SEDDON'S ROW 1974

by Dave Roberts

Long before the days of Waterside Way, the modern housing development which occupies part of the boggy land lying between Croxton Lane and the Trent & Mersey Canal, a short terrace of houses stood in the middle of a field in the area, looking rather incongruous, almost as though it had been dropped there by mistake.

The houses were of traditional Victorian design and had 'front' doors in the usual fashion, although there was a footpath rather than a roadway for them to open onto.

This was 'Seddon's Row', built by the local salt manufacturer to house some of their workers.

Although the area had been used from time to time for making salt, as we've seen here, and Ralph Seddon's Kinderton Works were a short distance away across the canal and River Croco, it is not entirely clear which of the works the houses were intended to be associated with.

Possibly the Seddon family just owned the land on which they were built (which was, incidentally, much closer to Croxton Lane than it was to the canal).

With regard to the above photograph, when I think back on the circumstances in which it was taken I remain convinced that, when challenged by the demolition gang and asked what I was doing there, I replied that I was from 'the Heritage Society'.

But this can't possibly be true, because we didn't start the Heritage Society until eleven years later, in 1985. A clear warning for us all not to take what we think we know, or remember, as fact. The human mind, and memory, can play tricks on us all.*

*Thinking back on this, I'm wondering if I told them I was from 'The Council'? They'd have to be a bit dim to swallow that one, as my camera was a Kodak Instamatic - not at all the sort of thing you'd expect an official Council photographer to be using!

UPDATE (10th July 2017)

Here's a view of Seddon's Row from Mike Jennings' collection which shows the setting of the houses.

This photo attracted quite a lot of interest on Facebook.

Mike Jennings asked if one of the end houses in the row had been a shop at one time, and his mother Mary replied that there was no shop in the row.

However Peter Dickenson, who said he had lived in Seddon's Row (his house can be identified by the fourth window from the right), told us that there had been a shop in the area, 'approximately where you turn for Waterside Way and Meadow View'.

Ron Evans asked if the photo showed the front of the houses as viewed from Croxton lane and Peter replied that it did, in fact, show the row as seen from the canal side over a field belonging to his grandfather.

So not only were the houses in the middle of a field, they also faced 'the wrong way ' or, at least, in a direction opposite to what you might expect.

Perhaps there were plans for more housing on the site, and a roadway in front of this row?

Ron Evans also reminded us of the existence of a large 'pond' between the houses and the canal where he used to go to catch frogs!

In response to another query from Mike Jennings, Peter told us that Hector Davies lived in the second house from the left.

Here, from Facebook, is Peter's partial recollection of the names of the  families living in Seddon's Row when he lived there.

'From left to right (as far as I can remember) it was: Farrington, Davies, Carter, ?, Bratt,?, ? George Dickenson (my Dad), ?, Rex Dickenson, Frank Gaffney.

If anyone can fill in any gaps please don't hesitate to get in touch!

Ian Buckley says: 'My wife tells me that her father's family lived in one of the houses. Surname Clarke, forenames Fred, Frank and Bob. There were also two sisters, but their names have been forgotten'.

One final note: Although I refer to this row of houses as 'Seddon's Row' and have always, almost without thinking, given it that name, this was never the 'official name' of the row.

As Peter Dickenson confirms, these houses were actually part of Croxton Lane, and the house where he lived was simply '28 Croxton Lane'. In fact, he can't ever recall the houses being referred to as 'Seddon's Row'

Similarly, there's a row of houses not too far away in Webbs Lane which was always called 'Yoxall's Row' and was owned by private landlords Mrs Yoxall and Mr Henshall (Mr Henshall was actually a near neighbour of ours in King Street in the 1960s).

The Middlewich UDC bought this row of houses in the late 60s/early 70s and took them into their council house stock.

 As relief rent collector it fell to me to collect the first 'council rents' from the tenants, many of whom complained bitterly at the vastly increased amount they were asked to pay.

 From memory the increase was something like 100%. They'd been paying about 50p (ten shillings) per week and the council were charging them just short of  £1*

It was all a long time ago.

Certainly the highest weekly amount I can ever remember collecting from any council tenant before I left the council in 1972 was £3.50.

Now these houses are just a part of Webbs Lane and I'm sure that almost no one except me can ever remember their past lives as part of 'Yoxall's Row'.

The name has passed into history and so, too has 'Seddon's Row'. 

In the latter case, of course, even more completely. It's been wiped off the face of the earth.

*actually my failing brain has got the story slightly wrong. The rents first 'shot up' to 10/- and it was only after the council carried out structural improvements that they reached the astronomical heights of 19s 6d. The Yoxall's Row story is told here.

First published 15th November 2011

Republished with revisions and additions 10th July 2017

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WEBBS LANE 1969

by Dave Roberts

Usually, when looking back on the colour slides I took of Middlewich in the late 60s to mid 70s, I have a pretty good idea why each one was taken.

It was a time of great change in the town as the old salt works closed down and were demolished to make way first for weed and rubble  strewn waste grounds and then, slowly but surely, for new developments such as The Moorings.

Information about what was going to happen, which buildings were going to be demolished and which long-standing Middlewich scenes lost for ever to new road schemes and so on, was hard to come by in those days before the internet.

Our sole source of information was the  local press which, then as now, seemed more interested in telling us about events in neighbouring towns than in what was happening here.

But most of the time, it was quite easy to work out what to photograph.

Once we knew that the old open pan works were going to be knocked down; that Kinderton Street was going to be radically altered, and that, most dramatically of all, St Michael's Way was going to be ploughing its way through the town from Chester Road to Town Bridge, the list of things to be photographed was written for us.

A similar period in our town's history is approaching now as the Supermarket Wars break out all around us*. It's unclear at the moment what the outcome will be but big changes are coming and we're in the fortunate position of being able to chronicle those changes for posterity almost as they happen.

All of which is what my old English teacher rightly referred to as 'waffle', pure filler inserted here so that I can put off the inevitable moment when I have to come clean and tell you that I have no idea why I took the above photo of Webb's Lane forty-three years ago.

The houses shown here were not being threatened by any road schemes; no supermarkets were planned to take their place and, as far as I know, no one was proposing to bulldoze them in order to build a new leisure complex/bowling alley/multi-screen cinema.

I haven't checked recently but I think this row of semis is still more or less the same now as it was then, barring the odd replacement window or new front door (not that you can even see any front doors in this shot ,of course) and the only claim to fame they have is that one of them is now home to Michael 'Trampas' Woodbine.

The interesting houses are way off in the distance, centre right. Yoxall's Row, owned by Mrs Yoxall and Mr Henshall, was a terrace of rented houses which the Middlewich UDC took over round about the time of this photo, making the people living there instant council tenants.

It was my job, as the council's very young (17) stand-in rent collector, to go round there armed with Kalamazoo Rent Collecting System clipboard and leather money bag to collect their very first week's rent, only to be met with a lot of disgruntled tenants complaining about their rent 'shooting up' to 10/- per week. They didn't know how lucky they were.

Once the council's improvements had been carried out (involving, among other things, the removal of those tall chimneys) their rent 'shot up' once more and they had to pay 19/6d a week.

But Yoxall's Row, quite obviously, was not the reason for my taking this slide.

The most likely explanation is that this was the last shot on the reel (or, in the case of Instamatic photography, cartridge) and I wanted to get the film off to Kodak for processing and so took this gratuitous shot to make up the numbers.

Professional photographers, many of whom used 35mm Kodachrome almost exclusively  for colour, would get the few shots they wanted and then wind the expensive film through the camera, wasting up to about 80% of it.

But then, most of them probably weren't paying for the film as I was.

For we mere amateurs film was expensive, every exposure counted, and this sort of picture was the nearest we got to a 'throwaway shot'.

* Update (July 2017) The 'supermarket wars' never happened. The main protagonist, Tesco, bought up vast swathes of land in the centre of the town in order to build a Mega Store. They then had a re-think, called the whole thing off and left us with no real increase in shopping facilities, but a lot of ramshackle properties right in the heart of town.

Facebook Feedback:

Geraldine Williams I love this clever pic. I presume it's an early morning shot from the shadows, and the solitary figure and absence of cars and mist in the distance makes it very atmospheric. Using up the film....ha! I think Phil and Dennis Hambley would still have been living in one of those houses on the left, and just out of shot is the bungalow owned by Mrs Horsfield. The house at the far end of Yoxall's Row used to be tenanted by the Gallimore family. He was an RAC motorcycle patrolman and also a cousin of my Grandmother's (she of postcard fame).
On the opposite side of Webb's Lane, towards Lawrence Gardens, lived a lady (Noden?) who delivered milk on a tricycle with a lidded container on the front, similar to those once used by ice-cream sellers.
Michael Tully Looks to me like a view from the Big Lock end with Johnny Fahy's place to your right. That can only mean it was before Trampas moved in just to the left hand side. You were probably photographing a neighbourhood that had to get used to some raucous Penny Whistling in the depths of the night. I'd entitle it "The calm before the......" 

Kieran Tully ‎"The storm" that included him knifing my brand new red Wembley football in the late 70s! I thanked him for it in the late 80s in the Narrow Boat!