FESTIVAL MEMORIES 1

 

by Dave Roberts

In the run up to the very first MIDSUMMER MIDDLEWICH FESTIVAL over the weekend of June 18th - 21st, we thought it might be nice to take a look back at some  of the classic Folk & Boat Festival photos taken over the years by photographers such as the late and still much-missed CLIFF ASTLES.

We start with this justly famous shot by Cliff from 2011 showing  the Town Wharf and Salinae Field at Festival time.

Sadly the Wharf can no longer be used on such occasions because of Health & Safety concerns, but the Salinae Field will be very much a part of the weekend.

And that bird, so enthusiastically joining in the festivities, wasn't photoshopped, but took the opportunity to get in the picture just as Cliff pressed the shutter release.

What may come as a surprise in this well-known photo is the amount of greenery on the field, which is now .given over mostly to lawns.

An even bigger surprise, to those relatively new to the town at least, is this view of the area as it was before the old Seddons Wych House Lane Works closed in 1967.

The salt pans looming over the Trent & Mersey Canal to the right are situated where the lush greenery of Salinae is in Cliff's 2011 photo.

On the skyline, beyond the canal lock, is one of two other works (the third being Pepper Street) belonging to Henry Seddon & Sons. All three closed in 1967. 
Close to the Brooks Lane works was a fourth open pan works belonging to Murgatroyd's. The associated brine pump has now been preserved by Middlewich Heritage Trust, which is currently in the process of restoring the pumps to working order and also building a medieval salt hearth to demonstrate the ancient craft of open pan salt making.

To the right, on the waste ground between the lock and the end of the salt works, where Wych House Lane (formerly Wych House Street) runs down to the canal from Lewin Street, is Andersen's Boatyard.

This photo will feature in a future edition of GO LOCAL as part of 'Middlewich Memories'.

Find out more about MIDSUMMER MIDDLEWICH here.

SEDDON'S WORKSHOPS 1972

Here's an interesting group of buildings in  Lewin Street, and a photo which will take some explaining. The original slide caption says 'council buildings', indicating that this was part of the MUDC depot (it will have connected with the council's yard which had an entrance on Town Wharf next to the BW warehouse). Originally this was Seddon's waggon repair workshop, associated with the Wych House Lane works behind it. Here all kinds of repair and maintenance work was carried out for Seddons where 'everything was done in-house'. On the right hand side was a long building, or series of buildings, opposite Middlewich DIY, which ran down the length of Wych House Lane and part of which is reputed to have been Middlewich's first Catholic Church. To the left, out of shot, are the Wesleyan Chapel, 'Square One' and the C o f E School. as seen in a previous slide. We're standing outside the then brand new Middlewich Library and the site is, of course, occupied now by the Salinae Centre and its associated gardens.





Facebook Feedback (11th May 2011):

Colin Derek Appleton I don't remember anything of these buildings, but I do remember the building that is just creeping into view on the right hand side of the frame, it was a couple of terraced houses and yearsleys clothes shop

Dave Roberts That's right now replaced by flats called 'Halfpenny Court'.

Geraldine Williams There certainly was a Catholic church in Wych House Lane and a stone cross from the building is now mounted in the porch of the present St Mary's Church.

First published 17th July 2011
Re-formatted and re-published 18th February 2019

FORTY-EIGHT YEARS ON - WYCH HOUSE LANE

by Dave Roberts

It's hard to  believe that the two photos above show exactly the same place.
Forty-eight years separate the two shots - nearly half a century in which Middlewich, like every other town, has seen immense changes.
We're standing next to the bottom lock of the Brooks Lane flight and looking down towards the Town Wharf, Middlewich Church and, in the first picture Seddon's closed Wych House Lane salt works, in the second the Salinae Clinic and its grounds.
The problem with any modern day view of Middlewich is immediately apparent; the immense profusion of trees and bushes which has grown up in the intervening years makes it difficult to photograph anything identifiable at this distance.
Behind the trees on the left, where that singularly unattractive scrubland littered with the remains of old salt workings and old cars was in 1969, can be found Andersen's boat yard. There aren't many boats to be seen at the moment (August 2017) as we're at the height of the boat hire season and most of them are out cruising along Britain's waterways. The boats you can see on the other side of the canal, however, are part of the Andersen fleet.
A full description of the top picture can be found here.
To try to connect the two photos together, we can only refer you to our old friend St Michael's church tower, which can just be glimpsed amongst the vegetation above the canalside canopy at Andersen's.
One further thing ties the two photos together; on the left, just above the 'V' where the two paths diverge can be seen a gap in the wall.
We think this might just be where that blue brick pillar (thought to be part of a pipeline bridge over the canal at one time) stands in the earlier picture.
Here's a close up of that part of the wall, and you can see that there are certainly plenty of those industrial blue bricks still in evidence.

ANDERSEN BOATS WEBSITE

HERITAGE SOCIETY PLAQUES (1) SALINAE CENTRE

In the 1990s Middlewich Heritage Society commissioned a number of metal plaques to be affixed to various buildings and features of historical interest in the town. Here's one of them, photographed in August 2011, which you will find on the front wall of Salinae, the day care centre and clinic in Lewin Street/Wych House Lane. So why photograph for posterity something which is itself designed to label Middlewich's heritage for the same purpose?
A couple of reasons, actually. Firstly, if you're a Middlewich resident or visitor it's relatively easy to wander about and take in the sites of interest and their accompanying plaques. But what if you left Middlewich many years ago and have found it difficult, or impossible, to get back here? What if you've (horror of horrors) never even been here? We hope the inclusion of these plaques will help fill these gaps and let everyone see via the internet what some of us can see whenever we want to.
We have, by the way, people all over the world looking at 'A Middlewich Diary', including avid followers in America, Canada, Spain, Germany, Sweden, and, intriguingly, Taiwan and  The Phillipines. A lot of these will be exiled Middlewichians, but some will have just stumbled across us by accident. How nice to be able to show all these people what used to be in Middlewich (and, equally importantly, what's here now).
And secondly, permanent as these plaques are, or appear to be, what happens if (God forbid) someone pinches one? What happens if a particular building is altered and the plaque is removed and someone loses it or 'forgets' to put it back? Presumably the Heritage Society has records of the plaques, and probably photographs and drawings too, but including them here is an additional safeguard.

Salinae 2nd August 2011

The culmination of those 600 years of salt making on the site was the Seddon's Wych House lane Works, which closed in 1967 but was still largely intact when this somewhat damaged slide was taken in 1969. The Salinae Clinic and its lawned area are where the salt works stood. In the foreground is the site now occupied by Andersen Boats and Wych House Lane ran (and still runs) down from Lewin Street to the canal alongside the salt works wall. Andersen's site was itself used for salt manufacture in the past. The grey brick construction in the centre of the picture is a column which once supported one end of a brine pipeline spanning the canal and River Croco. A full description of this photo can be found here

First published 3rd August 2011
Updated and re-published 3rd August 2017

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN WYCH HOUSE LANE

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN WYCH HOUSE LANE

by Malcolm Hough

(adapted from an article originally published in the Middlewich Heritage Society Newsletter)

This photograph of Wych House Lane in  Middlewich shows, on the right hand side, the cottages (nos  9 to 11) which were built some 300 years ago on the top of the bank of the River Croco. This was before the Trent & Mersey Canal was cut in 1777.  In 1979 these cottages were converted into one house (the 'House of Feathers' -Ed)  .

The building in the centre of the picture is Middlewich's original Catholic Church.

Ken Sumner, who supplied me with the photograph and some of the information, told me that his Great Grandmother Elizabeth Dunning was born in what is now number 11 in in 1850. Elizabeth is shown as a one year old in the 1851 census.

The gap between the houses and the chapel is where numbers 1, 3, 5 and 7 stood.

Nos 1, 3, 5 and 7 Wych House Lane

In 1851 the houses in Wych House Lane do not appear to have had numbers, so this gave me a fixing point for the route that the census enumerator travelled on that day, 162 years ago.
He came from Leadsmithy Street, close to St Michael's Church, via the Town Wharf and along the canal towpath, past the Robin Hood public house on the corner of Wych House Lane and then up the lane, past the salt works cottage (number 13, now demolished and then to numbers 11 and 9.
I have come to the conclusion that numbers 1 to 7 had not been built by 1851(this is only an assumption, and I have no proof), but they certainly were there ten years later and were covered in the 1861 census.
As mentioned above, the building in the centre of the main picture was the first Catholic Chapel in Middlewich, which was built in 1864. The town's first Catholic School was added in 1869.
The building behind the chapel with the unusual tower is the Wesleyan Chapel, and the roof to its left is the Centenary Sunday School in Lewin Street. This photograph dates back to the 1960s.
© Malcolm Hough 2013. Reproduced with permission.

We're very grateful to Malcolm, who is the brother-in-law of John Andersen of Andersen Boats and still lives in Wych House Lane, for this fascinating article, which solves another of our Middlewich Diary mysteries, first considered in July 2011 when we published this colour slide:

In this diary entry  we formed the opinion that the furthest building from the camera in this shot was too 'gimcrack and jerry-built' looking to ever have been a church, an opinion now proved way off course by Malcolm's excellent article

There's little real doubt now that the two buildings are one and the same and that Middlewich's first Catholic Church ended up as a ramshackle and tumble down part of  Seddon's waggon repair works, tacked on to the typical salt works buildings nearer the camera.

I did say in that earlier post that I had some dim recollection of the building in question having some 'vaguely ecclesiastical' looking windows', but couldn't trust my memory on the subject.

It seems that I should have.

Strange to think that this historic building was bulldozed and carted away along with the rest of the site's motley collection of brick and timber industrial sheds and workshops in the 1970s without, seemingly, anyone knowing, or caring, about its significance.

Unless, of course, someone knows otherwise. We'd be delighted to be proved wrong on this and shown that someone did care and took the trouble to at least make a proper record of this chapel before its destruction.

The modern Wych House Lane is still recognisable as the same thoroughfare, but is much altered.

 Here's a before and after feature showing the lane as it was in 1974 and 2011 and we'll be doing some more 'before and after' shots in the near future.- Ed