Porsche-noir: Nantwich Museum, Relish Nantwich

Nantwich Museum. Located in Pillory Street, at the heart of the town, the museum has different galleries telling the story of Nantwich through the ages: Roman salt making, Tudor Nantwich’s Great Fire, the Civil War Battle of Nantwich (1644) and the more recent shoe and clothing industries. There are also continually changing temporary exhibitions, as well as historic town walks, talks and other events. For a small museum, there’s a lot to see. It’s a registered charity and admission is free!

Museum Opening Hours

Monday : Closed

Tuesday – Saturday: 10.30am – 4.30pm

Sunday : Closed

The Salt Ship

shipdisplay-300x204A SECTION of a 700-year-old oak tree discovered under an area of Nantwich soil excited archaeologists, museum officials, and others – with good reason – back in 2004. For this was an ancient salt ship – or vessel in which brine (salt suspended in water) was stored as part of the salt-producing process. (It was not a sailing craft).

Clearly, as a wooden utensil it could not be used to boil the brine! That was done in pans.

The ship was found under land on which houses once stood. After the initial discovery it was reburied while a Lottery grant was applied for. Thanks to Cheshire County Council that bid was successful and the Heritage Lottery Fund provided £100,000 for the painstaking project to save the salt ship for posterity.

The medieval salt ship was taken from the ground in January 2004 at the start of a two-year preservation project.

Six barrels which had the same purpose were also unearthed, but it was not possible to save the fragile structures. ONE section of the salt ship (sadly, just a third) found in Nantwich is on display in our second gallery.

Kate Dobson

An exhibition of two Roman hoards discovered in Cheshire has opened at Nantwich Museum and will run until Saturday 8 July. The coins and jewellery were buried for safe keeping nearly 2000 years ago but their owners never returned for them.

The Malpas Hoard consists of 35 coins struck before the conquest of Britain and possibly associated with the capture of Caratacus, leader of the Catuvallani tribe.

The Knutsford Hoard involves 103 coins, three brooches and two finger rings ranging in date from 32 BC to AD 200.

The hoards provide evidence of the way of life of local people in the early Roman period with possible links to the Cheshire salt fields and coastal trading centres.

The hoards were discovered by metal detectorists and have been on display at the British Museum. Congleton Museum and Liverpool Museum jointly purchased the hoards thanks to a Heritage Lottery Fund grant. After display in Nantwich they will return to Congleton Museum.

Admission to the museum and exhibition is free.

Clothing Industry

The last clothing factory to close was Heaps in Millstone Lane which closed in the 1990s. By the end of the Victorian period, people were leaving cottage industries to work in factories. There were 6 clothing factories in Nantwich.

Leather Production

Leather has always been produced in the town, but by the 1860s, shoe making reached its peak and one third of men and a sixth of women being involved in the production of shoes and workman’s boots.

Nantwich Shoes and Boots

Nantwich boots and shoes were transported to cities such as Manchester and Birmingham. The last tannery to close was Harvey’s Tannery in 1972.

Cheshire cheese is one of the oldest recorded named cheeses in British history. There has been a long history of making Cheshire cheese on farms around Nantwich.

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 both 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 1355–66. It was first recorded as an urban area at the time of the Norman conquest, when the Normans burned 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. By the 14th century, the town held a weekly cattle market at the end of what is today is Beam Street, and it was also important for its tanning industry centred on Barker Street.

Churche's Mansion, one of the few buildings in Nantwich to survive the fire of 1583

A fire in December 1583 destroyed most of the town to the east of the Weaver. Elizabeth I contributed financially 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.

During the English Civil War Nantwich declared for Parliament, and consequently it was besieged several times by Royalist forces. The final, six-week-long, siege was lifted following the victory of the Parliamentary forces in the Battle of Nantwich on 26 January 1644, which has been re-enacted as Holly Holy Day on its anniversary every year since 1973 by the Sealed Knot, an educational charity. The name comes from the sprigs of holly worn by the townsfolk in their caps or clothing in the years after the battle, in its commemoration.

The salt industry peaked in the mid-16th century, with around 400 salt houses in 1530, and had almost died out by the end of the 18th century; the last salt house closed in the mid-19th century.Nikolaus Pevsner considers the decline in the salt industry to have been the critical factor in preserving the town's historic buildings. The last tannery closed in 1974. The town's location on the London to Chester road meant that Nantwich began to serve the needs of travellers in medieval times. This trade declined in the 19th century, however, with the opening of Telford's road from London to Holyhead, which offered a faster route to Wales, and later when the Grand Junction Railway bypassed the town.

Nantwich Mill

The existence of a watermill south of Nantwich Bridge was noted in 1228 and again around 1363, though the cutting of a mill race or leat and the creation of an upstream weir, river diversion and the resulting Mill Island has been ascribed to the 16th century (possibly after the original mill was destroyed in the 1583 'Great fire of Nantwich'). During the mid-17th century, the mill was acquired by local land-owners, the Cholmondeley's, who retained it until the 1840s.

Originally a corn mill, it became a cotton mill (Bott's Mill) from 1789 to 1874, but returned to use as a corn mill; it was recorded as such on the Ordnance Survey First Edition map of Nantwich in 1876. Around 1890 a turbine was installed to replace the water wheel.

It was demolished in the 1970s after a fire. The site was subsequently landscaped, with further stabilising work to the remaining foundations of the mill in 2008, and today forms part of a riverside park area. Proposals (as yet unfulfilled) have been made for small-scale hydropower generation using the mill race; Nantwich Mill Hydro Generation Ltd (in December 2016 dormant) was incorporated in April 2009.

Brine baths

Nantwich's brine springs were used for spa or hydrotherapy purposes at two locations: the centrally-located Snow Hill swimming pool (inaugurated in 1883; the open-air brine pool is still in use today), and the Brine Baths Hotel, situated in 70 acres of parkland to the south of the town, from the 1890s until the mid-20th century.

The hotel was originally a mansion, Shrewbridge Hall, built for Michael Bott (owner of Nantwich Mill) in 1828. The building was purchased by the Nantwich Brine and Medicinal Baths Company in 1883, expanded and opened as the Brine Baths Hotel in 1893, with "a well-appointed suite of brine and medicinal baths," - also described as the "strongest saline baths in the world." These baths were used for the treatment of patients suffering from ailments including gout, rheumatism, sciatica and neuritis, with two suites of baths.

The hotel's grounds included gardens, tennis courts, a 9-hole golf course and a bowling green. The latter is the most notable surviving feature, today managed by the Nantwich Park Road Bowling Club, founded in 1906.

The hotel served as an auxiliary hospital during World War I; during World War II, 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 it was closed and unsuccessfully put up for sale, being demolished in 1959. The hotel's 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 administered by the unitary authority of Cheshire East.

The borough of Crewe and Nantwich was formed in 1974 when the Local Government Act 1972 replaced urban district and rural district councils with a uniform system of larger districts often covering both urban and rural areas. 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 Nantiwch 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

Crown Hotel

Nantwich, outside Chester, has the largest collection of historic buildings in the county. The listed buildings are clustered mainly in the town centre on Barker Street, Beam Street, Churchyard Side, High Street and Hospital Street, and extending across the Weaver on Welsh Row. The majority are located within the 38 hectares (94 acres) of conservation area, which broadly follows the boundaries of the late medieval and early post-medieval town.

The oldest listed building is St Mary's Church, which dates from the 14th century and is listed Grade I. Two other listed buildings are known to pre-date 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",and particularly fine examples of timber-framed buildings constructed during 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. The town contains many Georgian town houses. Good examples include 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. The majority of the town's listed buildings were originally residential, but churches, chapels, public houses, schools, banks, almshouses and workhouses are also 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 and was considered by Pevsner to be one of the two finest Jacobean houses in Cheshire. Nantwich Show, including the International Cheese Awards, takes place in the hall's grounds each summer.

Nantwich Museum is in Pillory Street. It 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 and clothing industries. There is also a section devoted to the local cheese-making industry. Hack Green Secret Nuclear Bunker, a few miles outside the town, is a formerly government-owned nuclear bunker, now a museum. Also in Pillory Street 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.