Cheshire Memories
Imagine Weaverham if you can in the mid 50’s. A sleepy Cheshire village with add-on old and new housing estates belonging to that big chemical factory spouting smoke all day called ICI. For a young 12 year old straight from the back streets of Liverpool this was paradise. Plenty of fresh air (when the ICI smoke was blowing in the right direction) green fields and laid back country folk!
My father worked for ICI, we had a company house on one of the newer housing estates and I managed to get into Winsford Verdin Grammar School after a small fight with officialdom by my mother. Following a period of settling in, country orientation and making friends, life proceeded at a leisurely, non-city pace. Village life in those days was much quieter. There were no cluster of shops across from Lake House Field (the only cluster of shops in those days were in Lime Ave, and still there I see). The current village (new) shopping precinct was a field with a few cows wandering around it, and a public foot path which allowed you to take a short cut from Northwich road to Church Lane. It could be a romantic walk at times too!
The village had a few single shops and pubs. I didn’t use the pubs at 12yrs old but one well used shop was on the corner of Northwich road as it merged into High Street and Forest Street. The name escapes me of course but I usually shopped there for shoes, sports wear and shirts.
I secured two part times jobs as a teenager which made me rich and independent! One was the ubiquitous ‘paper round’, which of course meant getting up at an ungodly hour in rain, hail, sleet or snow (does anyone do that any more?). This job was connected with the news agents who again was situated on a corner – thus the term the ‘corner shop’ and was on the corner of Wallerscote road as it intersected with Church Lane. I think I scored ten shilling and sixpence per week for seven days a week paper delivery!
The second job was less of a regular one. It was odd job work at the local Weaverham farm. The farm of course is now long gone. It was situated at the corner again of Church Street and Northwich/High Street intersections, and owned by Mr Morton, a ‘kind man’ who lived alone, but had a sister who lived in the High Street just past the egg packing station.
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Past, Present and Future: Some weekends – usually Saturdays we would get far