Nantwich (/ˈnæntwɪtʃ/NAN-twitch) 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.[1]
History
The origins of the settlement date to Roman times,[2] 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 brinesprings 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.[3]
In the Domesday Book of 1086, 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.[4] It was first recorded as an urban area at the time of the Norman Conquest, when the Normans burnt the town to the ground,[5] leaving only one building standing.
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.[6][7] During the medieval period, Nantwich was the most important salt town and probably the second most important settlement in the county after Chester.[8][9] 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.[10]
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.[11][12]Elizabeth I contributed funds to the town's rebuilding and made an England-wide appeal for support for the rebuilding fund which thereby received funds from many successful medieval towns, including Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk. The rebuilding occurred rapidly and followed the plan of the destroyed town.[13] 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.[14]
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.[15]
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.[16]
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.[17][18][19]Nikolaus Pevsner considered the salt-industry decline to have been critical in preserving the town's historic buildings.[17] 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.[8][20] 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.[18]
Nantwich Mill
The presence of a watermill south of Nantwich Bridge was noted in 1228[21] and again about 1363,[22] 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,[21][22] possibly after the original mill was destroyed in the 1583 Great Fire of Nantwich.[23]
In the mid-17th century, the mill was acquired by local landowners, the Cholmondeleys, who retained it until the 1840s.[21] Originally a corn mill, it became a cotton mill (Bott's Mill) from 1789 to 1874,[21][22][24] but reverted to being a corn mill and was recorded as such on the Ordnance Survey First Edition map of Nantwich in 1876.[22] About 1890, a turbine was installed to replace the water wheel.[21]
The mill was demolished in the 1970s after a fire[21] and then landscaped, with further stabilisation of the mill foundations in 2008.[25] 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.[26][27] Nantwich Mill Hydro Generation Ltd was incorporated in April 2009, but dormant in December 2016.[28]
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,[22][29] where the open-air brine pool is still in use,[30] 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.[31] The hotel was originally a mansion, Shrewbridge Hall,[22] 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,[31] with "a well-appointed suite of brine and medicinal baths,"[32] – also described as the "strongest saline baths in the world".[31] These were used to treat patients with ailments that included gout, rheumatism, sciatica and neuritis, using two suites of baths.[33][34]
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.[35]
The hotel served as an auxiliary hospital during the First World War.[36] 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.[32] The grounds were later developed for housing – the Brine Baths Estate[31] – and schools (Brine Leas School and Weaver Primary School).
Governance
The civil parish now falls within the unitary authority of Cheshire East[37] and has its own Town Council covering the civil parish (originally this comprised two wards and then divided into three wards from 2023).
Since 1983, Nantwich has been in the parliamentary constituency of Crewe and Nantwich.[38] 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).
Nantwich has one of the county's largest collections of historic buildings, second only to Chester.[39] 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 38 hectares (94 acres) of conservation area, which broadly follows the bounds of the late medieval and early post-medieval town.[9][40]
Dorfold Hall is a Grade I listed Jacobean mansion in the nearby village of Acton,[42] considered by Pevsner one of the two finest Jacobean houses in Cheshire.[43] Its grounds accommodate Nantwich Show each summer, including, until 2021, the 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.[44]
The name of Jan Palach Avenue in the south of the town commemorates the self-immolation of a student in Czechoslovakia in 1969.
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 Acton lane on the western boundary of the town via an iron aqueduct. There is a basin nearby which 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 town is served by a by-pass to the north and west into which, directly or indirectly, the A51, A500, A529, A530and A534 roads all feed.
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.[45]
The tower of St Mary's Church was the origin (meridian) of the 6-inch and 1:2500 Ordnance Survey maps of Cheshire.[46]
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.
D&G Bus, Stagecoach and Mikro Coaches operate bus routes from Nantwich Bus Station and in and around Nantwich, some with funding from Cheshire East council.
Bus routes served from the Bus Station are:
- 39 - Crewe to Wybunbury to Nantwich (Mikro)
- 70 - Nantwich to Bulkeley (D&G)
- 71 & 72 - Nantwich to Wrenbury & Audlem (D&G)
- 73 - Nantwich to Audlem & Wrenbury (D&G)
- 84X - Crewe to Nantwich (D&G)
- 84 - Crewe to Chester, via Nantwich, including 84 Crewe to Nantwich direct once an hour. (Stagecoach)
The town has eight primary schools (Highfields Community, Willaston Primary Academy, Millfields, Pear Tree, St Anne's (Catholic), Stapeley Broad Lane (Church of England), The Weaver and Nantwich Primary Academy) and two secondary schools, Brine Leas School and Malbank School and Sixth Form College. Reaseheath College runs further education and higher education courses in conjunction with Harper Adams University and the University of Chester. A sixth-form college at Brine Leas opened in September 2010.
The town's football club, Nantwich Town, competes in and in 2006 won the FA Vase. It plays at the Weaver Stadium, opened in 2007.[47]
Rugby union is played at two clubs. Crewe and Nantwich RUFC, founded in 1922, is based at Vagrants Sports Club in Newcastle Road, Willaston, and runs four senior teams including a ladies team; the first XV play in the Midlands 1 West (Level 6). It holds Club Mark and RFU Seal of Approval accreditations and has a mini and junior section of over 250 young people aged 5–18 taking part every Sunday, with a girls section. Acton Nomads RFC, founded in 2009, won the 2010 RFU Presidents XV "This is Rugby" Award;[48][49] it operates two senior sides.
In rugby league, Crewe & Nantwich Steamers play at the Barony Park, Nantwich, also the home ground for Acton Nomads RFC.
The town's cricket club in Whitehouse Lane won the ECB-accredited Cheshire County Premier League title in 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2018. It regularly hosts Cheshire Minor County cricket matches. Midway through the 2017 season, bowler Jimmy Warrington became the first player in the history of the Cheshire County Premier League to take 500 wickets.[50] In 2019, Nantwich reached the final of the ECB National Club Cricket Championship.[51] In the final, played at Lord's, it met Swardeston and lost by 53 runs.[52]
The Nantwich News is a hyperlocal blog for local events and issues. The inNantwich website gives Nantwich information, including shops, firms, schools, wifi spots, car parking and toilets.
Events
Cheese awards
Up to 2019, the annual International Cheese Awards were held in July each year during Nantwich Show, at the Dorfold Hall estate.[54][55] In 2021 it was announced the Awards would be moving to the Staffordshire Show Grounds and would no longer be part of the Nantwich Show event.[56]
Jazz and blues
Since 1996, Nantwich has hosted an annual Nantwich Jazz and Blues Festival over the Easter Bank Holiday weekend. Jazz and blues artists from around the country perform in pubs and venues.[57][58]
Food festival
The annual Nantwich Food Festival is held in the town centre on the first weekend in September. Re-established as a free-entry festival in 2010, it attracts numerous artisan producers from the local area and further afield, and offers chef demonstrations, family activities and entertainment. It draws some 30,000 visitors a year.[59]
Ben Miller (born 1966), actor, director and comedian, grew up in Nantwich.
Thea Gilmore (born 1979), singer/songwriter, lives in Nantwich[87]
Alex "A. J." Pritchard (born 1994), ballroom and Latin dancer, who won fame on the BBC Television show Strictly Come Dancing, went to school in Nantwich.[88]
^Steve Hindle, "The shaming of Margaret Knowsley: gossip, gender and the experience of authority in early modern England", Continuity and Change 9 (1994), pp. 391–419.
^Take a Closer Look at Nantwich (booklet), Crewe & Nantwich Borough Council
^Borough of Crewe & Nantwich: Replacement Local Plan 2011: Insets: Town Centre, Acton, Aston, Audlem, Bridgemere School, Buerton, Hankelow, Marbury, Sound School, Worleston School, Wrenbury [1]Archived 8 November 2009 at the Wayback Machine, Retrieved 4 June 2010.
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