ONE YEAR AGO

One year ago the first tentative step towards what would become 'A Middlewich Diary' was taken when this colour slide was posted on Facebook:

It shows the much lamented Pool Head Farmhouse on the corner of Kinderton Street and King Street as it was in 1970. (for a detailed description see this entry).
We continued to post pictures on Facebook until the 25th May 2011, when we introduced 'A Middlewich Diary' on the now defunct Salt Town Site, still with links from Facebook.
 This ran until the 10th June when the blog version of the Diary, which you're reading now, came into being.

ORIGINAL MFAB PRESS AD MAY 1990

Middlewich Folk & Boat Festival

by Dave Roberts
As we approach festival time in Middlewich once more we take a look back to May 1990 when preparations were in full swing for the first ever Middlewich Folk & Boat Festival.
The original plan was for the inaugural festival to take place in June 1991, giving organisers plenty of time to make preparations but, almost at the last minute, it was decided to go for June 1990.
Although money was tight and everything in the early years was done on the proverbial shoestring some pre-festival advertising was clearly necessary and the above ad appeared in the local press in the month before the festival.
We've altered the contact telephone number to a fictitious one just in case some wag should decide to ring it after all these years.
Anyone not in the know who turned up for the Middlewich Paddies concert expecting to see a 'female ceilidh band' was disappointed. They're not, of course. A ceilidh band, I mean.

SEE ALSO: MIDDLEWICH FAB FESTIVAL 2012

MUSIC IN MIDDLEWICH: JUNCTION 18

MAKING WAY FOR GATEWAY 1987 (3)

In this momentous year for shopping in Middlewich here's another one in the series of photos kindly supplied by Mike Jennings and showing the site where it all started twenty-five years ago.
As always we can use the tower of St Michael & All Angels church as our benchmark and deduce that the area shown here is the 'top' part of the present day Tesco car park and my first impression was that Mike was standing  alongside the site of the current supermarket  when he took this picture, probably round about where the pavement and disabled parking bays are at the side of the building.
However, just after this entry was first published, Diane Russell pointed out that he was more likely to have been at the top end of Southway (see comments, below) and, just by coincidence, I had been on a shopping trip  to Tesco and  come to the same conclusion.
I took a similar photo of the Orchard Works fifteen years earlier than Mike, and it can be seen here. I think Mike was a little bit closer, but not much.
It is, perhaps, a little surprising that the bulldozers had moved in and started to clear the ground before the Orchard Works was demolished, but one possibility is that the building of the car park was a separate contract from the building of the supermarket itself.
The small industrial buildings we saw here can just be glimpsed on the extreme left of the picture.

SEE ALSO MAKING WAY FOR GATEWAY (1)

LOCAL HEROES AWARDS 2012

A message from the editor:

Yesterday I was astonished - and I don't mean mock-astonished, or false-modesty-type pretend astonished, but genuinely astonished - to receive an email from Middlewich town Council telling me that I had been awarded the Mayor's Award in this year's Local Hero Awards for my work on A Middlewich Diary and the Middlewich Rail Link Campaign.
I am, needless to say, absolutely delighted at this development and I'd like to thank whoever it was that put in the nomination.
It also goes without saying that this award is, as they always say at Award Ceremonies, 'not really for me' but for everyone who has helped me make the Middlewich Diary what it has so quickly become - a part of the town.
A Middlewich Diary (the original title was to have been 'The Middlewich Blog', which just sounds awful) started last June after several 'dry runs' on Facebook and the Salt Town website and many people very quickly caught on to what I was trying to do, i.e. to show people what the town was like in former days and - this has become more and more important as the Diary has developed - what is happening nowadays.
I don't, incidentally, subscribe to the 'Middlewich used to be a lovely town, but they ruined it' school of thought.
This town is far more attractive now than it ever was in the past but it is fascinating to look back over all those old photographs and see the town in  its drab, hard working salt town heyday.
So may I thank all the contributors to A Middlewich Diary and, in particular, Geraldine Williams, Cliff Astles, Jim Moores, Mike Jennings, Dave Thompson, Kerry Fletcher, Daniel Preston, Carole Hughes, Paul Hough, Kath & Barry Walklate, Chris Koons, Maureen Condra, Ewan Macdonald, Margaret Williams and Paul Greenwood. Not forgetting, of course (as if we could) Sherry Hill-Smith over there in the colonies (see comments, below).
There will, of course, be one or more major contributors who I have completely forgotten about so, to spare my blushes, it's you I mean.
As  for the Middlewich Rail Link Campaign - it has been running now for twenty years and for most of those years I have been chairman of the committee.
Twenty years, believe me, is not a long time for such a campaign to run.
 At a meeting once a very silly woman told me, ' don't give up your day job' because 'you haven't got very far, have you?'.
Rather than throwing a pint of Robinson's Bitter over her, which was my first instinct, I gave her a wry smile and a lecture on how these things work.
Whatever it is you are campaigning for you have to keep going on and on about it until people are sick of hearing about it. You have to ignore the naysayers and the people who 'can tell you quite categorically' (without a shred of evidence) that 'you're wasting your time' and 'it'll never work' and you just have to keep on keeping on..
MRLC has proved what it set out to prove: that a rail service from Crewe to Manchester via Sandbach, Middlewich and Northwich would be a viable and, some say, even a profitable venture.
Survey after survey has indicated this over the years, including two feasibility studies commissioned and paid for by MRLC and its parent group the Mid-Cheshire Rail Users' Association.
The stumbling block now is Network Rail, who are demanding exorbitant amounts of money just to look at our proposals.
However, our policy remains what it always has been: never take no for an answer.
Re-opening of the railway and a new station for Middlewich are absolutely vital for the town's regeneration, and we won't stop campaigning until it happens.
And again I have to thank the people who have done the real work, as distinct from my own role which has been to chair meetings in a slightly bemused way, listening to people who really know what they're talking about, and just keeping on telling everyone what a good idea it all is.
So can I just mention Stephen Dent, Cllr Mike Parsons, Vernon Perkins, Harry Boardman, Peter Cox and all the other members of the MRLC committee and the Steering Group, whose efforts will, I know, win through in the end.
Dave Roberts,
Editor

SEE ALSO: LOCAL HEROES AWARDS 2012 - THE MAYOR'S AWARD

REAR OF COSTELLO'S SHOP IN KINDERTON STREET 1974

Here's the full version of a slide which formed the basis for the original Salt Town Productions logo, as seen here.

This is an amended version of the original description of the scene:

On the right is, of course, the Boar's Head Hotel. In recent years this has been extended at the rear in sympathetic style so that those not in the know might assume it has been like that for many years.
To the rear of the pub is the substantial bulk of an old stable  building at the end of the car park. It can be seen that the building is of sufficient height to seriously affect the light reaching the windows of the cottage behind it, making nonsense of the current owner's claim to be affected by the much lower Portacabin which is there now.
The Portacabin in question is used by the local pigeon club as their HQ and supersedes an old converted railway wagon which was situated just inside the car park entrance.
The building on the left is Costello's shop and we can now get a good view of the 'privy' which once served it.
Behind the camera are some interesting old buildings which can be seen here.
The two chimneys in the background belong to Seddon's Salt Works on Brooks Lane which closed seven years earlier. These chimneys were the last of the Middlewich open pan salt works chimneys to be demolished and can be seen here.

WINSTON RIDES AGAIN 1990s

by Dave Roberts
We half thought of using this photo as part of an April Fool stunt and trying to suggest that during the 1990s road congestion had got so bad in Kinderton Street that the council had hired someone to walk along the rows of  cars reminding them which town they were stuck in.
Something along those lines anyway.
In the event we decided against such foolishness and so here is the picture with the real story behind it.
It was taken as part of the Middlewich Rail Link Campaign's never-ending efforts to raise awareness of the Sandbach-Middlewich-Northwich railway line and the need for its re-opening to passengers.
We have, of course, seen that signal box nameboard several times before (see below) and we will be seeing it  again before we're done.
It had recently been returned to Middlewich from Uttoxeter, courtesy of George Dean,and members of the railway campaign were keen to show it off on every conceivable occasion to remind everyone of the line's (and the campaign's) existence.
Winston Lea, who was a cellarman at the Kings Arms Hotel at that time and a very obliging chap, offered to carry the sign for us on one outing up to the former station site and here he is showing it to passing motorists.
What they thought of it is not recorded.
Also in the photo is MRLC Deputy Chairman Peter Cox who is standing where I stood with my Dad one day in  the 1950s and saw my first steam train, proving that there is such a thing as love at first sight.

Photo: Alan Wilkinson

The bridge was rebuilt and strengthened a few years later to cope with the horrendous amount of road traffic it has to bear, and new, much higher parapet walls inserted into the structure, so it's now much more difficult to see over the wall.

SEE ALSO: LNWR MIDDLEWICH SIGNAL BOX SIGN
                    SIGNAL BOX SIGN RETURNS HOME

MAUREEN and HER LOCK

One last tribute to a remarkable lady. Margaret Poniznik took this shot of the Tay taking Maureen Shaw through the Wardle Canal on her way down to Middlewich Town Wharf on 30th March.
The photo shows the boat leaving Wardle Lock, with the celebrated lock-keeper's cottage which was Maureen's home for many years to the left of it.
Looking to the future, we understand that the cottage has been bought by a family who are waterways enthusiasts and are keen to help in ensuring that Maureen's legacy will endure.
Our thanks to Margaret for permission to use her photograph.

SEE ALSO: MAUREEN'S FUNERAL 30th MARCH
                    WARDLE LOCK COTTAGE AND 'AUNTIE MAUREEN'
                    A TRIBUTE TO 'AUNTIE MAUREEN'