THE BIG LOCK AT NIGHT OCTOBER 2021

This superb night time shot by Hannah Fray shows the Big Lock pub, and the lock which gives it its name, on a dark night in October 2021. Once firmly part of Middlewich's industrial scene, the Big Lock was, until the 1980s, adjacent to British Crepe, textile manufacturers, using the site (and buildings) of the earlier Anglo-Swiss Condensed Milk Co. Those buildings have now been replaced by modern housing and the pub has been extended and modernised over the years to become an excellent pub restaurant and canal side cafe.
The Big Lock is a 'stack pub', the top part being at road level and the bottom part at canal level. At one time there were two bars, one for the residents of Webbs Lane and one for people working on the boats. The building at one time also incorporated a shop at canal level, to serve the 'boat people'
The lock itself, the only 'wide' lock in the area, was built in this way not, as is often thought, so that two boats could be accommodated at the same time, although it has of course served this purpose, but so that wide boats from the River Weaver could travel into the centre of Middlewich to reach the numerous salt and chemical works in the town. Whether this ever actually happened is unclear, but the destruction of the aqueduct at Croxton and its replacement by a narrow structure in the 1930s made it impossible anyway.

You can find out more about the Big Lock and its environs by following these links:

BIG LOCK circa 1875

BIG LOCK and MILK FACTORY 1920s

BIG LOCK & FINNEY'S LANE FROM ABOVE

BIG LOCK KEEPER'S COTTAGE 1960s

BIG LOCK RE-OPENS (2012)

STRAIGHT FROM THE HORSE'S MOUTH (A LETTER FROM HISTORY)

BIG LOCK and NESTLES MILK FACTORY 1920s

We believe this image to be out of copyright. If you own the copyright, or know who does, please let us know

Once again Bill Eaton has been delving into the archive of material given to him by the late Frank Smith of Ravenscroft, and this time we are taking a look at the Big Lock and the Anglo-Swiss Condensed Milk Factory, both situated on the banks of the Trent & Mersey Canal and built during the late 19th century.

The picture above shows the lock itself which, by its very nature, does not change very much over the years, except in small details. For example, notice the lock gates nearest the camera, which are of a type not seen nowadays (in this area, at least). They appear to be of all wood construction, rather than the mixture of wood and steel used nowadays.

Behind the boat can be seen the footbridge which still links Webbs Lane with King Street via the public footpath which runs up the bank from the canal, alongside Harbutt's Field to join the main road at the foot of the bridge which takes King Street over the railway line.

On  the extreme left of the picture is the Big Lock Pub, greatly changed, but not beyond all recognition in the present day. Its distinctive doorway and part of the Dutch style roof are still very much in evidence.

We believe this image to be out of copyright. If you own the copyright, or know who does, please let us know

We have seen the other picture before, when we looked at the Condensed Milk Factory.

 Frank has obviously grouped these photos together because they were taken at around the same time.

 We've dated them as being taken in the 1920s, because, according to Allan Earl, the milk factory  closed in 1931 after fifty-nine years of operation before being re-opened as a silk works in 1932.

That perennial problem of the salt districts, subsidence, meant that part of the factory had had to be demolished a couple of years earlier, causing lost production and financial difficulties, both for the milk company and the many local farmers who supplied it.

Both these pictures give an impression of the factory working at full swing, so were probably taken a few years before these problems emerged.

The tall building which dominates the left hand side of the top picture is the same one which can be seen on the extreme left of the lower one.

SEE ALSO: RE-OPENING OF THE BIG LOCK 2012

First published 7th January 2013

Re-formatted and re-published 8th January 2018

Re-published 2nd June 2020

BRITAIN FROM ABOVE (MIDDLEWICH) - FINNEY'S LANE & THE BIG LOCK

Aerial View: Britain From Above/English Heritage

 by Dave Roberts,

Today we're returning to our 'core business' to indulge in what was recently and very memorably, referred to as '...the regurgitating of random, boring, local facts' as we take a look at one of the aerial photographs of our town now made available by English Heritage on the site britainfromabove.org.uk.
The 'Britain From Above' collection contains hundreds of high definition photographs taken between the years 1919 and 1953 and thus, in the case of Middlewich, giving us an invaluable view of our town in its salt town heyday.

What's more the site is asking everyone to help annotate the photos in the collection so that future generations will be able to identify just what it is they're looking at and enjoy them all the more. If we've missed anything out of our interpretation of this, or any of the photos we'll be featuring in this series, please let us know.
Our own notes on the photo above are appended to the version below, and we would as always be pleased to have any additional information and/or corrections.

We're starting with this excellent view of the area around the still-thriving Big Lock pub (and, of course, the lock it is named for) as it was (we estimate) some time in the early 1920s. We've given the open pan works in the top left hand corner of the picture its original name on opening in 1892, but by the time of this photograph it would be under different ownership and partly disused, as was the custom during the open pan era, when pans were opened and closed as demand for salt fluctuated.
There's an intriguing structure on the far bank of the river (right next to the little blue aeroplane). We're wondering if this has any connection with attempts to screen the salt works from the Upper Crust at Croxton Hall Farm, as mentioned here (with diagram) by Frank Smith.
The building we've circled and called a 'salt warehouse'  survived well into the early 1970s, finding various industrial uses, as discussed here. On the other side of the Trent & Mersey Canal lies the River Dane and the spot where the River Croco, running alongside the canal through the town, joins it, can also be seen.
The top right hand corner of the photo shows us Harbutt's Field, long known for its connections with the Romans and long marked on maps as Roman Station (Condate). It would be the 1980s before the fact that this modest and unassuming field had, in fact, been the  site of a fully-fledged permanent Roman military fort was confirmed by modern geophysical techniques. We are, though, dealing with the world of archaeology here, and not all is sweetness and light as the name 'Condate' for Middlewich is still disputed among academics, as, for that matter is 'Salinae'.
On the right a public footpath ran, and still runs, from bridges over the canal and River Croco to join King Street at the top right hand corner of the field. The land on the other side of this footpath, now given over to housing, was studded with brine shafts and the remains of previous salt workings.
On the opposite side of the canal from the Big Lock is the old lock-keeper's cottage, perched precariously between canal and river and  threatening  always  to subside backwards into the Croco. We discussed the sad fate of this building here.
Every year, come festival time, bands perform on the patch of ground where the cottage once stood (with the audience, somewhat unusually, standing on the other side of the lock), a use for the area which those lock-keepers of old could never have foreseen in their wildest dreams.
Taking centre stage is the impressive bulk of the Anglo-Swiss Condensed Milk Factory (later part of Nestle, and later still a silk and man-made fibre factory).
It goes without saying that this little corner of Middlewich has, like many others, now been covered in modern housing.
In the bottom right hand corner, along Webb's Lane, is 'Swiss Cottage', which gets its name from the fact that it was built to house the Manager of the Anglo-Swiss works.
The Milk Factory closed in 1931 and the buildings were converted for use as a silk factory which opened in 1932 and closed in the early years of the 21st Century.
Finney's Lane itself is all present and correct, although its course has changed through the years and it now takes a more direct route towards the Big Lock, where it joins Webbs Lane. 

Aerial View: Britain From Above/English Heritage

Swiss Cottage, Webbs Lane as it is today

SEE ALSO: BIG LOCK & SILK WORKS 1970s

First published 12 August 2014
Republished 3rd November 2019

MIDDLEWICH IN AUTUMN, 2018, photographed by Rebecca Page

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

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

by Dave Roberts

Poor old Middlewich, eh? That's telling us, J.C.! 

To be fair, though, he did go on to say, '...nor is her dark visage today a discredit, for Middlewich knows the meaning of hard toil under conditions which give her little chance of any cheerful display.'

If you'd approached any Middlewichian in the 1930s and talked about 'the beauty of Middlewich', you'd have been looked at askance and met with hollow laughter.

And poor old Middlewich's dark and gloomy visage lasted for another thirty-seven years until, in 1967, its remaining open pan salt works closed.

An accident of industrial history  resulted in Middlewich being an unredeemed, uncouth and disfavoured hag for so many years. 

In most of the local salt towns the salt industry was, for various reasons, situated away from the town centre, enabling those towns to preserve at least a little bit of civic pride. 

Not so in poor old Middlewich, where the sprawling Pepper Street Works was just a matter of yards away from Wheelock Street, and the Wych House Lane Works backed onto Lewin Street.

The penny-pinching ways of the salt works owners, who only used the cheapest coal they could find to fuel their salt pans, ensured that Middlewich was a grimy old town indeed.

After a rather grim interim period in the 1970s, when it seemed that half the town was being torn down, a much more pleasant  and attractive town slowly began to emerge - the modern day Middlewich which prospective new inhabitants, putting to one side our horrendous traffic problems and lack of amenities, fall in love with.

Rebecca Page has been out and about with her camera, capturing the beauty of Middlewich in Autumn in 2018.

And no one's laughing.

The photo above shows a stretch of the Trent & Mersey canal between the Big Lock and Town Bridge. Fifty years ago this was a very industrialised stretch of waterway, with Seddon's Pepper Street works to the right, just beyond the overhanging trees in the centre of the photo - the area is now the site of 'The Moorings' - and, to the left, Middlewich's gas works, once dignified with the elaborate title of the Middlewich Gas Light & Coke Company Ltd.

Taken from underneath our utilitarian and almost brutalist early 1930s Town Bridge, the resplendent Autumn colours on the canal bank mark the spot where the gas works once stood. The River Croco runs in a culvert on the other side of the canal bank, stretching from Brooks Lane to Harbutt's Field where it joins the River Dane, and acts as an overflow for the canal.

Beyond the Big Lock and heading in the direction of Northwich we see the new housing to the left which has replaced the old Nestle Condensed Milk Factory, in more recent years British Crepe's silk works.

Beyond that, many years ago, stood the Dairy & Domestic salt works, one of many open pan works which have been dotted around the town over the years.

Opposite, and beyond  the trees to the right, is the place where the Croco meets the Dane.

The field on the extreme right is Harbutt's Field, the site of Middlewich's Roman fort.

Middlewich's swan population is thriving as never before and you'll find these magnificent creature in several locations along our waterways.

You can find out more at

MIDDLEWICH SWAN GATHERING POINT (Facebook)

...and now we're back where we started, but heading in the opposite direction, towards the Big Lock.

The Newton Brewery Inn and its large gardens are out of shot to the left, and to the right, on the other side of the canal and the River Croco, where yet more housing development has taken place in recent years, is the area we all knew in childhood days in the fifties and sixties as 'Down Bill Hewitt's'.

This was a huge area of scrubland which had, years before, been the site of yet more traditional open pan salt works.

A brine shaft, rudimentarily fenced off, could be found at the far end, close to Harbutt's Field. 

This has now been permanently capped and few will even know of its existence.

Many thanks to Rebecca Page for permission to use these photographs showing the beauty of this part of our town in Autumn 2018.

THE FIRST MIDDLEWICH FOLK AND BOAT FESTIVAL 1990

by Dave Roberts

Times have changed, and so has Middlewich, in the twenty-six years* since the first Folk & Boat Festival in June 1990. Nothing illustrates this better than a glance at the programme from that first Festival. Sponsors for the inaugural event were BRS Northern, who had a depot in Middlewich at that time, and Middlewich Town Council. Quite why BRS should have been involved in sponsorship of the event is lost in the mists of time, but funding for the first Festival was gathered by the late and still much-missed John McAteer and John may well have been having dealings with the firm at the time and levered a few quid out of  them as part of some other deal. It's interesting to note that the Town Council was using its familiar canal-bridge logo all those years ago. It's stood the test of time, the only thing to have changed being the typeface. 

UPDATE: Shortly after this Diary entry was first published something quite remarkable happened. We were contacted by Mike Buckley, the man who originally created the very first Folk & Boat Festival artwork, as seen on the programme cover above, over a quarter of a century ago. Mike now lives in Cuddington.

He writes: 'John McAteer persuaded me to produce the artwork for the very first FAB event all those years ago. Computer design capabilities were limited in those days and I well remember John being meticulous with regard to the placement of the curved lettering. I'm sorry to hear of his passing. RIP. We used to share a pint or two in the Boars Head with someone called Len, who was a badminton player. His surname escapes me. I did the artwork while working for what was then ICI, using an early artwork generating programme. Incidentally, the same programme was used to produce the Winnington Park Recreation logo, though not by me'.

Congleton Borough Council also sponsored the event but, for some reason, didn't get its logo on the front cover. The price of the programme was, as can be seen, £1 and the cover price remained at this level for many years, on the grounds that people would reach into their pockets and hand over a pound very readily. Any more than £1 and some of them would think twice...

* Although we're celebrating the 25th Festival this year, it's still worth reminding ourselves that it was twenty-six years ago that MFAB started. The 2001 Festival never happened because of the Foot and Mouth disease which was causing havoc in Cheshire's rural and semi-rural communities that Summer.

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Dorothy Roberts was Mayor of Middlewich in 1990 and wrote this introduction to the programme in which she managed to encapsulate in a  few words everything that MFAB is (or was) all about. The first committee listing follows. My name doesn't appear there because, although I was invited to join  the Festival as MC after the first meeting, I insisted that I would 'never' be on a committee! Before the first Festival had even taken place I found that I had become the publicity officer!

The Folk & Boat Festival was designed to bring people into the town and it was felt necessary to introduce Middlewich to our visitors, many of whom would have heard very little about the town, other than the 'Wiches of Cheshire' stuff taught to them in school geography lessons.

 So I donned my Middlewich Heritage Society hat to write this potted history.

 Note that I refer to the event simply as the 'Middlewich Folk Festival'. 

For the first few years the boat rally which runs alongside the folk festival part of the weekend was organised separately by the Trent & Mersey Canal Society (which invariably referred to the event as the 'Boat & Folk Festival') and the terms 'Middlewich Folk & Boat Festival' and 'Middlewich Folk Festival' were interchangeable. 

However, the shortened version, the 'Folk & Boat' has a certain ring to it (and, of course, sounds a bit rude if you say it quickly) and so that was the version which won out in the end.

 When Middlewich Town council took over the event in 2011 the name was officially changed to Middlewich FAB Festival to reflect the new way in which the event was funded and run and also to stress the move away from 'purely folk' and towards the willingness to embrace other kinds of music.

Our first ever guest, the legendary Bernard 'the Bolton Bullfrog' Wrigley. Bernard was part of the 'folk-comedy' boom in the 1970s, along with Mike Harding, Billy Connolly, Max Boyce, Jasper Carrott and others and has also made numerous TV appearances, as mentioned above. 

He appeared in a cameo role in Victoria Wood's Dinnerladies, combining his roles of actor and singer in a version of Jingle Bells with concertina accompaniment!

Bernard also returned for the second Festival and in subsequent years, notably in 1994 when, to celebrate the first five years of MFAB he appeared as guest MC.

His performance in this exacting role was shambolic, rambling, undisciplined and erratic. It was also hilariously funny.

I'll never forget him introducing Marilyn Middleton-Pollock as Marilyn Middlewich-Pillock!

 Wouldn't it have been nice if he could have been here for the 25th anniversary?

The programme of events for Festival one. Note that this is the entire programme of events for the whole weekend!

The Friday concert in that first marquee consisted of songs from the Middlewich Paddies interspersed with 'poems' from me (more correctly monologues and comic verse).

The main concert on Saturday was Bernard with - you've guessed it - me again!

Fortunately Bernard appreciated my attempts at comic verse, and we later collaborated on a few things, including the Lion & Albert follow-up, Albert, The Lion & The Drink (1992). 

Notice that the Token Women were appearing at a ceilidh at the Wych Centre at the same time. They are the 'Female Ceilidh Band' referred to in the (in)famous publicity below.

Also appearing at the first Festival, but not listed here, were Flotsam from Manchester and Dempsey's Lot who joined us from Birmingham. 

And making the first of many appearances at the festival over the years was the legendary Boat Band.

The first ever publicity for the Festival, which appeared in the Middlewich Chronicle in May 1990, leading those not in the know to think that the Middlewich Paddies were 'a female ceilidh band'

They're not, of course. A ceilidh band, I mean.

The actual ceilidh band in question was The Token Women.

As might be expected, the programme for the first Festival is packed with advertisements for local businesses, some of which are still with us. 

Others, however, have now passed into history, including Margaret's (although Margaret herself is, thankfully, still very much with us) and that well-known Middlewich name Harold Woodbine Ltd, a firm which has now decamped to Sandbach.

Note that Woodbine's are following  T&M Society practice and referring to the Festival as Middlewich Boat & Folk Festival!

Other businesses, notably public houses, have changed hands over the years, and it comes as a bit of a novelty to find ourselves welcomed to the Big Lock by 'Tom and Jean'.

It's helpful of them to point out that the Big Lock is 'adjacent to the canal', though.

Elsewhere in the programme 'Sean and Maureen' are welcoming us to the Boar's Head and 'Liz and Ray' to the Newton Brewery.

And at the other end of town, we're invited to the long-defunct Kinderton Arms by 'Ken and Marie'.

Other advertisers in the 1990 programme include: Barry Fleet Insurance Services at The Old Post Office, Wheelock Street; Martrim Coach Trimming & Supplies, St Michael's Way; Dillon's in The Bull Ring and Pineland at the same address; Just Jems (Sue and John Foy) in Sutton Lane and Cheshire Electrics, Hoover Cleaner specialists, at 69 Wheelock Street.

It all seems such a long time ago. 

And it was. 

A different time and, in many ways, a different world.

Illustrations in this Diary entry are courtesy of Richard Devaney and Liz Rosenfield

Originally published 19th June 2015

Re-formatted and re-published 7th June 2018.

BIG LOCK COTTAGE LATE 1960s

If you own the copyright on this image, please let us know

As so often happens in our Middlewich Diary, today we  find ourselves walking down an already much-trodden path to view once again the lock-keeper's cottage which  stood opposite the pub at the Big lock.
Built on a basically similar pattern to the much better-known (and still extant) Wardle Lock Cottage, but never extended in the same way, due to its chronic problems with unstable foundations, the Big Lock cottage was, nonetheless, a picturesque edifice in a quaint, ramshackle kind of a way, and, if it hadn't been for its tendency to threaten  to collapse and fall into the River Croco behind it for much of its life, would have made a much sought after canal-side dwelling in the new, modern canal age.
There's more on the cottage here (follow the links).
In the foreground are those utilitarian metal lock  gates which were only replaced by gates of a more traditional style in recent years. You can make out the crumpled bit on the nearest one where some overenthusiastic boater gave it a bit of a bashing.
The land to the rear of the cottage, on the other side of the River Croco, and stretching away to the right to the houses in King Street on the skyline is 'Down Bill Hewitt's', a hinterland of old salt workings with a public footpath running right through the centre of it which was ideal for the testing of bike riding skills.
Housing has now been built on much of 'Bill Hewitt's', but the footpath still survives, diverted somewhat to run alongside the River Croco to a point just out of shot to the left of the photo above.

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Paul Greenwood Demolished by Baskerville Demolition of Stoke-On-Trent round about 1980 (give or take a year)

On the 27th May 2011 we took a look at a picture of Wheelock Street which had been lurking in our archives for 38 years labelled 'Lewin Street'.

Oh the shame! We'll have to give that award back...

Also the strange tale of the MUDC sign and the 'witches flying over the church'.

A MIDDLEWICH DIARY - 27th MAY 2011

BIG LOCK circa 1875

Photograph from the collection of the late Frank Smith of Ravenscroft. Reproduced by courtesy of Joan Smith

by Dave Roberts
This photograph, which has been sent to us by Middlewich Diary contributor Bill Eaton, must be one of the oldest, and certainly one of the most interesting, we've ever published.
It was loaned to Bill by the late Frank Smith of Ravenscroft Cottage, who was one of the leading lights of the Middlewich Heritage Society when it started in 1985.
As Bill says, Middlewich's heritage was a passion with Frank and the two of them would spend hours talking about the town's past.
Frank was always meticulous in his research, so we can, I think, take it for granted that the description he wrote on the back of the original photograph is correct, and that the image shows the shop which stood where the Big Lock pub and restaurant is now before that building was erected in the last quarter of the 19th century.
In fact Frank  added a question mark to the title - Big Lock Ca 1875? - indicating that, in his opinion, more research was needed.
It was, and is, but the photograph seems to fit the bill if we're looking for a picture of what stood on the site of the pub in former days.
The broad lock itself is in the foreground, and one of its gates can be seen on the left (the boatwoman standing next to it, by the way, appears to be wearing the traditional white head dress, indicating that Queen Victoria was still alive when the photo. was taken. Women on the canals switched to black head dresses as a sign of mourning for the old Queen, and never changed back again)
The steep cobbled alleyway in between the shop and the large building on the right which was, we presume, the condensed milk factory ( the Anglo-Swiss Milk Company was certainly in business in 1870) has endured for all these years and now forms a passageway between the Big Lock pub and the smart new town houses which have replaced the factory in recent years.
Bill Eaton, like all the rest of us, can only remember the building next to the  Big Lock being a pub but, it stands to reason that something must have been there before it.
We're used to the idea of a shop for boaters being incorporated into the pub, but it's very interesting to know that, as this picture appears to show us, the shop pre-dated the pub itself.
The canal and its lock had been there for a hundred years before this photo was taken and the need for groceries and provisions for the people working the boats would always have existed, so its perfectly likely that the shop was there first.
In fact, there are photographs of the pub with the shop incorporated into it, and the shop frontage looks remarkably similar to the one in this picture. Could it be that the shop premises were simply enlarged to form the pub, leaving the original shop and its frontage intact?
The building on the left with the tantalising letter 'S' at the end of its sign (we'll probably never know what that sign said) is interesting and could provide an alternative answer to this latest Middlewich Diary mystery.
You'll note that there is a set of stairs running up from the towpath to give access to this building.
Could it be that the building in question  was the canal side pub at the time, calling itself the Big Lock  or, perhaps, going under some other name?
Many thanks to Bill Eaton for sending us this fascinating picture.

SEE ALSO THE BIG LOCK 1970s (FOLLOW THE LINK FOR BIG LOCK 2012)
                    THE BIG LOCK AND NESTLE'S MILK FACTORY

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Geraldine Williams Is it possible that Frank was actually querying whether it is a picture of Middlewich Big Lock? Apart from the little alleyway it takes some imagination to transform the site into the 1970 version. I understood that the building by the present-day car-park used to be stables and that there were also some rails to roll down the condensed milk barrels onto the barges. The 1970 pic of the pub shows it was quite a grandiose design, so it's unlikely that it was an adaptation of any of the 1875 buildings.

Dave Roberts Yes, I think that's exactly what Frank was querying. I gather from Bill Eaton that he and Frank discussed this at length. The quality of the original photo suggests that it was taken from a book, and I think Frank was querying the original caption, or description, from that book.
My first impression was that the lock gate has to be in the wrong place for this to be the Big Lock, but when I looked at the 1970 picture it became obvious that the lock gate in the picture is the gate at the 'Middlewich' end of the lock, not the 'Northwich' end, so it could fit. The alleyway and curved wall to the right are also tantalisingly 'correct'. What a pity the picture doesn't include the building out of shot to the left.
This could be another Croxton Waterfall...

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