Nantwich

Nantwich ( ) is a market town and civil parish in the unitary authority of Cheshire East in Cheshire, England. It has among the highest concentrations of listed buildings in England, with notably good examples of Tudor and Georgian architecture. It had a population of 14,045 in 2021.

History

The origins of the settlement date to Roman times, when salt from Nantwich was used by the Roman garrisons at Chester (Deva Victrix) and Stoke-on-Trent as a preservative and a condiment. Salt has been used in the production of Cheshire cheese and in the tanning industry, both products of the dairy industry based in the Cheshire Plain around the town. ''Nant'' comes from the Welsh for brook or stream. '' Wich'' and ''wych'' are names used to denote brine springs or wells. In 1194 there is a reference to the town as being called ''Nametwihc'', which would indicate it was once the site of a pre-Roman Celtic nemeton or sacred grove.

In the Domesday Book, Nantwich is recorded as having eight salt houses. It had a castle and was the capital of a barony of the earls of Chester, and of one of the seven hundreds of medieval Cheshire. Nantwich is one of the few places in Cheshire to be marked on the Gough Map, which dates from 1355 to 1366. It was first recorded as an urban area at the time of the Norman conquest, when the Normans burnt the town to the ground, leaving only one building standing.

The town is believed to have been a salt-producing centre from the 10th century or earlier. The Norman castle was built at the crossing of the Weaver before 1180, probably near where the Crown Inn now stands. Although nothing remains of the castle above ground, it affected the town's layout. During the medieval period, Nantwich was the most important salt town and probably the second most important settlement in the county after Chester.Hewitt, 1967, p. 67. By the 14th century, it was holding a weekly cattle market at the end of what is now Beam Street, and it was also important for its tanning industry centred in Barker Street.

A fire in December 1583 destroyed most of the town to the east of the Weaver. Elizabeth I contributed funds to the town's rebuilding, which occurred rapidly and followed the plan of the destroyed town. Beam Street was so renamed to reflect the fact that timber (including wood from Delamere Forest) to rebuild the town was transported along it. A plaque marking the 400th anniversary of the fire and of Nantwich's rebuilding was unveiled by the Duke of Gloucester on 20 September 1984.

From the time of the Henrician Reformation, the town had trouble finding good Protestant preachers. An example of the problem was Stephen Jerome, a puritanical preacher, who in 1625 nonetheless tried to rape one of his maidservants, Margaret Knowsley. Rumours of this spread across the town, eventually leading to Knowsley's imprisonment and public shaming in 1627. A few years later, Jerome went to Ireland to continue his preaching career.

During the English Civil War Nantwich declared for Parliament and was besieged several times by Royalist forces. A final six-week siege was lifted after a Parliamentary victory in the Battle of Nantwich on 26 January 1644. This has been re-enacted as "Holly Holy Day" on every anniversary since 1973 by Sealed Knot, an educational charity. The name is taken from commemorative sprigs of holly worn by townsfolk in caps or on clothing in the years after the battle.

The salt industry peaked in the mid-16th century, with about 400 salt houses in 1530, but almost died out by the end of the 18th century; the last salt house closed in the mid-19th century.Pevsner & Hubbard, 1971, p. 12.Lake, 1983, pp. 131–132. Nikolaus Pevsner considered the salt-industry decline to have been critical in preserving the town's historic buildings. The last tannery closed in 1974. The town's location on the London–Chester road meant that Nantwich began to serve the needs of travellers in medieval times. This trade declined in the 19th century with the opening of Telford's road from London to Holyhead, which offered a faster route to Wales, and later with the Grand Junction Railway, which bypassed the town.

Nantwich Mill

The presence of a watermill south of Nantwich Bridge was noted in 1228 and again about 1363, through the cutting of a mill race or leat and creation of an upstream weir. The resulting Mill Island was ascribed to the 16th century, possibly after the original mill was destroyed in the 1583 Great Fire of Nantwich.

In the mid-17th century, the mill was acquired by local landowners, the Cholmondeleys, who retained it until the 1840s. Originally a corn mill, it became a cotton mill (Bott's Mill) from 1789 to 1874, but reverted to being a corn mill and was recorded as such on the Ordnance Survey First Edition map of Nantwich in 1876. About 1890, a turbine was installed to replace the water wheel.

The mill was demolished in the 1970s after a fire and then landscaped, with further stabilisation of the mill foundations in 2008. Today it forms part of a riverside park area. Proposals, so far unfollowed, have been made for small-scale hydropower generation using the mill race. Nantwich Mill Hydro Generation Ltd was incorporated in April 2009, but dormant in December 2016.

Brine baths

Nantwich's brine springs were used for spa or hydrotherapy purposes at two locations: the central Snow Hill swimming pool inaugurated in 1883, where the open-air brine pool is still in use, and the Brine Baths Hotel, standing in 70 acres (28 ha) of parkland south of the town from the 1890s to the mid-20th century. The hotel was originally a mansion, Shrewbridge Hall, built for Michael Bott (owner of Nantwich Mill) in 1828. It was bought by Nantwich Brine and Medicinal Baths Company in 1883, extended and opened as a hotel in 1893, with "a well-appointed suite of brine and medicinal baths," – also described as the "strongest saline baths in the world". These were used to treat patients with ailments that included gout, rheumatism, sciatica and neuritis, using two suites of baths.

The hotel's grounds included gardens, tennis courts, a nine-hole golf course and a bowling green. The last survives today under the Nantwich Park Road Bowling Club founded in 1906.

The hotel served as an auxiliary hospital during the First World War. In the Second World War it became an army base and then accommodated WAAF personnel. It closed as a hotel in 1947 and in 1948 became a convalescent home for miners. In 1952 that closed and the building was unsuccessfully put up for sale and demolished in 1959. The grounds were later developed for housing – the Brine Baths Estate – and schools (Brine Leas School and Weaver Primary School).

Governance

The Borough Council of Crewe and Nantwich was abolished on 1 April 2009; the civil parish is now run by the unitary authority of Cheshire East. The Borough had been formed in 1974 when the Local Government Act 1972 replaced urban district and rural district councils with a uniform system of larger districts. Some town administration responsibilities of Nantwich Urban District Council passed to Nantwich Town Council, while Nantwich Rural District Council responsibilities passed to the combined Crewe and Nantwich borough.

Since 1983, Nantwich has been in the parliamentary constituency of Crewe and Nantwich. Between 1955 and 1983, Nantwich was a parliamentary constituency in its own right, largely covering the areas managed by Nantwich urban and rural district councils (rural areas to the south, west and north of Nantwich now form part of the west Cheshire Eddisbury constituency).

Places of interest

Nantwich has one of the county's largest collections of historic buildings, second only to Chester. These cluster mainly in the town centre on Barker Street, Beam Street, Churchyard Side, High Street and Hospital Street, and extend across the Weaver on Welsh Row. Most are within the of conservation area, which broadly follows the bounds of the late medieval and early post-medieval town.Borough of Crewe & Nantwich: Nantwich Conservation Area: Conservation Area Character Appraisal and Review (January 2006).

The oldest listed building is the 14th-century St Mary's Church, which is listed Grade I. Two other listed buildings are known to predate the fire of 1583: Sweetbriar Hall and the Grade I-listed Churche's Mansion, both timber-framed Elizabethan mansion houses. A few years after the fire, William Camden described Nantwich as the "best built town in the county". Particularly fine timber-framed buildings from the town's rebuilding include 46 High Street and the Grade I-listed Crown coaching inn. Many half-timbered buildings, such as 140–142 Hospital Street, have been concealed behind brick or rendering. Nantwich contains many Georgian town houses, good examples being Dysart Buildings, 9 Mill Street, Townwell House and 83 Welsh Row. Several examples of Victorian corporate architecture are listed, including the former District Bank by Alfred Waterhouse. The most recent listed building is 1–5 Pillory Street, a curved corner block in 17th-century French style, which dates from 1911. Most of the town's listed buildings were originally residential, but churches, chapels, public houses, schools, banks, almshouses and workhouses are represented. Unusual listed structures include a mounting block, twelve cast-iron bollards, a stone gateway, two garden walls and a summerhouse.

Dorfold Hall is a Grade I listed Jacobean mansion in the nearby village of Acton, considered by Pevsner one of the two finest Jacobean houses in Cheshire. Its grounds accommodate Nantwich Show each summer, including International Cheese Awards.

Nantwich Museum, in Pillory St, has galleries on the history of the town, including Roman salt-making, Tudor Nantwich's Great Fire, the Civil War Battle of Nantwich (1644) and the more recent shoe, clothing and local cheese-making industries. Hack Green Secret Nuclear Bunker, a few miles outside the town, is a once government-owned nuclear bunker, now a museum. Also in Pillory St is the 82-seat Nantwich Players Theatre, which puts on about five plays a year.

The name of Jan Palach Avenue in the south of the town commemorates the self-immolation of a student in Czechoslovakia in 1969.

Geography

Nantwich is on the Cheshire Plain, on the banks of the River Weaver. The Shropshire Union Canal runs to the west of the town on an embankment, crossing the A534 via an iron aqueduct. The basin is a frequent mooring for visitors to the town. It joins the Llangollen Canal at Hurleston to the north. The town is some four miles south-west of Crewe and 20 miles south-east of Chester. The major road junction in the town is the meeting point of the A51, A500, A529, A530 and A534 roads. The stretch of A534 from Nantwich to the Welsh border is seen as one of the ten worst stretches of road in England for road safety.

The tower of St Mary's Church was the origin (meridian) of the 6-inch and 1:2500 Ordnance Survey maps of Cheshire.

Public transport

Nantwich railway station is on the line from Crewe to Whitchurch, Shrewsbury and other towns along the Welsh border. It is served mainly by stopping trains between Crewe and Shrewsbury.

Arriva

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