The railway arrives

The North Staffordshire railway opened its line between Crewe and Derby via Stoke-on-Trent in 1848. Alsager was then no more than a hamlet on the road from Sandbach to Audley, a few houses around the smithy, a pub, and farms centred on the Town House and Town End, part of which is now incorporated in the Manor House hotel. Stations were opened at Alsager and Radway Green. The railway led to land sales from at least 1844, principally to the north of the station on Sandbach Road and along the main road to Crewe to the west.

In 1851 there was a still-scattered township of fewer than 500 people, almost wholly engaged in agriculture, with no large resident landowners. The farms included land round the Mere, to which there was no public right of access – though points of access, informally, there certainly were. One coal-miner lived in the village, one farmer also did some mining work, and four elderly people subsisted on parish relief. There was one professed laundress, and more people taught school-age children than were employed on the railway. Even the stationmaster lived at Radway Green.

Growth was slow. Some farmland was earmarked either for building or brick production or both. The first potter known to have been associated with Alsager, Thomas Daniel, a printer of pottery, was resident by 1851. Several factory-owners soon afterwards made their family homes in Alsager. Mining was also a feature of the surrounding area, and as well as mine-owners and engineers, miners were also making their homes in the neighbourhood.

After the railway came, the focus of village life moved, crucially, north of the station. As an index of this, the annual parish meeting, which hitherto had alternated between the old Lodge inn (then at the corner of Lodge Road and Church Road) and the Plough, moved in non-Plough years from the old Lodge to a new meeting-place: the newly-built (and now demolished) Alsager Arms opposite the station.

It took a very long time, however, to establish the Fairview crossroads as the effective village centre. In the 1850s the first identified building on the road to Crewe was the new Lodge Inn, in 1853/4, when nearby land was still available. Other developments around this time include ‘The Villa’ (now the ‘Old Villa’), with its back to Sandbach Road South; and Heathfields, on Dunnocksfold Road. By 1854, there had been sufficient further building to re-value properties occupied for assessing local rates. There was development east of Sandbach Road North, probably once known as Mere Farm: to this period in all probability belong the Firs and Clover Bank behind it, as well as Mere House; also what became Milton House. Grove House at the junction of Pikemere and Hassall Roads was there by 1860. Towards the end of the 1850s there was development in Fields Road, a natural growth outward from the original hamlet and the railway station. Development was patchy, though, and this area continued for a long time to be known as ‘the Fields’. There was also the redevelopment of the Church school.

By the 1860s a landowner, one of the Wilbrahams of Rode Hall, established a mansion at Cresswellshawe, and the Cedars in Cedar Avenue had been built, but the most noticeable growth was in participants in the earthenware business, and business-owners most of all. All of these were men – a mould maker, an engraver, a modeller and a printer. The grandees first noticed by the compilers of directories were Thomas Walker of the Villa, and Edwin Till, one of the partners in the large family firm of Thomas Till of the Sytch works, Tunstall. There were several others, among them John Maddock senior, at first at Longview. There were others, large and small and in between; substantial householders’ could expect to be made overseers of the poor more or less on arrival. Some individual families are mentioned under People.

To this period belongs select development of glebe land (Brundrett House and its neighbour to the north). The Limes was built, probably by the local artist Seddon Wildblood, in 1868, and by 1871 Holmcroft was in existence. In Cedar Avenue were the Cedars, Springfields and its near neighbour, later Greenlands; also, east of Brookhouse Road, Osborne House and Ivy House, near the health centre. There was also Robert Mellor’s building of The Hill (later ‘The Hall’) and also most of the crucial development on his land, mostly along the south side of Crewe Road west of the Lodge Inn. Radway House, in the far west, was built in the 1860s, and so was Prospect House, now part of the civic complex at Fairview. Brook Villas on Talke Road are difficult to date. They were there in 1871; they may well be earlier.

There were houses in Ashmore’s Lane, building at the foot of Shady Grove had been begun, and, at the top of the same track, Moorhouse farm had acquired its name through occupation by a family called Moore. Development around Linley Lane came slowly in the following decade, stimulated by the opening – to serve the mines in Staffordshire – of the Audley branch of the railway and its station on Talke Road.

By the mid-1870s building development along the south side of the Crewe Road, between the immediate surroundings of the Mere Inn as far west as Farfield, was almost complete. The north side, plus most of the south side east of Cross Street, remained undeveloped. There was a cluster of shops around the Lodge Inn, including the post office, but little development further east, other than a handful of large villas towards the station, and more modest buildings, very spread out, along the middle part of Lawton Road. The village still had no obvious centre, and at the start of the decade most businesses were established towards the western end. There was building on that part of the Lawton Road opposite the new Wesleyan Chapel, possibly stimulated by the chapel itself.

Attempts had been made to sell privately the land round the Mere, the Church and the station. But the pivotal event in this decade was in July 1876, when the residue of the Alsagers’ estate – most of the town’s land – was put up for auction. On the day this was only a partial success. Some of the farms were sold, as well as pubs, but not all the building sites. But land (hitherto farmed) around the Mere was unsold at auction (though sold privately soon afterwards), and what remained – principally Heath End, the Hall farm, the Mill and some further building land – was auctioned a year later.

The first development was along the main Crewe road. Here small villas and some shops were built. Some building activity followed in the later 1870s, though less than might have been expected. During the 1870s Shady Grove doubled in size, and was still building by 1881; Wesley Avenue came a bit later. By the end of the century unbuilt parts of the main road were filled up with shops and villas, and some that started life as villas later became shops. In 1881 Parville completed a trio of the town’s grandest houses along Sandbach Road South.

Businesses and shops In 1851 there seems to have been little in the way of retail: three grocers; two households producing boots and shoes, one tailor and one dressmaker. Of the three recorded in the census as keeping public houses, one ran the Plough Inn, one a beer shop near the station (the present Railway Inn), and the third, then still farming where Lodge Road meets Church Road, was in the business also of keeping a tavern (the Lodge) on the same premises (he moved it shortly afterwards). By 1861 the now-resident stationmaster was one of 6 people employed on the railway. The farmers, farm labourers, blacksmiths and wheelwrights saw little change, but there was a tiny growth in the number of shoemakers and school teachers; four businesses supplying groceries; three tailors, and one household with two dressmakers. A developing town had of course also to have its policeman and its ‘house agent’, and a post office was established, initially near the Lodge Inn.

Settlement by pottery owners and employees was followed by more shops. There were more grocers, more butchers, more boot- and shoe-makers, as well as coal merchants and ‘travelling drapers’. There was also encouragement to visitors: in the summer of 1878 Henry Watson was offering boats on the Mere for hire, from ‘Mrs Asbury’s refreshment rooms’ at ‘Mere House’ (the Asburys ran a shoe-making business on Crewe Road), and skating on the Mere when frozen attracted people from the surrounding area, sometimes in large numbers.

Late in the 1870s, the Amor family, the draper James and his son Reynolds (who set up a printing and stationery shop next door to James) promoted the development of a row of shops they called Betley Place, on Crewe Road just west of the Fairview crossroads. Some villas were also made into shops. A corner landmark was a shop, initially a grocer’s, run by successive Hancocks at the top of Sandbach Road South, opposite the two banks, which from the 1890s faced each other – hence ‘the Bank Corner’ – across Crewe Road to the west. A terrace of shops (called Chapel Terrace) had arrived earlier, near the Primitive Wesleyan Chapel; Chapel Mews is now on the site. A pharmacist (who became the town’s first dentist) was on Lawton Road, opposite the newer, larger Wesleyan chapel. The Post Office has had various locations, including a move from the top of Station Road to ‘the Poplars’ on Sandbach Road South. A further sub-post office opened in the Railway Stores in Audley Road, opposite the station, in 1928. The Co-op arrived in the early 20th century, and after it moved from the north to the south side of Lawton Road at the corner of Ashmore’s Lane, was replaced by one of ultimately at least three premises in the town operating for motor sales and repairs and the sale of petrol.

Local government and public health Before the public health legislation of the 1870s, Alsager’s local authority was the parish vestry. Originally the annual town meeting took place in a pub. Then mid-Victorian sensibility moved it away from licensed premises to one or other denominational schoolroom. The Congleton poor law union, with its eventual workhouse (later a hospital) at Arclid, dealt with the individual and his or her health. Then in 1874 came the Congleton Rural District Council, which, almost from the first, raised the question of whether Alsager should have its own authority and meanwhile delegated management of issues concerning the town to a committee.

Establishment of the town’s own urban district and council was finally achieved in 1894. To the east, Church Lawton parish remained with Congleton; to the west, rural affairs were decided from Nantwich. The UDC first met at premises of the Primitive Methodist Chapel, and eventually kept offices and its fire engine on separate, private premises nearby.

Despite requiring those submitting new building plans to provide copies, no authority has left accessible records other than minutes. Buildings begun before 1894 are often hard to date. By the 1930s, the authority was beginning to flex its planning muscles, but had little by way of enforcement powers.

Waste disposal and water supply exercised local authorities from their outset. A survey of local WCs, earth closets and privies was undertaken. In 1878 a system of mains sewerage was installed, and an outfall for sewage was established near Heath End Farm, as well as a long-standing annual contract for the removal of ‘night soil’. Contiguous owners could be required to connect to a sewer, and where practicable new construction was so required. It was estimated even in 1931 that about 300 privies still required to be connected, and the council had to apply for a central government loan to achieve this. All new houses were required to have an adequate supply of water. Many houses continued into the 20th century to supply their own water from a proprietary pump, but mains water was originally available from waterworks at the foot of Well Lane, and until 1905 the supply was shut down overnight.

The fire brigade was the council’s own, and mostly voluntary. Communicating with it remained a constant problem. Even by 1928 communication was still effected in person rather than by telephone. After a serious fire at the Hall farm, the Council appear to have decided to rely on an ‘aerial maroon’ (a rocket) rather than install electric bells in volunteers’ homes. As late as 1920, there was a worry that in case of a fire there would not be horses available, especially after Band the carrier – then at Fairview – disposed of his.

Street naming: In November 1899 there was an official road naming, and new signage was ordered. Until that time – and for some time after – the picture was confused. Though only the western limb of the main road was still called Barthomley Road by the Ordnance Survey, it was known to the council by its modern name, Crewe Road. On the same map Sandbach Road is called Alsager Road – though it was sometimes, confusingly, in practice called Station Road, for obvious reasons. Station Road itself was known occasionally as Sandy Lane, possibly because early in the century it had been Sand Hole Road (though the part nearest Church Road sometimes appears to have been called Back Lane). The name Sandy Lane, however, was more usually applied to Ashmore’s Lane. In 1899, it was decreed that what is now Chancery Lane and Lodge Road should together be called Mere Road; though the name ‘Chancery Lane’ crept into use, and had become commonplace by 1910. What is now Dunnocksfold Road was once to be Sunnyside Road. Not only did some names come in for more than one revision; new names were rarely used by officialdom itself, which continued giving locations as ‘Mr So-and-so’s’.

Lighting the streets was from 1897 by the Kidsgrove Gas Company (some of the great and the good of Alsager had long since been shareholders). In 1898 a ratepayers’ petition sought keeping the lamps on all night at street corners and at the end of their run. There continued to be grumbling about the quality of the gas, and electric lighting was decided on in 1929.

Postal collections The local authority always interested itself in the availability of stamps and the times of postal collections. It also took up issues about train times and the quantity of accommodation on trains, and was in perpetual disagreement with the railway company about the level crossing, constantly seeking to have the road cross the railway uninterrupted, thus promoting the idea of a subway. Neither side ever offered to pay for this, which is sufficient to explain why it has never happened.

Schools At the outset only primary education was provided, and that by the churches. About the time Stonehewer ceased to be schoolmaster at the Church school, the latter (now Charles Tryon Court) was rebuilt. In addition, education beyond the limits offered by public authorities was available to boys at Stonehewer’s Grove House (he called it the ‘Alsager Grammar School’, which he soon expanded to accommodate 12 boarders). There were also other small, private schools opened from about 1860, many with boarding available. Some were for girls – Miss Broady’s, the most long-standing, originally at the Firs, and subsequently in Lawton Road; Miss Bray’s, Kate Bastarde’s, and Sarah Daniel’s, all in ‘the Fields’. Other private schools recorded are a short-lived boys’ school at Mere House, and another at the White House on Crewe Road.

Social Alsager An increasing population brought with it increased social activity. The Mere was available for boating, and refreshment afterwards: from an early date it was especially popular in winter for skating, and fatalities not unknown (though the trust arrangement eventually precluded commerce). Friendly societies (Druids, Shepherds, Foresters) established ’lodges’, each of which held its own fete, often on the Brunds. From at least the late 1870s these might involve cricket matches and amateur dramatic performances by an established club (mostly – if not all – male). The fetes involved mass summer outings originating at railway stations between Alsager and Stoke. There were, later, agricultural shows, and throughout, various decorous church bazaars. At one of these in the 1880s a very modern event occurred: exchanges between a bored and flirtatious couple minding stalls were recorded by an early phonograph, according to a comic versifier.

A football team, which may have sprung out of an existing cricket team, was playing in the district league by the century’s end. A bowling club founded about 1904 at the Alsager Arms later acquired a green off Fields Road, and a 9-hole golf course was established south of Talke Road in 1909. This failed, but later, successively, other clubs came into being on the Linley Hall estate. There were two tennis clubs, one north-east of the crossroads and the other at Heathfields. There was a further bowling club, as well as billiards at the village Institute established in 1908 off Sandbach Road North. A ‘reading room’ at ‘Club Corner’ (later Bank Corner) may have been less successful.

The 20th century The council took control of motor bus services, which began from the Potteries to Sandbach, unlicensed, in 1914. At the same time, the town was adapting itself, for example by appropriate signage, to increasing motor traffic. New waterworks were established, not without much travail (including ratepayers’ meetings the press described as ‘lively’), on land near the county boundary which belonged to Oak Farm, with a reservoir near Mere Lake. Later, the town agreed to supply Haslington and Oakhanger with water.

In 1910 the UDC took over rooms behind and above shops at 46 Crewe Road, which they soon equipped with a telephone. The council members sat for a photograph, as did their chairman, Huntley Goss, in robes presented by himself (to which, many years later, a hat was added for wearing on civic occasions). In 1922-23 they moved to Fairview, and let surplus land on the large site for cricket and football. In 1939 they first established use of Prospect House.

In 1911 the population was 2,743; it rose slightly in the following two decades, but in 1931 was still shy of 3,000, though WW2 saw great changes and the population more than doubled. The increase in population during the second half of the 19th century was due to incomers settling rather than local population growth, and this is likely to have continued.

During the first war Belgian refugees moved for a time into Hampton House in Station Road, and allotments were established at Ashmore’s Lane. Dr Crutchley gave land at the end of his garden at Holmcroft for the war memorial, which the council undertook to maintain, and which was enlarged by his successor Dr Harpur.

After WW1

The second war changed everything. The munitions factory, the farm that became a hostel that became a college and eventually new housing – not to mention the motorway – all occasioned major changes, physical and otherwise. There was a huge increase in the premises and the sophistication of school provision. Milton House, first a hostel and then private flats, had its grounds made into a public park. Much redevelopment at Fairview cemented the main crossroads as the true village centre, even though the banks (both eventually part of the same national chain) have gone from what was throughout the 20th century known as Bank Corner.