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.

MIDDLEWICH ARCHAEOLOGICAL SOCIETY IN KING STREET 1968

by Dave Roberts

On a warm afternoon in the Summer of 1968 members of the Middlewich Archaeological Society work on one of the Society's digs in King Street.

This particular site, long since built over, was at the very top of the public footpath, known to us all in those days as 'Bill Hewitt's', which ran, and still runs, from King Street  past the 'Stone Houses'  and along the River Croco to a point just on the south-west corner of Harbutt's field where two footbridges take it, and the other footpath from King Street, across the river and canal at the Big Lock.

The existence of the Roman Fort at Harbutt's Field was not officially confirmed until 1993, when modern geophysical methods were brought into play, but was long suspected, not least by members of the Archaeological Society, of which my Dad was a founder member.

Excavations were made on the field in the early 1920s aimed at establishing the existence of  a permanent Roman fort, which had been the subject of speculation for many years previously, but no evidence of the fort was found.

The excavations the Society made in the years 1964-1969, under the direction of one John D Bestwick, centred around the King  Street area and discovered much evidence of salt, iron and leather manufacturing as well as Roman pottery and coins.

The point was, as my Dad used to tell us frequently, if there was not a major military Roman presence in the area, what was all that industry doing there? Who was it serving?

Several members of the Archaeological Society are pictured above, hard at work.

I suppose it might have been a good idea to line them up and take a proper picture of them for posterity, but they were a little bit touchy about being disturbed during their endeavours.

At least two of them are, it will be noticed, sporting the sleeveless pullover and shirtsleeves look as worn by Percy Thrower on Gardening Club during this period.

The gentleman in the light coloured jumper to the right of the trench is my Dad, Arthur Roberts, and also present on the day, among others, were Middlewich UDC surveyor Donald Stubbs and local schoolteacher Ken Laundon, who lived just across the road from this particular dig.

Behind the camera is the path leading 'down Bill Hewitt's' and the greenery just visible top left is part of the then unspoilt farmers' fields leading up to Harbutt's Field itself.

See also: ARCHAEOLOGICAL SOCIETY 1968 (2)

              ARCHAEOLOGICAL SOCIETY 1973

              The Heritage of  Middlewich THE JOHN BESTWICK ARTICLES