TANNERY ALLEY 1950s

by Dave Roberts

The name Tannery Alley probably won't mean very much to those who haven't been Middlewichians for very long, but when we substitute Southway and mention Tesco things may start to become a little clearer.
Tannery Alley is, or was, the public footpath which runs from St Ann's Road and joins Wheelock Street alongside the former Bargain Booze off-licence (now blessed with the not much more dignified name The Booze Centre). 
Tannery Alley was long ago re-christened Southway.
Slightly confusingly the row of shops behind Drinks & Bites at 35 is also called Southway, as is the pathway running from Wheelock Street and up the steps to the strange 'pagoda-like' structure which advertises the presence of Tesco's supermarket to people approaching from that direction.
As Malcolm Hough, who sent us this photo, reminds us the alley did,  at one time, have a third, unofficial, name. 
When the Alhambra was in business as a cinema the locals christened it 'Picture Alley', as it formed a short-cut to that popular establishment for those coming from St Ann's Road and 'Newtonia'.
Of course many who were young at the time will remember that the rear door of the Alhambra was (and still is) down a little alleyway off what became Southway, and it was a relatively easy job to sneak through this door behind the cinema's screen, risking the wrath of 'Torchy', who, we think, was named after Torchy The Battery Boy, a popular puppet TV star of the 1950s. Or did his nickname pre-date this early Granada star?
Malcolm suggests, rightly, that this photo is just begging for a 'Now & Then' comparison and we'll be doing this just as soon as we have time to take a shot of that 'pagoda' which is approximately where these houses once stood.
Unless one of our many photographer friends would like to oblige?
To make our modern day bearings even clearer, the much-admired Barclay House is out of shot to the left. The prospects for this lovely old building are looking brighter now that Tesco has decided to dispose of all the property it bought up for its aborted Middlewich mega-store plan.
We have seen the old buildings in the photo before, again courtesy of Malcolm Hough, when we published this picture:

We first published this picture  here in 2011 under the title 'Mystery Picture' as we weren't entirely sure of the location at that time, although the 'mystery' was soon solved. That's one end of the former Orchard Works to the right and Barclay House is immediately to the left of what is obviously the building in the picture above. We can now see that there appear to be three houses here - two cottages and a fairly substantial house, the main entrance to which was probably at the front facing Wheelock Street.
Were these, perhaps, a couple of workmen's houses and a 'manager's house', relating to the vanished tannery which gave the alley its original name?
The other obvious question is, where did the name 'Southway' originate?
Incidentally, the resemblance between this little section of Tannery Alley and
White Horse Alley is quite striking.

We'll be returning to the scene with some 'Now & Then' shots soon.

Note: We've dated this photo provisionally as '1950s' due to the quality of the photography, although we're open to argument and correction on this. Was that building still standing in the 1960s?

With thanks to Malcolm Hough

UPDATE (9th May 2019):
In the four years since this diary entry was written, there have been changes in the area, the principal one being that 'Big Tesco' has gone, to be replaced by Jack's and that little 'pagoda' now has a 'Jack's' logo on it. The Booze Centre which replaced Bargain Booze has also closed to be replaced by an 'International Food Store'. Various other changes have happened in Wheelock Street. Soon this area will be completely transformed as plans to redevelop the area between Southway and Daerlington Street go ahead. When that happens 'Tannery Alley' will be an even more distant memory.

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