2023 – Page 2 – Janet's Adventures in Waterstones

Crewe – Thursday 14th September 2023

Crewe is a town in Cheshire which is probably most famous for its connection to the railway industry. The Grand Junction Railway arrived in Crewe in the late 1830s. Before this time, it was just a small village, but by the 1871 census it had grown into a town with a population of approximately 40,000 people. For a long time, the Crewe Works were one of the biggest locomotive building works in the country employing thousands. This number declined over the years and some of the land now houses a heritage centre, but it only opens at weekends, so sadly we weren’t able to visit. The Waterstones is in a red-brick building in the main shopping area and is set over two floors. It was previously an Ottakar’s book shop.

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Crewe map

Lyceum Theatre

A theatre known as the Lyceum opened in Crewe in 1887, the building having previously been a church. The building burnt down in 1910 and was rebuilt, opening the following year – it is Grade II listed. We popped our heads in the door to take a look, expecting to just see the lobby, but a staff member took us into the auditorium. The building is just stunning as you can see from the photos.

Crewe Market Hall

A cheese hall was built in Crewe in 1854 for the storage of Cheshire cheese. Later a Corn Exchange and a butter and bacon warehouse were added to form what is now Crewe Market Hall. Today the market offers food and goods for sale, and also hosts events.

The photo below shows the weathervane on top of the Municipal Council Building in Crewe in the shape of a train, echoing that town’s railway heritage.

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Wilmslow – Monday 11th September 2023

Wilmslow is an affluent market town in Cheshire full of chain shops and independent stores, and is known for being a popular place to live for footballers and actors. Alan Turing OBE lived in the town from 1950 to 1954 and it was here that he lost his life to suicide following his conviction for gross indecency and subsequent chemical castration. We had spent most of the day at the National Trust’s Quarry Bank industrial heritage site a few miles away so we didn’t have time to explore the town. The Waterstones is located in the main shopping street, but as you can see from the photo, the building is being worked on at the moment, so was covered with scaffolding and polyethene sheeting.

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Wilmslow map

Quarry Bank

Built in 1784 by entrepreneur Samuel Greg, the cotton mill at Quarry Bank at Styal in Cheshire is now a Grade II listed building. Greg built houses in Styal for his staff to rent and provided health care and education for them, and at one point this was the largest mill in the UK. Samuel’s ancestor Alexander Carlton Greg left Quarry Bank to the National Trust in 1939, and they later purchased the Greg’s family home which was next door to the mill. The mill’s equipment and the machinery that drove it is still in situ and we very much enjoyed our visit to it, and to Quarry Bank House.

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Grove Street

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Altrincham – Sunday 10th September 2023

Altrincham is a market town in Greater Manchester. It was given a market charter in 1290, and permitted to hold a market on a Tuesday. When the Bridgewater Canal arrived in Altrincham in 1765 it encouraged a growth of market gardening in the town, and the later arrival of the railway made the area popular with the middle-classes. Altrincham is frequently voted one of the best places to live in the North East of England and is said to have the highest proportion of millionaires as residents outside of London. The Waterstones is located in a modern shopping centre.

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Altrincham map

Altrincham Market

Altrincham Market (or Alty Market as the locals call it) has seen a revival in recent years, and the indoor market is now home to various eateries with communal tables seating nearly 200 people, whilst the outdoor covered section has various stalls from clothing and pottery to cheese, and opens on Tuesdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. It’s a very attractive building in a pretty area of the town.

The Eudaemonium

This is a living sculpture in the form of a book and made from metal and wood intended to promote well-being. It has a locked cupboard behind the metal panel with the wording on, which contains recipes and tips for health. It’s a nice idea, although I’m not sure how this helps people as they can’t access the items, as far as I can tell. It’s an attractive statue though.

The wording in the centre reads:

Altrincham Eudaemonium

Note the spelling of Altrincham with a ‘g’ instead of a c. This is the spelling of the town as it would have ben in the year 1290.

Knutsford – Sunday 10th September 2023

Knutsford is an affluent market town in Cheshire with a mix of upmarket independent shops and larger national stores, and there are more than 100 listed buildings in the town. We arrived by train, and the first thing we saw was a man riding a Penny Farthing bike! Shortly afterwards we saw another, and it turned out that we’d timed our visit well, as “The Knutsford Great Race” was taking place, and it is only held every 10 years – in total 102 Penny Farthings took part! Local legend has it that the town was named Knutsford after the English King Canute, who is said to have forded the river there, although this is disputed. After coffee and a spot of bike watching we went for a stroll around the town, visiting the Waterstones, which is located in a red brick building in the middle of the main shopping street.

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Knutsford map

Elizabeth Gaskell

Knutsford’s most famous resident is the Victorian author Elizabeth Gaskell and the titular town in her novel Cranford is based on Knutsford. Many of the locations in the book are here and have blue plaques on them. There are lots of references to Mrs Gaskell in Knutsford including a Gaskell Avenue in the town, a Cranford Drive just outside, and even a café bearing her name. She married unitarian minister William Gaskell in the chapel here in 1832 and the pair are buried in the chapel’s graveyard along with two of their daughters.

Gaskell Memorial Tower

Opened in 1907, this was originally council offices, a coffee shop and a ballroom and was designed by Richard Harding Watt as a memorial to Elizabeth Gaskell. Titles of some of her novels are carved into the building, and there is also a bust and a carving of her on the outer walls.

Brook Street Unitarian Chapel

Some of Knutsford’s many listed buildings

Penny Farthings in ‘The Great Race’

King Canute

Manchester Trafford Centre – Saturday 9th September 2023

The Trafford Centre is a large out of town shopping centre which opened in 1998 – it’s currently the third largest in the UK. The style of the centre was chosen to prevent it looking dated, and it really is quite spectacular! The centre boasts the largest chandelier in the world, which hangs in front of a staircase based on one from the Titanic, and the main dome was modelled on St Paul’s Cathedral. I forgot to take photos of the outside, and I could kick myself as that is also highly decorative. The Waterstones here is located on the ground floor of the centre.

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Manchester Trafford Centre map

The Chandelier and Staircase

The Dome

Arthur Brooke

Arthur Brooke founded the tea trading business Brooke, Bond & Company and opened his first shop in Manchester in 1869. This sculpture, by Anthony Stones, was donated to the centre by the Brooke Bond Tea Company.

Various Statues

Stockport – Saturday 9th September 2023

Stockport is a town in Greater Manchester which, in the 1800s, was famous for its hat-making industry which gave the town’s football team, Stockport County, its nickname of ‘The Hatters’. At the height of the industry the town exported over £6 million hats a year! The last factory closed in 1997. There is a Hat Works Museum in the town but it’s currently closed for refurbishment, which is a shame as I should have liked to have gone. Stockport is also the location of the start of the River Mersey, which is formed by the meeting of the Rivers Tame and Goyt, and is the location of the largest brick structure in the UK – the Stockport Viaduct – which was built in 1840 and contains some 11 million bricks! The Waterstones is located in the Merseyway Shopping Centre in the heart of the town.

Stockport map

Stockport Plaza

This stunning Grade II listed Art Deco building first opened as a cinema in 1932, and its equipment included a Compton organ which is still used today. It was refurbished in the 1950s to include a stage for performances. It became a bingo hall in 1967. More restoration work took place in 2009 with some of the funding coming from the National Lottery, and further renovations took place between 2012 and 2016 and is now fully restored to the original 1932 décor. As well as being used as a cinema and theatre, the Plaza has been used as a filming location for various TV shows. We timed our trip to Stockport perfectly, as the Plaza was open for the Heritage Open Day scheme so we got to look round it. It’s absolutely stunning as you can see from the photos. I took LOTS!

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Below, clockwise from top left

Underbank Hall (a 15^th century town house), Two of Stockport Market (1962), the Stockport Viaduct (1840) and The Stockport Pyramid (1992 – originally offices for the Cooperative Bank, but currently empty).

Barrow-in-Furness – Thursday 7th September 2023

Barrow-in-Furness is a town in Cumbria that is possibly best-known for its shipbuilding. The shipyard was founded in 1871 as the Barrow Shipbuilding Company and the first ship was launched in 1873. Vickers & Sons bought the company in 1897 and later they began producing naval vessels. With the arrival of the first world war, production of munitions was stepped up, and in WW2 the town became the target of the Luftwaffe in 1941 and 1942. The Vickers shipyard is now owned by BAE. It’s also famous* as the town where my paternal Grandad was born (*but maybe only in our family)! He worked for Vickers his whole working life, starting at the age of 14 working his way up to become a chartered secretary, working in the London offices until he retired in the early 1960s. The Waterstones is located in a modern, open air shopping centre.

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Barrow-in-Furness map

Nella Last’s Diaries

In 1937 the Mass Observation Project was started in order to record the lives of everyday people for future posterity. On 5 September 1939, just two days after World War 2 broke out, Nella Last started keeping a diary – a habit she kept up until 1966. She lived in Barrow-in-Furness with her husband and two sons. Her story was dramatised as Housewife, 49, written by the late, great Victoria Wood who played the Nella.

Emlyn Hughes

Footballer Emlyn Hughes was born in the town in 1947. He started his footballing career at Blackpool and played for various clubs during his career, as well as for England. He later went on to host the BBC quiz A Question of Sport. Hughes died of cancer in 2004, and there is a statue commemorating him in the town outside an office block called Emlyn Hughes House.

The Spirit of Barrow

This sculpture dating from 2005 was created by Chris Kelly. The four workers depicted represent Courage, Labour, Progress and Skill which represent the town’s industrial heritage.

Anson Street – my Grandad was born here!

Barrow-in-Furness Town Hall

Kendal – Wednesday 6th September 2023

Kendal is a market town in Cumbria, possibly best-known for its Mint Cake, which has a reputation as being popular with walkers and climbers as a source of energy. Another, perhaps less well-known fact about Kendal is that the post office in Postman Pat is based on a former post office called Beast Banks in Greenside in the town! The Waterstones is located in Westmorland Shopping Centre with entrances from there and from the street and is set on two floors.

Kendal map

AW Wainwright

Alfred “A W” Wainwright, the famous fell walker and guidebook writer, moved to Kendal when he was 34 and took a job working for the council having fallen in love with the area on an earlier visit. He wrote seven books in the series Pictorial Guides to the Lakeland Fells, which were originally self-published, and were written by hand, with his own drawings as illustrations. The desk shown below was Wainwright’s desk in the council office (also shown).

Mrs Goggins’ Post Office

Postman Pat’s creator, John Cunliffe, was friendly with the sub-postmistress here, and is said to have based Mrs Goggins on her.

Kendal Library

The Carnegie library in Kendal opened in 1909. We stuck our heads in the door – it really is a beautiful building.

We loved this signpost in the town!

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Blackburn – Wednesday 6th September 2023

We stopped in Blackburn on our way to the Lake District where we were spending the first few days of our holiday. Blackburn is an industrial town in Lancashire in the north west of England and was an important centre for textile manufacturing during the Industrial Revolution, in fact, it was once known as “the weaving capital of the world”. Blackburn is also famous as the location of the first mass-fingerprinting following the murder of a three-year-old girl. Over 45,000 fingerprints were taken, leading to the murderer’s conviction. The fingerprints were later destroyed. The Waterstones is located in The Mall shopping centre and only opened last month.

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Blackburn map

Blackburn Cathedral

The building was consecrated as a church in 1826, eventually becoming a cathedral one hundred years later in 1926. We had hoped to visit, but unfortunately there was a service taking place for a local school, so we weren’t able to go inside, although we have been inside before several years ago.

Transition Sculptures

These sculptures are located in Church Lane, just around the corner from the cathedral. The artist is Ian Randall and the pieces are made from various materials and represent the town’s heritage.

The Postal Order

Now a Wetherspoons’ pub, this is the former post office – it’s an Edwardian building dating from 1906 according to an ornate carved date above one of the doors

Currently reading: Anne of Windy Poplars by L M Montgomery

London – Liverpool Street Underground Station – Monday 4th September 2023

I was spending the day in London with my good friend Helen before heading north to meet Peter for our holiday the following day. Helen and I planned a day in Kew Gardens, where neither of us had visited before. I got up early and had a walk around Westminster where I was staying before meeting Helen and heading to Kew. We had the most wonderful day there, including a trip up the Pagoda. Unfortunately, the high walkway was closed for repairs, so we will have to go back to do that another time. After we parted I had a trip booked to go up London’s newest (but not tallest) viewing platform at 8 Bishopsgate. Before that, I had time to pop to the Waterstones located at Liverpool Street station. It was a little difficult to find, and it only opens on weekdays, but although tiny, it’s a beautiful purple colour.