DIRTY OLD TOWN...

'A mean old town without any manufactures but, I think, a Corporation'

- Dr Samuel Johnson

'Of the three wiches, Middlewich is rather a hag, unredeemed, uncouth and disfavoured...'

- J.C. Walters, 'Romantic Cheshire' 1930

by Dave Roberts

Vicky Walker has kindly given us permission to publish this series of photographs, originally posted  by her on Facebook and taken over a period of forty-three years. They show a section of Lewin Street, as seen from Middlewich church tower, as it  slowly changed from  being  part of a grim, grey smoky industrial town to a much more pleasant - if traffic-choked - area of the Middlewich we know today. We've included several links to past Middlewich Diary entries which will show us something of the buildings which once stood in this historic part of the town. -Ed.

1957. Probably something of a revelation to people who have only known Middlewich in comparatively recent years. The building in the lower middle of the photo is the Church of England Infants' School. Beyond that is the Wesleyan Methodist Chapel, and then Seddon's waggon repair shop which incorporated Middlewich's first Catholic Church. The original cross from this building is preserved in the entrance porch of the current St Mary's Church in King Street.

Between the school and the chapel and fronting directly onto Lewin Street is the building which was, at one time, Dawson's record shop and ended its days as a hardware shop called 'Square One'. It's hard to discern whether this building was a shop at the time of the photograph. It may well have been two cottages. To the immediate left of the school and chapel can be seen three chimneys belonging to Seddon's Wych House Lane salt works.

See also: WYCH HOUSE LANE 1969

 Bottom left, the building with the smoking chimney is currently Peter Forshaw's funeral parlour. At the time this was Les Gibbins' Newsagents shop.

But it's in the background that we can see something of the dirty old town which was Middlewich at the time.
To the right is  ICI Middlewich in Brooks Lane, the site of which is now mostly occupied by Pochin Ltd. This works was dedicated to the production of alkali, as were many other such works in the area, including those at Northwich and Sandbach. The square building to the right is part of the limestone crushing apparatus. Railway trucks full of limestone were hoisted to the top of this tower and tipped, the limestone falling into the crushing machinery below.

This tower was situated immediately behind the King's Lock pub, across the Trent & Mersey Canal from Booth Lane and the Avenues. The constant noise from this machinery has been described by one local resident as 'frightening'. 

On the left can be seen a jumble of salt works chimneys.
The taller ones belong to Seddon's Brooks Lane salt works, and the smaller ones to Murgatroyd's salt works.

In 1957 all these icons of industrial Middlewich had just ten years of life left in them: the ICI works closed  five years later in 1962; Murgatroyd's salt works, which started operations in 1889, closed in 1966 and Seddon's Brooks Lane works (along with the works in Wych House Lane and Pepper Street) in 1967. 

The land in between Lewin Street and Brooks Lane was, at this time, pasture land. Nowadays you'll find the houses of the Maidenhills development, closing the gap between Lewin Street and the Trent & Mersey Canal, there.

An enlarged version of part of the above photo, but showing a little more of the ICI works, to the right. A much degraded image, looking rather like a Turner painting. But it's still possible to see from this image just how smoky and dirty industrial Middlewich was at this time. This is the 'lovely little town' which people remember - or think they remember - from this period.

Frank Smith's photo of the area in 1983 will make the layout  a little clearer.

LEWIN STREET 1983

1986. Time has moved on, and Vicky Walker has taken advantage of one of the Middlewich Church Tower open days which occurred from time to time to show us Lewin Street as it was when all those buildings - the salt works, the waggon repair shops, the Infants' School, the Methodist Chapel and Square One had all been razed to the ground. 

Middlewich Library which was built a surprisingly long time before all this demolition took place, is the square building to the right.

Most of the ICI works is long gone, but a few tall buildings linger on as part of Pochin (Contractors) Ltd.

The pasture land which will eventually become Maidenhills is still unspoilt.

On the left Gibbins' Newsagents has survived, under different ownership.

2000. Another trip up the church tower has given Vicki the chance to picture Lewin Street looking a lot more like it does nineteen years later. 

On the extreme left is just a small part of the gardens and car parks surrounding the Salinae Centre. Bottom right is part of the library roof.

The main difference, though, is the filling in of all that pasture land by the houses of Maidenhills. Part of the land between Maidenhills and the canal has been preserved as the 'Three Locks Trail'.

See also: LEWIN STREET 1972

MIDDLEWICH'S MILLENNIUM DOME 2000

The 2000 Middlewich Folk & Boat Festival Committee:

Back row, l to r: Ian Murfitt, Mike Parsons, Dave Roberts, Dave Thompson, Mike Hough, Lynne Hardy

Front row, l to r: Richard Devaney, Peter Cox, Rita O'Hare, Julie Bickerton, Alison Roylance-White

by Dave Roberts

In June 2000 the Middlewich Folk & Boat Festival celebrated its eleventh birthday (it doesn't sound right, but it is) with a special 'Millennium Festival' to welcome a new century (and, yes, we did know that, officially, the new century didn't start until 2001, but sometimes you just have to go with the flow...) and to add our town's sixpenn'orth to the nation's celebration of the 21st Century.

Tony Blair's labour government was, at the time, desperately trying to convince the populace of the merits of its  Millennium Dome in Greenwich, London, and failing miserably.
The widespread view was that the whole thing was 'a waste of money'. 
The exhibition, housed inside the 'Dome' itself and showing, among other things, notable British achievements, was always doomed to failure; not because of what it contained, but because of what it missed out.
The list of British inventions, ideas and institutions unrepresented was as long as your arm.
There was, for instance, and quite disgracefully, not a single mention of the railways, despite the country being the birthplace of this most civilised form of transport.
The Greenwich Millennium exhibition was open throughout the year and attendances diminished and diminished until the whole project ended in financial failure and ignominy.
Middlewich's own dome fared better.
If it looks a bit like a circus tent, that's because that's what it was.
Shrewdly, Dave Thompson  the festival's director, did a deal with a travelling circus which wanted to come to Middlewich anyway, and was able to extend the F&B Festival to include circus performances in the days running up to the weekend.
An added bonus was that the circus performers  could provide circus skills workshops for local children.
Over the  weekend the circus tent was used as the festival's main performance venue and dubbed 'The Middlewich Millennium Dome'.
I MC'd the first concert of the weekend on the Friday and the very first round of applause was for the marquee itself.
The only drawback was for photographers who, in those (mostly) pre-digital days found that every photo they took came out with either a red or yellow cast to it (wider shots, I suppose, featured a fetching mixture of the two) but all in all it was a resounding success.

The idea of a circus marquee standing in for the 'dome' is not so far away from the original concept.

The Greenwich Millennium Dome is itself supposed to represent a large marquee covering the actual exhibition hall inside. The twelve yellow supports represent the twelve hours of the day* - a reference to Greenwich's role in international time-keeping (the meridian runs very close to the structure). The Millenium Dome was also intended to remind people of the 'Dome of Discovery' at the 1951 Festival of Britain.

In the present day the dome is part of the 02 Arena, and the white surface of the dome itself has really come into its own as a giant 'screen' on which all kind of light and laser shows can be presented.

*there are those who say that they represent, not the hours of the day, but the months of the year. Take your choice...