Nantwich

Wednesday
Roger and I visited the market town of Nantwich today. The origins of the settlement date to Roman times, when salt from Nantwich was used by the Roman garrisons at Chester and Stoke-on-Trent as both a preservative and a condiment. Wich and wych are names used to denote brine springs or wells.
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. Nantwich is one of the few places in Cheshire to be marked on the Gough Map, which dates from 1355-66. The salt industry peaked in the late 16th century when there were 216 salt houses, but the industry ended in around 1856 when the last salt house closed. The town contains more than 100 listed buildings, and has the second-largest collection of historic buildings in the county of Cheshire after Chester. The oldest building in the town is St Mary's Church, which dates from the 14th century. The town has many timber-framed or "black-and-white" buildings dating from the 16th and 17th centuries, The black and white building on the right of the picture is the Crown Hotel. The Crown and Sceptre was the most important of 7 inns which were reduced to ashes in the Great Fire which destroyed half of Nantwich in 1583. A national appeal was launched to rebuild the town and with money donated to this and timbers from the Royal Forest of Delamere donated by Queen Elizabeth 1 the Crown Hotel was able to once again open its doors to 16th century travellers.

We went to St. Mary's Church first, but discovered there was a service in process, so we went and had a coffee and returned later. We found the church most interesting and there was a very friendly and informative lady member of the clergy who talked to us about the church and pointed various things out to us. One thing we found of particular interest to us was a Guernsey flag (my husband was born and grew up in Guernsey). "It was presented by the former pupils of Vale School, Guernsey on the 8th July 1990, to the people of Nantwich, in the safekeeping of St. Mary's Church. It commemorates the 50th anniversary of the evacuation of the school to Nantwich during the German occupation of the Channel Islands in June 1940 and the hospitality shown by the people of Cheshire throughout the war until liberation in May 1945. Roger's Dad was one of those evacuated during the war, though he was from a different parish and was evacuated to the country near Liverpool. After spending quite a long time exploring the church, we wandered round the town a bit more, then had a delicious lunch at The Cheshire Cat, a pub located in another old timber-framed building.

From Nantwich we went out into the country to Audlem Locks, a flight of 15 locks on the Shropshire Union Canal, and went for a walk along the canal.

One year ago: Turtle on a log