MORETON'S FARMYARD 1973 (2)

This slide was taken at exactly the same time as this one, and will illustrate how a change in viewpoint can make a big difference. We're looking once again at Moreton's farmyard and the large building dominating the left hand side of this slide can also be seen on the left of that earlier slide.
Seen from this angle the farmyard looks almost tidy, but the earlier shot shows that, at the time, this was far from being the case.
St Michael & All Angels church tower can be seen just above the roof of the little lean-to centre right.
Behind and to the right of the camera was the large agricultural building where bales of hay were stored, giving the area the name of 'The Stackyard'.
For many years an ancient baling machine was stored in this building - an enormous wooden contraption of the type now seen at steam rallies with lovingly preserved and gleaming traction engines attached to them, demonstrating farm practices of long ago.
It all seems so settled and secure but evidence that change was coming can be seen in the shape of the conical bonfire on the right of the picture made up of  beams and lengths of wood from the old farmyard buildings which were soon to disappear to make way for the new King Street/Kinderton Street junction.

HARRY JACKSON AT WHISTON'S

by Dave Roberts

Hot on the heels of this picture of Harry Jackson, proudly showing off Whiston's smart new TV van in the early 1960s, comes another one from the same source showing Harry outside the Radio and TV shop itself.

Again, we think this is one from the early 1960s, though it may be slightly earlier judging from the radios and the one solitary TV set on show in the right hand window. The style of that set shows us that we're well into the Granada TV era (we refuse to use the boring, generic 'ITV' label) and those windows are a perfect time-capsule of what look, at first glance, like TV and radio trade names of the past. But, strange to say, all three of the names represented here - Bush, Pye and His Masters Voice - are still in business and their trade marks still used, albeit in modified form.

The most evocative, of course is 'His Master's Voice', now masquerading as 'HMV' with a barely recognisable dog and gramophone graphic derived from the original oil painting by Francis Barraud

The dog, as any trivia fan worth his salt will know, was called Nipper. You'll note that, back in  Harry Jackson's day, the Gramophone Company Ltd was still using reproductions of the original painting and the full 'His Master's Voice' title. And so they should.

The painting and trademark was also used by RCA (Radio Corporation of America) which, under the name RCA Victor had a reciprocal arrangement with His Master's Voice to release British records in the USA and vice versa.

And the RCA Victor company in turn had an offshoot in Japan - the Japanese Victor Company, which was the origin of the well-known and still thriving Japanese electronics firm JVC. Such are the convoluted connections and interweavings of the electronics industry.

Any Middlewich resident of a certain age will recognise Whiston's distinctive house style in the shop name and the fine shaded lettering used for the words Radio & TV and Cycles.
Whoever did the sign-writing was a master of the art.
Harry, of course, fits into the scene with his usual style and panache.

Facebook feedback:

Geraldine Williams I see in the later view of Whiston's the sign which you admire so much has gone and been replaced by a more modern (and boring) sign which incorporates the MOT logo. This building was also the Whiston family home and had an entrance door round the side.

Dave Roberts Yes, the whole place ended up festooned with FORD dealership signs and lost its quirky individuality. I hate bland corporate images like that. 'ITV' in case you haven't noticed, is one of my least favourites. An excellent regional TV network wrecked in pursuit of profit.

MIDDLEWICH SHOW 1937 FILM

Here's a direct YouTube link to a short (15 minutes) film of the Middlewich Agriculture Show in 1937. The film was produced by members of MCACS (the Mid-Cheshire Amateur Cinematography Society) and the original is now in the North-West Film Archive at Manchester University, as part of the Roberts Collection. Various bootleg copies of this film are in circulation on DVD, but this  is the official Salt Town Productions version, complete with restored opening titles. The copyright is held by me.
We hope during the course of this year to be able to present the rest of the films in the Roberts Collection on 'A Middlewich Diary', along with some of the audio presentations we have produced for Middlewich Town Council. Dave Roberts, Editor

MANOR LODGE EARLY 20th CENTURY

Here's Manor Lodge when it was just that -  the lodge at the start of the carriage drive which led from Nantwich Road to the Manor about half a mile away and shown here in a postcard from the 'Perfection' series we estimate to be getting on for a hundred years old.
A 'lodge' in this context is usually described as a small house or cottage at the gates of, or in the grounds of, a large house. It may be occupied by someone specially employed as a gatekeeper or, perhaps, someone who combined that function with the job of gardener or estate manager.
At the time the photograph was taken the lodge really did look as though it was a part of the Manor estate and one can easily imagine being stopped by someone and asked what one's business was at the Manor.
On either side of the impressive gate are well built stone walls which add to the feeling of solidity. Approaching the Manor from this direction in those days must have been quite intimidating.
Note what looks like a lawned area to the right of the gate marked out with white posts. Presumably this was some form of early traffic control measure preventing carriages from making too hasty a descent from the driveway down onto Nantwich Road.
And right in front of the lodge's front door is that stone gatepost, minding its own business and little suspecting that a hundred years later, having had its top portion, complete with ball, resurrected after years of lying  in the undergrowth only a short time before, it would be knocked flat  by a speeding motor-car.
Assuming that the lodge was built at the same time as the Manor would make it an early 19th Century building dating back to around 1830 (some accounts date it even earlier at 1800).
In this photo it looks very much as if the building is faced in Ashlar Stone, as was the Manor itself (although it, i.e. the Manor, was originally of plain brick construction without stone facing), but its walls have been rendered and painted white for as long as most people can remember.
We'll be looking at Middlewich Manor itself in later Middlewich Diary postings.
SEE ALSO: NOW & THEN: MANOR LODGE
                    MANOR LODGE: A CHRISTMAS MEMORY

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BIG LOCK AND SILK WORKS 1970s

If you own the copyright on this photo, or know who does, please let us know.

This is the somewhat depressing face that the Big Lock pub presented to the world (well, the canal world, at any rate) during the early 1970s.

It's a tall and potentially  impressive building, but was always rather overpowered by the milk factory/silk works which, as can be seen here, rubbed shoulders with it for many years.

A cobbled alleyway (actually laid with setts, which is a slightly different thing - see this posting) separated the pub and the factory, and  still slopes up from towpath level to the road above.

The Big Lock is what the late Brian Curzon used to call a 'stack pub', built on two levels.

Until the end of commercial canal carrying in the 1960s the establishment also operated on two levels in a different way too, with a bar at street level catering for the inabitants of Webbs Lane, and a bar for the boatmen and their families at towpath level, seen here with its arched door and window on the right hand side of the pub.

It's possible that the opening hours of the two bars were split between daytime hours for the lower bar and evening hours for the upper one, to cater for the two different types of clientele. It was also the practice, before the pub was drastically altered in the 1980s, to open  the bottom bar in the depths of winter to cater for the Webbs Lane trade, saving on heating and lighting costs for the much bigger bar on the top level.

The clumsily done and lighter coloured infilled brickwork next to the bar was where the shop selling provisions to canal users was situated.

It's tempting to think of this shop as something of a makeshift affair but, in fact, it was a real shop with plate glass windows and a central door, such as could be found in any High Street.

The Big Lock today is a smart pub-restaurant and a much more attractive looking building.

with a balcony overlooking the canal and a new downstairs bar and function room. 

The essential features from the old building, including the ornate terra cotta work outside the boaters bar, have been retained.

From 1990 onwards the pub was a venue for the original Folk & Boat Festival and plays a similar role in the new Middlewich FAB Festival.

For a time, after fire destroyed the large factory building on the right and it was replaced by a modern single storey building, the pub dominated the area and looked a little out of place. However, now that modern housing has been built on the site of the old silk mill, on the other side of that steep cobbled alleyway, the old look of the area has been somewhat restored. A recent photo by Cliff Astles illustrates this, and can be seen here.

On the other side of the lock from the pub is a relatively new addition to the Middlewich scene, the much admired 'Welcome To Middlewich' sign.

Photo:Salt Town Productions

Until the early 1970s there was a lock-keeper's cottage on the other side of the lock which always seemed to lead a rather precarious existence, and you can read about it here.

The Big Lock - i.e. the canal lock - is interesting in itself. It's the only lock in the town capable of taking two boats, side by side, and the reason for this is very simple.

Originally it was possible for wide boats to come up from the River Weaver right into the centre of Middlewich to load salt at the Town Wharf, avoiding transhipment from narrow to wide boats.

However, when the aqueduct over the River Dane at Croxton was washed away by severe flooding in the 1930s, it was replaced by a narrow aqueduct capable only of taking narrow boats. In any case the potential of Middlewich Town Wharf was never fully exploited as trade was concentrated on Preston Brook instead.

The steel lock gates, which were installed in the 1960s, were unusual (and a little inelegant) but  stood the test of time. They were in place for many years,  painted in pleasing British Waterways black and white, but have now been replaced by more traditional wooden gates.

THE BIG LOCK IN 2012

THE BIG LOCK circa 1875

Facebook Comments:

Daniel Preston: In the mid-sixties I used to go to that area with some of the lads and lasses from Webbs Lane. There was a rope swing, such as Tarzan is depicted as using, which we used to swing ourselves over the canal. I don't know what the rope was made of, but it was a stretchy material, so as you swung over the canal it stretched.

 I can't remember what it was tethered to, only that it was in the area of the silk works. I think it was possible to swing across, let go and land on the other side of the canal.

Robert Shecklestone: In the late 70s I drank in the Big Lock when Freddy Dutton was the landlord.

Dave Roberts: So did I. I still see Fred and Clarice about the town. Very nice people.

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CONDENSED MILK FACTORY, FINNEYS LANE 1920s

We believe this image to be out of copyright. If you own the copyright, or know who does, please let us know

by Dave Roberts

The Nestlé-Anglo-Swiss Condensed Milk Factory still  looms large in Middlewich history, despite the fact that it closed many years ago.
Now that the factory itself, which was also used as a silk mill for many years, has disappeared to be replaced by yet more housing, the only evidence that it was ever here is in the name of the former manager's house, Swiss Cottage, which stands nearby in Webb's Lane.
Our picture shows the huge bulk of the factory stretching away from the Big Lock pub, which is just beyond the large building on the  left, to run alongside the Trent & Mersey canal as it heads for Northwich. On the extreme left you may just about be able to make out the footbridge which still carries the public footpath from King Street, near the entrance to Harbutt's Field, to Webb's Lane.
Henri Nestlé was born in 1812 in Frankfurt and made his fortune in the dairy industry both on the continent and in the UK, despite competition from his arch-rivals the Page Brothers, founders of Anglo-Swiss.

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It was the merger of the two companies in 1905 which led to the establishment of the Nestlé-Anglo-Swiss company.
The Middlewich factory was the major factory in the group, which also had premises in other towns around the country. In fact the company's design department was based here and produced plans for the other factories in the group.
When I was growing up in King Street our neightbour, Dora Darlington, used to regale us with stories of riding around the town on the back of the milk cart which delivered milk and other products in the area, eating that famous local delicacy a 'conny-onny butty' (or condensed milk sandwich, to the uninitiated).
Which brings us to another peculiarity of the local dialect. Although Middlewich English uses the short form of vowels - as in 'bath' rather than 'barth' and 'conny-onny' is pronounced exactly as spelt, the longer form - i.e. 'condensed milk' (if you can have a longer form of something that's condensed) is always pronounced 'corndensed milk'.
Similarly 'concrete' is always 'corncrete'.
Just so you'll know if you ever walk into a local shop or builder's merchant and try to buy condensed milk or concrete. I wouldn't want you to get looked at askance.
It's easy to see why Middlewich should have been chosen as a place to manufacture condensed milk; despite the fact that the town was highly industrialised it does stand right in the middle of lush Cheshire dairy country There was also, at one time, a Kraft Cheese factory not too far away in Holmes Chapel Road, more or less where the Shell Garage now stands and  the Little Chef restaurant could be found until it closed in January 2012. The Little Chef has now been replaced (2014) by a Starbucks Coffee Shop and a branch of the Subway sandwich chain
The closure of the milk factory in 1931 was a blow to the local economy, and there were sighs of relief when the premises were taken over in 1932 for use as a silk factory.
It's hard to resist using the obvious phrase, so I won't: It was a case of 'from milk to silk'.
The silk mill was operated by  British Crepe Ltd, a division of the Macclesfield silk makers G H Heath & Co. The massive brick built factory was reduced in size over the years following several disastrous fires, and production at Middlewich, which by then had moved over to synthetic fibres, ended up being carried out in modern industrial units before final closure at Middlewich in 2003.
Production was then moved to Manor Lane in Holmes Chapel  and the company ceased production there in around 2005-6. Many thanks to Gina Nicholson (see Facebook feedback, below).

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SEE ALSO FINNEY'S LANE 1968
                    BIG LOCK AND CONDENSED MILK FACTORY 1920s

Facebook feedback:
Geraldine Williams: It never occurred to me why Swiss Cottage was so named. Doh!


Gina Nicholson: British Crepe closed for good in Holmes Chapel about six years ago (2005-6? -Ed). My Dad, Alan Dean, worked there for 40 years until it closed. It did move to Holmes Chapel around 2003.

OLD BUFFERS IN KING STREET, 1975 (BUILDING THE MIDDLEWICH LOOP)

Well, apologies if the title of this entry caught your eye and you're taking a look to see if it's anyone you might know. These are the buffers in question, lying discarded by the side of the Sandbach-Middlewich-Northwich line near King Street. Work was going on on the line to create a long 'passing loop' stretching all the way from the Holmes Chapel Road (or 'Station') Bridge to the King Street Bridge, where that road moves from one side of the line to the other. Previously, trains had crossed over onto the single line to Northwich just a few yards from the station, and the second line was merely a long siding (a 'headshunt' in railway terms) which enabled trains to gain access to the station goods yards and also get out of the way if a following train needed to overtake them for any reason by drawing forward along this siding. A very time consuming and cumbersome way of working, of course, as the trains in question would then have to reverse in order to reach the crossover onto the Northwich line.
The simple, and obvious, solution once the station yard had closed was to take out the crossover near the station and create one at the end of the long siding, which necessitated the removal of these buffers, which had been in situ for many years.
Oddly, this wasn't done as part of any resignalling scheme (resignalling with colour lights only happened five years later, in 1980), and meant that the old mechanical signalling system had to be modified, because the end of the loop was quite a distance away from the signal box, out of sight of the signalman. 
The viaduct taking the line over the River Dane can be seen on the extreme right and the sign with a white 'T' on a black background signifies the end of a temporary speed restriction, in place while the work went on.

The two photographs above were taken at the same time and show the old track panels which were replaced to form the new 'Middlewich Loop'.
At this stage the points connecting the loop to the Northwich line had yet to be installed.
Remarkably, the two photographs above were replicated thirty-three years later when Robert Avery photographed the Cheshire Gardens Express in 2008

This was the first steam train to travel over the Middlewich line for forty years. The Middlewich Rail Link Campaign's parent organisation, the Mid-Cheshire Rail Users' Association, hoped to run steam trains via this route again this year (2012) but, at the time of publication, it appears doubtful that this will happen. However, given the popularity of the line for rail tours, there's always the possibility that one of the other rail tour companies may stage another steam comeback on the line before too long.
See also
STEAMING THROUGH MIDDLEWICH
and
STEAM ON THE MIDDLEWICH LINE