THE ROYAL OAK - THE TRUTH REVEALED!

Photo: Maureen Condra

This Diary entry is a follow up to: THE ROYAL OAK, circa 1900

                                                        LAST REMNANTS OF THE ROYAL OAK circa 2012

UPDATED 9th APRIL 2015 (PLEASE SCROLL DOWN THE PAGE)

The last piece in the jigsaw, as supplied by Malcolm Hough, finally vindicates Trevor Williams in his assertion that the still extant wall behind the site of Niddrie's former bus garage was, indeed, part of the Royal Oak - Ed.

by Dave Roberts

Our convoluted theories about the Royal Oak in Lewin Street (see previous Diary entries - links above) came down, in the end, to a simple truth - that The Royal Oak ended its days not as a public house, but as a private house, sandwiched in between the White Horse and, at first that three storeyed house with the steep steps and, later, Niddries new building.

The red herring, and the thing that threw all our calculations out, was Trevor Williams' assertion that one of the walls of the former pub still existed at the rear of the old Niddries site. There was no way we could make the 'footprint' of the pub fit where it was supposed to if we placed one of the walls of the pub so far back and so far to the left of the site.

In one of our earlier entries mention was made of Maureen Condra, nee Hitchen, who now lives in America and is an avid reader of the Middlewich Diary. 

Maureen sent us the above photograph a couple of years ago, explaining that it showed her former home at 40 Lewin Street.

Obviously Maureen's family home and the erstwhile Royal Oak are one and the same building. It had obviously ceased to be a pub and been converted into a private house many years before.

So that is the reason no one could remember a Lewin Street pub being demolished in the 1950s.

Maureen writes:

We occupied the whole house. The right hand side with the single chimney was where my bedroom was. My brother Jimmy and sister Margaret were born there, as was my daughter Leona, with the assistance of Dr Brown and Nurse Benger*. I remember it as if it was yesterday. And, yes, the new building on the left was being built by Niddries. I left in 1958 and came back for a visit in 1960 and my family were living in George VI Avenue. The photograph was taken while the pavement was being repaired.

* One of the town's well-known and well-respected District Nurses. Geraldine Williams says she remembers Nurse Benger, along with others including Nurse Adamson.

So Malcolm Hough and Trevor Williams were obviously quite right when they said that the building was demolished at the same time as Niddries was built, but it was many years after it had ceased to be a pub.

I wonder if the thorny problem of the remains behind the site of Niddries garage can be solved with a little lateral thinking? Are those remains perhaps part of a retaining wall at the rear of the pub's yard, or maybe the last remnants of an outhouse of some kind? The pub's yard may have extended behind those adjacent buildings.

UPDATE: 9th APRIL 2015

Actually Malcolm Hough and Trevor Williams have the final word on this  Royal Oak enigma, with virtually no lateral thinking needed.

Malcolm writes:

Hi Dave,

 I have only just read your edited article on the Royal Oak. I like it very much. Nice to see other people interested. Trevor Williams may have been right about the remnants of the pub though. Take a look at the attached image. It shows the footprint of the pub on the 1909 O.S. map, it is the reversed [Z] shape [yellow]. The left-hand side does go back a fair way. It looked a large building in those days.

 The White Horse [blue]; looks like there were three buildings there in those days. Maybe that’s how the car-park came about, after the demolition of the first two buildings or part of. 

 Regards

Malc

Photocapture: Malcolm Hough

So we can consider Trevor Williams vindicated!

As for the Royal Oak and the White Horse being immediately adjacent to one another, as we've explained before, this was by no means unusual at one time. Malcolm Hough has kindly sent us a list of pubs and beer houses in the town in 1860 and we can see that the two establishments did indeed flourish side by side.

As time went on, however, it may well have been that there was not enough trade for both pubs, and this could explain why the Royal Oak became a private house, leaving the White Horse to cater for all the local drinkers.

Many thanks to everyone who has enthusiastically joined us in solving another little Middlewich mystery!

• HOTELS, INNS, TAVERNS & LICENSEES IN MIDDLEWICH 1860

BLACK BEAR: MARY DEAN. PEPPER ST

BRASS HEAD: THOMAS WARBURTON. KINDERTON ST

BULL’S HEAD: SAMUEL BURGESS. KINDERTON ST

CARBINEER: SARAH BAILEY. HIGH TOWN

CHESHIRE CHEESE: JOHN WALTON. NEWTON

GOLDEN LION: SAMUEL PERCIVAL. NEWTON

GRAPES: GILBERT EGERTON. LEWIN ST

HORSE & JOCKEY: JOHN MAULKIN LOWER ST

KING’S ARMS: FRANCIS EARL. HIGH TOWN

NAVIGATION: JAMES OAKS. KINDERTON ST

RED COW: ROBERT MILLS. WHEELOCK ST

RED LION: WILLIAM WOODWARD. NEWTON

ROSE & CROWN: JAMES ELLISON. LEWIN ST

ROYAL OAK: JOHN LUNT. LEWIN ST

SPREAD EAGLE: FRED WHITTAKER. HIGH TOWN

TALBOT: CATHERINE BOLSHAW. KINDERTON ST

WHEAT SHEAF: JOHN LEECH. LOWER ST

WHITE BEAR: THOMAS BARRATT. WHEELOCK ST

WHITE HORSE: JOHN HOLFORD. LEWIN ST

WHITE LION: WILLIAM EGERTON. WHEELOCK ST

BEER HOUSES

NEWTON BREWERY: WILLIAM BRAITHWAITE. WEBB’S LANE

PLOUGH: FRED DALE. LEADSMITHY ST

ROBIN HOOD: JOHN HURST. NEWTON

KINDERTON ARMS: EDWARD LOWE. BOOTH LANE

JUNCTION: WILLIAM SIMON OAKS. BROOKS LANE

KINGS LOCK: WILLIAM OAKS. NEWTON

LORD HOOD: NO RECORD. PEPPER ST

PAUL FRY & RING ‘O’ BELLS WERE CLOSED PREVIOUS TO 1860

First published 19th January 2015
Re-published (with amendments) 9th April 2015)
Re-published 18th January 2018
Re-published 15th January 2019

LEWIN STREET 1987

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

FAB FESTIVAL FOLK SESSIONS AT THE WHITE HORSE 2016

Photo courtesy of the White Horse/Ian Murfitt

SEE ALSO: ARTISTS APPEARING AT THE WHITE HORSE OVER THE FAB FESTIVAL WEEKEND

THE WHITE HORSE ON FACEBOOK