by Dave Roberts
Another photograph from the Carole Hughes Collection showing Lewin Street as it was nearly thirty years ago, and packed with nostalgia.
On the extreme left we can see the distinctive bow window of the legendary and much-missed Howe's Bakery, home of what many consider the best meat and potato pies ever made.
Next to that is Roland Wilson's second-hand shop (or 'junk shop' as we weren't too fussy to call such places years ago). Roland was part of the family which ran Howe's Pies.
Roland was in the habit of buying up used stock of such things as gas mantles, oil lamp wicks and packets of 'dolly blue' and was a source of such arcane material long after other shops ceased to stock it.
He also supplied me with an inexhaustible supply of old valve radio sets (or, more properly 'wireless sets') as the transistor radio took over and people were anxious to get rid of their 'old-fashioned' radios.
The fact that the old sets sounded much better than the tinny and often trashy transistors didn't seem to be an issue for most people.
But those old sets are now cherished by the discerning and change hands on the internet for a great deal of money.
Roland also sold me boxes full of old gramophone records (and a wind-up gramophone to play them on) for 10 shillings apiece, as remembered in the feedback on the above link.
Nowadays even the most unpretentious 'junk shop' refers to itself as an 'antique shop' and no one bats an eyelid at the hugely inflated prices paid for the kind of 'rubbish' we used to buy for next to nothing.
1987 must have been towards the end of Roland's time in the shop.
The next shop along the row is the 'Coral Reef' chip shop which took the place of what had been a Co-op butcher's shop.
By the 1990s the shop had become 'Giorgio's' and it is still going strong in 2016 as The Middlewich Fryer.
Next comes a row of small houses which, like houses all over the town, have gone up in the world a little over the last thirty years and then, slightly set back from the road, the huge Victorian bulk of the former Co-op Drapery Department, which by this time had become Oates Builder's Merchants.
The builder's merchants are still on site (although the building fronting onto Lewin Street is long gone) and the establishment is now part of the Jewson's chain. There's more about this here.
Crossing the road, just to the right of the red van is the recently demolished Niddrie's Toy Shop.
Christmas 2012 was the first one in living memory without Niddries. Everyone used to look in the window to see what the latest trend in toys was, even if they didn't buy any of them.
And wouldn't it have been nice if that unusual red and white illuminated sign saying NIDDRIES COACHES had been saved to become an exhibit in our future Middlewich Museum?
UPDATE (November 2016): Actually, that sign has been saved and can be seen, neatly stacked, among the unsightly ruins of what was once Niddries shop (photo follows soon). I wonder what will become of it?
Roman remains are all very well, but nothing is as poignant as something like that sign, which we've all seen countless times in our lives without many of us really noticing it.
Talking of signs, in the top right hand corner of the (main) picture is the bottom of the pub sign which tells us that the present day Narrowboat was, at that time, The Danes.
Slightly further up the street, next to Niddries, is The White Horse, in those days selling Ansell's Ales.
SEE ALSO: VICTORIA BUILDING AND LEWIN STREET 1987
Facebook Feedback:
Rob Farmer: I've just been looking through the old pictures and it's absolutely fantastic. You've done a great job, really enjoyed it.
Originally published on the 4th November 2012
Reformatted, updated and re-published on the 4th November 2016
by Dave Roberts
From the Carole Hughes collection, and courtesy of Carole's friend Diane Parr, comes this view of Lewin Street twenty-five years ago including, on the left, the Victoria Building, home to the Middlewich Town Council, its predecessor, the Middlewich Urban District Council (until 1974), and various other organisations.
You can see that the practice of displaying notices in the office windows was already well-established, and that someone from Congleton Borough thought he/she could come up with a better arrangement (see below)
The main door at the front of the building was originally also the 'official' entrance to the Civic Hall and there was an illuminated red and white sign over the door reading 'Council Offices & Civic Hall'.
This dated back to the opening of the Civic Hall in September 1969 but, as can be seen, had disappeared by 1987.
In general the Lewin Street scene looked much as it does today.
Until, that is, you look closely.
Surprisingly, the ramp access to the council offices was already in place by this date, and is, of course, still there, but the glass boxes for official council notices on their brick plinth are long gone.
This arrangement, put in place by Congleton Borough Council, could best be described as a 'triumph of hope over experience'.
Townspeople looked at those vulnerable-looking boxes with a mixture of scorn and amusement and the general opinion was that they 'wouldn't last five minutes'.
And they didn't.
To be fair, I don't think they would have 'lasted five minutes' in any era, or in any town.
They were soon gone, smashed to pieces by the local idiots, but the brick plinth lingered for many years afterwards with the remains of the metal struts for the boxes sticking out of the top as a reminder of why 'we can't have anything nice', as one resident forlornly put it to me all those years ago.
The former co-op shop was already in business as a chemists in 1987, as stated in the curiously old-fashioned (even then) 'Stymie' typeface (the same one used by Granada TV in the early 1960s) on the end of the building.
At this time the shop was, I think, owned by Mr N G Stott, and still had its central doorway as in Co-op days. Before becoming a chemists, the shop served time as a laundrette and as a Landrover Sales & Service outlet..
Can anyone clear up a bit of confusion here? Mr Stott also used a shop further down the road at the Lewin Street end of Hightown (the shop now known as 'Jennie Edwards'), but I can't remember in which order these shops were used. Did he move from Lewin Street to Hightown, or was it the other way round?
Any information on this gratefully received.
Also seen on the end wall are the still extant post-box, one of the 'new-style' BT telephone boxes (which is still in situ, and has, in fact, just been repaired at the time of writing) and that road sign which caused us some puzzlement here.
The shop is (for the present) still a chemist - one of two Rowlands Pharmacy branches in the town, and also Middlewich's Post Office.
Next comes the pub originally known as The Crown and now named The Narrowboat.
At the time of our photograph it was called The Danes as can be seen from the sign over the door.
The Danes was run by a former landlord of The Red Lion and boasted a specially made carpet woven with representations of Great Danes.
There were also several real Great Dane dogs on the premises.
The pub at this time was very long and thin, making full use of the former outbuildings and well-known as a 'disco pub' with state-of-the-art sound and lighting systems.
A For Sale sign can be seen underneath the pub sign. Was this the beginning of the end for The Danes?
Certainly The Narrowboat was in existence in the early years of the Middlewich Folk & Boat Festival which started in 1990.
Next comes a small alleyway giving access to the rear of the pub and a small car park (now effectively blocked by a new extension on the side of the pub) and then Fred Dodd's Gents Outfitters.
The row of houses between Dodd's and the library had gone by this time.
SEE ALSO: LEWIN STREET 1972
LEWIN STREET 1987
