NOW & THEN: TANNERY ALLEY/SOUTHWAY

 

Tannery Cottages as they were in the late 50s/early 60s. Although we refer to old photos of this public footpath as depicting 'Tannery Alley' in fact the name was changed to 'Southway' a very long time ago. Certainly those of us born in the early 1950s can't remember it being called anything else. What the name 'Southway' is supposed to mean is anyone's guess. It's one of those exquisitely meaningless names which local councils love. You can find out more about the area in this Diary entry, written during the 'Jack's' era: 

SOUTHWAY

Southway as it was in January 2024,  and the huge bulk of the Home Bargains store dominates the scene as it has done since the early 1980s. This building, which started life as a Gateway/Somerfields supermarket and later became Tesco and then the short-lived Jack's, looks relatively unaltered from the way it was in the early 1980s, but was in fact comprehensively rebuilt before Home Bargains moved in. The earlier semi-rural feel of Southway has largely disappeared. On the other side of the wall on the left-hand side, great changes have taken place; The much lamented Barclay House and the other prestigious homes in the area have all disappeared to be replaced by new housing, still at the time of writing under construction. Even further to the left, in Darlington Street, the hotch-potch of old industrial buildings, garages and flats which once formed one side of the street, have been replaced by Roman Court a retirement development built by McCarthy & Stone.

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.