kind of antique shop by Ian and Margaret McQueen. It's now been turned into flats and is linked to the large housing development on St Michael's Way next to the telephone exchange.

This is the best I could do for a modern comparison shot, as the green iron railings rule out any attempt at taking a picture from the same angle. Our mystery shop lurks despondently at the back, dreaming of better days.

The railings are fencing off what used to be the car park for Pace, an offshoot of the old Cheshire County Council, which was just out of shot to the right, next to the Co-operative Travel Agency.

This area of Wheelock Street will change radically once Tesco implements its plans for a large new supermarket on land behind the trees in the background.

UPDATE: Sadly not. Tesco announced in the first week of January 2013 that they had abandoned plans for the new superstore, leaving a large tract of blighted land filled with dilapidated former luxury homes right in the middle of the town. See BROKEN DREAMS...

UPDATE - 5th JANUARY 2013

Well, I may not remember this shop, but many people do, including those who posted comments on Facebook after reading this entry.

Sammi Hatton says, 'I recall this being a card shop at one time, run by Barbara Wells and called, I think, 'Best Wishes'. I used to baby-sit for them when they lived in a flat above the Co-op Travel Agency for a while. I also recall a dry-cleaning business being there too. Hope this helps?

Well, it certainly does.

Brendan Conlon  remembers the shop as 'Kev's Corner'.

This is confirmed by Emma Louise Brown who says, '...it was called 'Kev's Corner and it sold all sorts of stuff - gifts, toys crockery and cards - in fact I think it later became a card shop. I think in 1987 it would still be Kev's Corner. They sold all kinds of gimmicky stuff and when I was a child it was one of the few places you could spend your pocket money on rubbish such as water pistols, trading cards and  those things you threw on the floor which went BANG!

Stuart Warren Twigg has been studying the photo itself and says, 'I think that the items outside of the shop are indicative of what was for sale inside (there certainly appears to be a rack full of greetings cards in the picture -ed) Didn't the shop belong to Barbara Wells, the wife of Steve who had what is now Chisholm's Newsagents?'

Jenny Hatton says, 'I can't remember the shop like this, but I do remember a dry-cleaners at some point. I went to school with Simon Wells, so I do remember the family. I've got a really vague memory of his Dad running a fishmonger's from the shop in front of it - or at least fish in freezers? - can anyone else remember this, or have I made it up? I would have been seven or eight then, so it's a bit fuzzy! I do remember that fruit and veg shop which is now part of Temptations - didn't they have a sweet shop to the side of it as well?'

So it would appear that during the period of this particular photograph this little shop was called 'Kev's Corner', selling all kinds of items, including cards, but later concentrated on cards, probably under the name 'Best Wishes'.

Stephanie Burton actually worked in the shop. She says,: 'I'm not sure what it was in 1987 but in 1985/6 it was called 'Kev's Corner' I had a Saturday job there. It sold all sorts from stationery to household bits and bobs, as well as things for kids to spend their pocket money on.'

Going back to the 1987 photo itself, Chris Koons has a theory about all the goods outside the shop: 'It looks to me like they're having a clearance sale.'

I wonder if this was the time of transition from 'Kev's Corner' to 'Best Wishes', and all the surplus stock was being sold off?

Geraldine Williams says that she does not remember this particular shop from the time when she lived in the area: 'The shop with the sun canopy that you're enquiring about didn't exist then. It seems to have been tacked onto what was always a private house.'

Geraldine goes on to say, 'It's lovely to see Carole's picture showing the two shops across the road. This was our family home from the late '40s to the late '50s as my parents ran a business from the shop on the left. My bedroom was the one over the small-paned shop door but the other bedroom also belonged to our property and the lock-up shop below was rented by an optician who came to Middlewich twice a week.'

Both Geraldine and Stuart Warren-Twigg were interested in the house with the green windows:

Stuart remembers it as 'Cobweb Antiques' and mentions that it was the former home of Reg Taylor.

Geraldine goes back even further: 'it was owned, prior to Reg Taylor, by G F Pugh who ran his joinery business from outbuildings at the back of the property. He also made coffins! The shops, and his house, had long gardens which ran down to the corner of Pepper Street and Webbs Lane.'

So another gap in my knowledge of Middlewich has been filled! Many thanks to everyone who sent in this information.

VERNON'S BUTCHER'S SHOP 1987

We're going back twenty-five years again to take a look at the shop we have, in another Diary entry, dubbed The Butchered Butcher's Shop. Here we see Vernon's, successors to Fitton's, Butcher's as pictured by Diane Parr in 1987.
The obvious problem with trying to use these premises as anything other than a butcher's shop is that the shop was purpose built in the 1920s as such and has, by its very nature, never really lent itself to any other kind of retailing.
It's current use as the Balti Spice Takeaway has, at least, brought it  closer to its original use as a food retail outlet and, thankfully, the overall look of the building hasn't altered beyond all recognition.
In 1987 the shop was nearing the end of its days in the meat retail trade and the red and white vinyl labels affixed to the windows are evidence of what may have been a last-ditch attempt to promote the idea of buying meat from local shops.
We were, of course, well into the supermarket age by this time and people were getting used to picking up their Sunday joints as part of the regular weekly shop, be it in Middlewich, Winsford or Crewe, rather than using their local butcher's shops.
Just discernible through the windows are those priceless, and now lost for ever, Italian tiles and all the accoutrements of a traditional butcher's shop, including the very evocative scales on the left hand side of the picture.
In front of the shop is a bicycle, festooned with shopping bags and baskets which even the most careless of reporters could never mistake for a Raleigh Chopper. It has, of course, got to be a Raleigh Shopper, or something of the sort.
We'd love to be able to identify the people in this photograph. Does anyone recognise them?

Facebook Feedback:

Chris Koons: I can't tell you their names, but the pic certainly brings back memories! I used to work here as a Saturday girl from '86 through to '88, sometimes at the Middlewich shop and sometimes at the branch in Sandbach Market (at least I think it was Sandbach LOL) Ahh...those were the days....

Ann-Marie Hunter:  I remember this as a butchers!

Robert Sheckleston: The lady standing in the doorway is Mrs Mary Plumb, my auntie.

JAYGEE FIREPLACES 1987

Another from Carole Hughes' collection showing Middlewich as it was twenty-five years ago.
Here we see a long, low building which still survives today and was, for many years, the home of Jaygee Fireplaces.
Built on a high bank overlooking the 'new' town bridge itself, this was the first building on the right hand side of  Lower Street as it led from the town bridge towards the Bull Ring.
Hidden behind the traffic signs on the right is a  brick  facade with the name of the firm on it, designed, probably, to give the building a more imposing look when viewed from the town bridge and Kinderton Street.
This facade has now disappeared.
The survival of this almost temporary looking building when so much in the area was demolished is probably due to its somewhat isolated position away from the main shopping area.
Never a particularly attractive building, it nevertheless lives on with a new roof and in a much smartened up condition as the Town Bridge Estate Agency.

Facebook Feedback:
Geraldine Williams: I don't know when Jaygee started trading, but we certainly had a fireplace from them when we were setting up our first home in Kinderton Street in early 1961!

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?

Facebook Feedback:

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

NOW & THEN: THE OLD CROSVILLE GARAGE 1987 and 2012

Left hand image courtesy of Diane Parr

by Dave Roberts
Today we're looking at an iconic building  at the top end of Wheelock Street.
The 1987 picture on the left is taken from Carole Hughes' collection of images from twenty-five years ago taken by her friend  Diane Parr, and the one on the right was taken on April 27th 2012.
It's rather reminiscent of the Alhambra, further down the street, with a large building flanked by two smaller ones (although, as we saw here, the Alhambra was built after the buildings on either side and replaced an earlier one).
What is remarkable is how the roofline has changed since 1987
It's now much more elaborate than it used to be, and the section of building on the left (the old Crosville office) appears to have been extended.
On the extreme left in both photos is the old Star Cinema, Middlewich's first picture-house.
Just creeping into shot in the 1987 picture we can  make out half of one of the town's long-lost red telephone boxes (or kiosks, if you prefer).
Let's take a closer look at the 1987 photo:

Photo courtesy of Diane Parr

I'm wondering if the old Star Cinema was a shop at this time, or was still used as a car repair business. Certainly there's a cigarette advert on one end of the building, but the roller-shutter door on the side is still in place.
Any information would, as always, be appreciated.
On the right hand side Gator's bakery shop is back in business, and appears to be selling clothes of some kind.
The central portion of the building, where the Crosville Garage once was, was occupied at this time by T&M Autoparts, the 'Complete Brake Service'.
It appears that T&M also used the old ground-floor Crosville office, but the office space on the second floor was for sale (or was it to let?).
Carole Hughes herself worked here at the time, as did Phil Yearsley among, no doubt, other well-known Middlewich personages.
T&M had a contract to supply re-lined brake shoes to ERF Middlewich at this time and, by coincidence, I was the person who received them at ERF's Goods Inwards department in Brooks Lane, and booked them into  stock.
Here's the same location in 2012:

The very much smartened up 'Cabin' (or 'Triffic Togs') is on the left, and the former Gator's shop,looking a little drab but still just as it always was, even down to the wooden gate (now painted black) in the doorway is on the right.
A discreet wall with railings  now screens it  off from the MoCoCo internet cafe, operated by Middlewich Community Church, which occupies the rest of the building.

Many people will, of course, remember this building (or, at least, the middle part of it) as the Crosville garage.
Certainly I do.
In 1957 I used to go down there, accompanied by William Moreton, to catch the single-decker Crosville bus to Wimboldsley School.
So can anyone tell us:
When this ceased to be the Crosville Garage.
What it was after Crosville left.
When did T&M move in and move out
and what was there before it became the MoCoCo cafe?

MIDDLEWICH COMMUNITY CHURCH

MIDDLEWICH 1987 - 2: SOUTHWAY

Photo courtesy of Diane Parr

We've looked at Southway before in our travels around Middlewich and it's interesting when comparing this 1987 view with its counterpart from thirteen years earlier...

...as seen in this diary entry, to see that not a lot changed in this area in that thirteen years.

Southway proper - i.e. the footpath seen on the right hand side of this picture - still provided a shortcut into town for people in the St Ann's Road area, and the 'dirt track' with a rudimentary pavement to the left  which we now think of as 'Southway', and was used mostly for car parking in those days, also remained untouched.

That strange red lead painted building we encountered here is also still standing at the rear of the shop on the corner.

Photo enhanced

It's only when you look at the middle of the picture, and at what's happening at the end of that 'dirt track', that you realise just what is going on.

We're seeing the very start of Middlewich's slow-burning shopping revolution with the building of the Gateway Supermarket on the field where the Orchard Works had stood until a few years before.

The temporary fence, just to the left of the trees, which separates the building site from what will become the supermarket's pedestrian approach is the approximate site of that 'pagoda' structure which welcomed shoppers walking towards the supermarket from Wheelock Street first to Gateway, then (from 1994) to Somerfield and which currently (since 2009) welcomes them to Tesco. 

As we've said before, it all looks so familiar and yet so different.
You can learn more about the convoluted history of Middlewich's first proper supermarket here.

OATES BUILDERS MERCHANTS, LEWIN STREET 1987

Photograph courtesy of  Diane Parr

by Dave Roberts

Regular Middlewich Diary contributor Carole Hughes has been given access by her friend Diane Parr to a brilliant collection of photographs showing Middlewich as it was twenty-five years ago. All the photographs are now safely filed in the 'Carole Hughes Collection' and we'll be bringing them to you from time to time during the rest of 2012. Many thanks to Diane and to Carole for letting us show you these photographs.

We're starting with this one because, just by coincidence, I was looking the other day at an old MHS Newsletter from September 1992 which was when the building shown here was finally demolished.

It started life as one of many Co-op shops in Middlewich and I have dim recollections of it as a dress shop (or, in Co-op parlance, a drapery department).

It had a glass display case in its entrance hallway, making it look very sophisticated and cosmopolitan. You could imagine the very best people buying their clothes there.

By 1987 it had become Oates Builder's Merchants (or, if the sign is anything to go by, Oates Builder  Me chants) and was looking a little the worse for wear.

In the early 70s, when I was still working in Middlewich UDC's Rates Office, I applied for a job at at this establishment, at that time called Thomas Eyres Ltd, and was interviewed by somebody who blew cigar smoke at me throughout the interview and I could never have worked with.

In those pre-computer days the job involved writing out orders for building materials on printed forms and handing them to this cigar smoking lunatic for processing.

'I hope you can write clearly!' he shouted at me, enveloping me in a choking blue cloud, 'I tend to get VERY ANGRY if I can't read things!'

Fortunately I wasn't offered the job. But it's interesting to note that if I had got the job my workplace would have moved a matter of yards across Lewin Street, and I could have gazed down on the windows of the rates office from one of those upstairs windows.

By 1992 Thomas Eyres had transmogrified itself into Oates which, in turn, had become Hall & Co. At this point plans were announced to demolish the building 'to improve access'.

Here's what I had to say about this in the September 1992 edition of the Middlewich Heritage Society Newsletter in a caption for the above photo:

Demolition begins on the showroom premises of Hall & Co in Lewin Street. There was something of an outcry locally over the destruction of this former Co-op shop, but the Heritage Society raised little objection, rightly concluding that whatever architectural merit the building had ever had had already been destroyed by mutilation of the shop front and the erection of the garish 'Hall & Co' sign which, we will record for posterity, was bright orange and blue.

Perhaps whatever replaces this building will actually be an improvement?

Of course at the time it never occurred to anyone that the building might be replaced by nothing more than a gateway into the builder's merchant's yard.

Just in case you haven't got your bearings precisely, we're standing at the bottom of Civic Way (that's the Council offices on the left of the 1992 photograph). The house to the left of the building still survives, as does that quirky little cottage on its right.

UPDATE: By 2012 this builder's merchants had changed hands  again and had become a branch of Jewson's

Facebook feedback:

Geraldine Williams I think your glasses may be a little rose-tinted in your memories of the Co-op drapery store, Dave. I seem to remember yards of net curtaining and tea-towels being on display but, to be honest,

my Mother didn't shop there so my only occasional visits were with my Gran on Co-op divi day!

Dave Roberts Ah yes! A case of distance lending enchantment to the view (a distance in time in this case). I think they also had one of those change-giving systems running along a wire connected to the cashier's office.

Geraldine Williams Yes, I think they did. I wonder if it was because the 'Management' didn't trust the assistants' arithmetic or the obsession in the old days with every transaction having to be written down? The only alternative was the fantastic Meadow Dairy verbal running total system which we discussed previously.

Dave Roberts Well, it seems my memory has served me quite well on this occasion. We've received a comment from Cliff Astles who appears to confirm my childhood impressions of this shop as something rather special. I'm reproducing Cliff's comment here as it's relevant to the history of the shop and I wouldn't want anyone to miss it:

This particular Co-op shop was the town's main drapery shop, selling clothes of all descriptions for both men and women.

They did have a spectacular glass entrance to the shop with windows at the front and each side with a glass central piece allowing for access each side of it into the shop. You could buy all types of material and cottons, lace etc.

It also had the latest technology with the accounts and tills upstairs! The money tendered for goods was whisked away upstairs by a circular 'vacuum facility' much like a drain pipe and the change was also sent back by the same method.

All goods sold in the Middlewich Co-op shops allowed for a 10% dividend to be paid out each year (I think) on the value of goods sold to that person.

This dividend was also paid out at this shop.

The inside of the shop was very 'Victorian' and if it was still with us today would be a place worth visiting.

The shop which is the 'Middlewich Fryer' today was also a Co-op Shop. It was a traditional butcher's shop from which I obtained meat for my mother on a Saturday morning, as she was working all day in her hairdressing business (behind Etta Mault's Chippy).

What a waste of a very good shop.

- Cliff Astles

(I think Cliff's last comment refers to the old Co-op drapery rather than the Middlewich Fryer. It goes without saying that turning any shop into a chip shop is never a waste... -Ed)

Geraldine Williams Thanks for not putting 'Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah Geraldine!' (as if...Ed) Ha ha. As I've said before, for all its altruism, which is not in doubt, there was something insidious about the Co-op movement, which had a finger in every pie, when seen through the eyes of other shopkeepers (like my parents) who were trying to earn a living. Which is why my family never frequented Co-op stores!

Dave Thompson  Happy Days! I worked there during school holidays when it was Thomas Eyre's, then full time when it was Oates Builders' Merchants.

The front building was a fitted-out showroom with bathroom and kitchen displays - I sold hundreds of Ideal Standard and Twyfords bathrooms from there!

I worked with Phil Flaherty there for about ten years, until I went back to ERF for more money - which lasted 14 months!

It's interesting to note that Dave, who's now the Town Council's Events Manager, actually did make that trip across the road (but in the opposite direction) from Builder's Merchants to Council offices. Took him a few years, though. - Ed

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