Middlewich is a market town and civil parish in the Cheshire East district of Cheshire, England. It is located east of Chester, east of Winsford, south-east of Northwich and north-west of Sandbach. The population of the parish at the 2021 census was 14,421.
Middlewich lies at the confluence of three rivers: the Dane, Croco and Wheelock. Two canals also pass through the town: the Shropshire Union and the Trent & Mersey, both connected by the short Wardle Canal. The town has three major roads: the A533, A54 and A530; there are also good motorway links to the nearby cities of Manchester and Liverpool. The town's population has doubled since 1970, despite a reduction in the number of manufacturing jobs in salt and textile manufacturing.
Since 1990, there have been initiatives to increase the volume of tourism into the town, through events such as the annual folk and boat festival, the Roman and Norman festivals, and regular farmers' markets.
History
In the Domesday Book Middlewich is spelt "Mildestvich"; the termination wic or wyc in Old English refers to a settlement, village or dwelling. It is also supposed that "wich" or "wych" refers to a salt town, with Middlewich being the middle town between Northwich and Nantwich.
Middlewich was founded by the Romans, who gave it the name Salinae because of its surrounding salt deposits. It became one of the major Roman sites for salt production, an activity that was centred on the township of Kinderton, about a quarter of a mile north of the present-day parish church of St Michael and All Angels. It has been suggested that pre-Roman salt production also occurred in the same area, but there is no supporting archaeological evidence. Whittaker's History of Manchester claims that the Iron Age Cornovii made Kinderton their capital, but it is more likely that the Cornovii inhabited Kinderton for its salt-making potential. There was once thought to have been a medieval castle at Kinderton, but that is now thought to have been unlikely.
Middlewich lies across the Queen Street fault, which roughly follows the Roman road, King Street, from Northwich to Middlewich. During their occupation the Romans built a fort at Harbutts Field (), and excavations to the south of the fort have found further evidence of Roman activity including a well and part of a preserved Roman road. An excavation in 2004, in Buckley's Field, also uncovered signs of Roman occupation.
Salt manufacture has remained the principal industry for the past 2,000 years, and it has shaped the town's history and geography. Before the Norman invasion of England in 1066, there is thought to have been one brine pit in Middlewich, between the River Croco and the current Lewin Street.Earl, Middlewich 900–1900. In the Domesday Book the area is described as being "wasted", having been cleared by King William around 1070 as an "act of rage against his rebellious barons". Gilbert de Venables became the first Baron of Kinderton shortly after the Norman Conquest, the title being conferred by Hugh Lupus. A manor house was built to the east of the town and became the baronial seat of the Venables family. A Jacobean screen in the church of St Michael and All Angels has the carved Venables coat of arms. The title "Baron of Kinderton" is now vested in the Lord Vernon.
On 13 March 1643 the town was the scene of the first Battle of Middlewich, between the Parliamentarians, under Sir William Brereton, and the Royalist supporters of King Charles I of England, under Sir Thomas Aston. The second Battle of Middlewich took place on 26 December 1643, and claimed the lives of about 200 Parliamentarians, along with a number of Royalists under the command of Lord Byron.
The population of Middlewich rose during the 19th and 20th centuries. Some of this rise is attributable to a number of parishes being combined, for example parts of Newton were added to Middlewich in 1894, with Sutton having previously been added to Newton in 1892. Some will also be due to a general increase in population of the United Kingdom, and some of the increase would have been required to provide a labour force for the increased number, and scale, of salt and chemical works in the town. In the middle of the 19th century Middlewich was described as a town with principal works being the surrounding farming district, a silk factory, and the salt works in Kinderton and Newton. In 1887 the town was described as having an antique appearance, with its principal trade being salt, along with fruit and vegetables, and small silk and heavy cotton works. The town had one bank and one newspaper. By 1911 the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition mentions the existence of chemical works and the manufacture of condensed milk.
In common with the rest of the United Kingdom, Middlewich's young male population was decimated during the First World War. The cenotaph, near to the parish church,Image of the town cenotaph, Upload.wikimedia.org lists the names of the 136 men who died in that conflict, representing around 10% of the male population of the town aged between 15 and 45. Forty-two of Middlewich's inhabitants lost their lives in the Second World War, with a further fatality in the Korean War. The Brunner Mond salt works in Brooks Lane also erected a cenotaph in memory of the 16 men from the works killed in the First World War, and the two who died during the Second World War.Image of the Brunner Mond cenotaph, Upload.wikimedia.org15 of the 16 names from the First World War are duplicated on the town cenotaph, as are both from the Second World War. Arthur Harrison's name does not appear on the town cenotaph.
In the period between the end of the First World War until shortly after the Second World War, there was extensive housebuilding in the town; a significant number of houses were built in the King Street area to the north, the area bounded between Nantwich Road and St. Anne's Road to the west, and especially in Cledford to the south. The 1970s commenced with the building of a new road, St. Michael's Way, which allowed traffic moving from east to west through the town to bypass the main shopping street, Wheelock Street. Along with the bypass there was significant remodelling of the town centre, with the old town hall and library being demolished. This bypass successfully eased the flow of traffic away from the main shopping street, but the joining of three major roads remains a bottleneck, which will be eased by a proposed eastern bypass.
Since the early 1980s Middlewich has seen a significant quantity of new housing development, initially in the Sutton Lane and Hayhurst Avenue areas. New developments have recently been built on the sites of old salt workings to the south of the Roman Fort at Harbutt's Field, near the Norman Baron's moated manor house at Kinderton Manor, and on the site of the old railway station. One of the latest developments is on the old silk works next to the Big Lock public house. In common with other local towns such as Holmes Chapel, Northwich and Winsford, people are attracted to Middlewich because of its good road links via the M6 motorway and the relatively low price and availability of suitable building land.
Governance
There are two tiers of local government covering Middlewich, at civil parish (town) and unitary authority level: Middlewich Town Council and Cheshire East Council. The town council is based at the Town Hall, formerly known as Victoria Buildings, on Lewin Street. For national elections, the town forms part of the Mid Cheshire constituency.
Administrative history Middlewich was an ancient parish. It was subdivided into fifteen townships:
Byley cum Yatehouse Clive Croxton Kinderton cum Hulme Middlewich Minshull Vernon Mooresbarrow cum Parme Newton Occlestone Ravenscroft Sproston Stublach Sutton Weaver Wimboldsley
Weaver was in Eddisbury Hundred, and the rest of the parish was in Northwich Hundred. The Middlewich township covered just around the parish church and adjoining streets in the town centre; by the 19th century, the urban area extended into the adjoining townships of Kinderton cum Hulme to the north and east and Newton to the south and west.
From the 17th century onwards, parishes were gradually given various civil functions under the poor laws, in addition to their original ecclesiastical functions. In some cases, including Middlewich, the civil functions were exercised by each township separately rather than the parish as a whole. In 1866, the legal definition of 'parish' was changed to be the areas used for administering the poor laws, and so the townships also became civil parishes.
In 1869, a Middlewich local government district administered by an elected local board was established, covering a newly defined area which encompassed the township of Middlewich and parts of the neighbouring townships of Kinderton cum Hulme and Newton. The district was enlarged in 1893 to take in further parts of Kinderton cum Hulme and Newton, plus part of Byley. Such districts were reconstituted as urban districts under the Local Government Act 1894. The 1894 Act also directed that civil parishes could no longer straddle district boundaries, and so Middlewich parish was enlarged to match the urban district, and the parts of Kinderton cum Hulme and Newton outside the urban district were merged into a parish called Kinderton. The urban district was enlarged in 1936, notably gaining a large area from the parish of Kinderton, which was abolished.
The urban district council was initially based at the old Town Hall on Hightown, which had been built in 1844 and was gifted to the local board by its private owners in 1887. The rear part of that building, including the council's offices, was demolished in 1930 to allow for street widening, at which point the council moved to the Victoria Buildings on Lewin Street, which had been built as a technical school and library in 1898. The remainder of the old Town Hall was demolished in the early 1970s.
Middlewich Urban District was abolished in 1974 under the Local Government Act 1972. A successor parish called Middlewich was established covering the area of the abolished urban district, with its parish council taking the name Middlewich Town Council. District-level functions passed to Congleton Borough Council. In 2009, Cheshire East Council was created, taking over the functions of the borough council and Cheshire County Council, which were both abolished. In 2013, the ownership of Victoria Buildings and the adjoining Civic Hall was transferred to Middlewich Town Council from Cheshire East Council; they were renamed the Town Hall and Victoria Hall respectively.
Geography
Middlewich is located at (53.192, −2.443), on the confluence of three rivers, the Dane, the Croco and the Wheelock. The town is approximately from junction 18 of the M6 motorway. The main westward traffic route between the motorway and Winsford, and also southbound traffic to Crewe, go through the town. There are three canals in Middlewich, the Middlewich Branch of the Shropshire Union Canal, the Trent and Mersey Canal, and the Wardle Canal, the United Kingdom's shortest canal at long.
The town sits less than above sea level, on Upper Triassic Mercia mudstone laid down with large salt deposits as part of the Cheshire plain, a boulder clay plain separating the hills of North Wales and the Peak District of Derbyshire, formed following the retreat of ice age glaciers.