'A dream town of fanciful creation by a disordered brain'

There is no architectural dignity in Northwich, shops and cottages pitched forward like drunken men. Churches and schools assume irreverent postures like those of a ballet girl with one leg in the air. Recently the post office was disporting itself on stilts, and the public library was straining its dome in an attempt to look over the adjoining buildings.

The above was part of an article in the Sunday Chronicle of 1907; this was at the height of the spectacular and destructive subsidences that Northwich suffered. This problem prevailed in most of Mid Cheshire, but Northwich took the brunt of its effects.

Salt was rediscovered here accidentally in 1670 when excavations were underway to find coal at Marbury on the instructions of the Merbury family of Marbury Hall.

Instead of black diamonds, they found white gold. Wild brine pumping commenced in the 1800s, and if you pump water into a salt bed, it dissolves the salt and is drawn to the surface to make the wild brine pumper a good wage.

What he has to do on receipt of the saturated brine mixture is boil it off to leave just the white salt. But then what happens to the underground cavities that are left if the salt is not replaced? It collapses, taking everything above with it. As a result of the subsidence, new buildings were built with the ability to be jacked up; an excellent example of this is the old post office in Witton Street that you can see in the photograph. Although looking ancient, it was built in 1914 and opened at the end of the First World War.

After serving the town as a post and sorting office for 60-odd years, it closed and is now a popular pub called The Penny Black.

The leading name for the area was Witton cum Twambooks as the High Street area was the only real Northwich. Around it was Leftwich and Castle. The Bullring led to High Street and then Witton Street to Station Road. On the way, it led to Leicester Street, and this area was one of the worst as far as subsidence goes.

Before building the Barons Quay complex, a fortune had to be spent preventing further subsidence in the area. Further up Witton Street, subsidence reared its head again, as seen in some of the photos.

But baby boomers brought up in and near Northwich have happy memories – mine involves the smells from Cheadle’s tobacconists, drinks from Pop Hornby’s. My 1/- dinner money would get me a pint of cream soda from there and a 6d bag of chips from the Plaza Supper Bar. Then further up the classical Plaza Cinema building and on, passing The Green Dragon subsidence was bad again.

But in those days trainspotting had nothing to do with drug taking as in the film, virtually every boy and many girls enjoyed the hobby. We also had a Northwich railway shed to bunk into and walk around the enormous black engines smelling of coal smoke and oil. Happy days in Northwich.

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