Crewe Road – both sides, east of Church Road and Station Road
All the buildings in this area post-date the railway, and most post-date the estate sale of 1876. On the south side, the triangular area east of the Lodge Inn, between Crewe Road, Station Road and Cross Street, formerly a field of about an acre, was called, because of its shape, ‘Three Nooks’. The Crewe Road frontage on this block was fully built up by 1875, and probably grew eastwards from the Inn. From an early date it was known as Chapel Terrace, and consisted at least in part of shops. Chapel Mews replaces the Primitive Methodist Chapel formerly here. Next to the chapel, nos. 64 and 66 appear to have been known as Rose Villas. Like much of this street, one has had a shop front added.
The chapel’s schoolroom was the first meeting-place of the local urban district council, which in 1910 leased rooms in the range of shops to the east, beside Boyce Adams, a local grocery chain, at 46 Crewe Road. The chapel was earlier used on a temporary basis by the Anglican church before St Mary’s was built. Among the houses and shops at 46-54 may be those advertised as recently built, probably by Henry Watson, in 1880. The fire engine was situated opposite, in premises then described as ‘damp’.
The Mere Inn, on the corner with Cross Street, must date from before September 1870, when its licensee appeared before the bench following drunkenness after a fete. Now a Joules house, it was owned throughout much of its existence by the Wilderspool Brewery Co., later part of Greenall Whitley. The northernmost four cottages behind were built by the brewery, probably around the same time as the pub, who were told firmly in 1895 – the early days of the really local authority – that these should be provided with proper drainage, and not pails. The more recent, which once included a shop on the corner with Station Road (possibly once part of George Plant’s holdings), were in being by 1891. Cross Street itself is the head of an old route along Well Lane to Hole House Farm, and appears as such on the Alsager enclosure map of c.1834. East of Cross Street, building post-dates 1875.
Along with the Lodge Inn, the shops at this ‘west end’ of the town were developed first, before the town’s centre of gravity moved eastward. Some of the shops on the north side were built by Thomas Gratton, who was also building on this side of Church Road. On the Mere frontage there was probably building by Henry Watson, who hired boats here: but he was in severe financial difficulty by the end of the decade.
Northolme (no. 44), now a café-bar, bears a date, 1884, and the initials SB, representing Samuel Booth, a builder in Kidsgrove who intended it for his retirement and lived here for around a dozen years. Later occupiers included Daniel Lingard, co-owner of the Lingard and Webster pottery, makers of teapots at Tunstall; and Dr Crutchley, Alsager’s first medical practitioner, who had previously been in Sandbach Road South. As domestic premises, Northolme is (as the government valuers commented in 1912) ‘too large for the position’. They also thought its garden opposite was suitable for building, though sale particulars of 1939 describe it as ‘delightful… with frontage to the Mere, giving rights for boating, bathing &c.’ Fortunately the garden was bought by the local council in 1944 and became one of two public gardens beside the Mere. Earlier, the owners of Northolme had negotiated with the council for its purchase, but the project failed as the owners wanted to retain a strip of land for access.
Nos. 40 and 42 were built as houses which came to be known as ‘Mereleigh’ and ‘Thornleigh’. Thornleigh was the home of Lucy Hawthorn (one of the daughters of Joseph Eardley), and the other for a time that of Adolphus Goss. The names suggest his sense of humour. Pool House (no.38), built as a single house, was also formerly domestic, but later became a doctor’s surgery.
In the park, Milton House is possibly the site of an early Maddock residence. There is some evidence of partial rebuilding in 1866, after which it was for most of the 19th and earlier 20th centuries the home of the Craig family. Originally there was a high wall between its lodges, beside the main road. After use as a hostel in the mid-20th century, the house became privately-owned flats and its grounds a public park.
37, 43 and 45 Crewe Road were built about 1901 by John Smallwood Cooke, a local cabinet maker who had business premises at 55 Crewe Road. The first occupants of Ellerslie, no. 37, were the family of John McKie, a supplier of drapery, who also bought the land (which they began to develop in 1929) between their house and Cooke’s pair of similar semis at 43 and 45.
The former police house and cell accommodation at no. 33-35, renamed Copper House on its recent conversion into flats, was opened here in 1894, there having before that time been a police presence on the corner of Pikemere Road and Sandbach Road North.
No. 27 (Holly Villa) was said to have been built ‘recently’ when offered for sale in 1880. It was for over 50 years the home of Richard Attey (1851-1933), commercial traveller in textiles, and his daughter Eleanor, who married Edwin Holmes, another pottery manufacturer. It seems to have been part of the same building project as nos. 29 and 31, at one time known as Mere Villas, newly built (probably by Walter Hook) and offered for sale unoccupied at the same time.
East of the Avenue and St Mary Magdalene’s church were probably the ‘house and shop’ advertised as to let by Samuel Davies in 1879. Those built by or for Amor the draper on the south side are more securely identifiable (though Davies may have originated this project). Amor had come here from London (where eventually he returned), via a hosier’s business in Tunstall. He appears to have been one of the main movers in developing the row of shops, where both he and his son Reynolds had outlets. Reynolds ran a stationery business, and printed local postcards in a series he called, in a play on his surname, ‘Roma’; eventually this functioned as an employment exchange as well. Their buildings are attributed to an architect, Ralph Dain. Beginning in 1878 with premises he described as suitable either as a house or a shop (the former being more usual in Alsager), Amor took several years to let and then to sell all of them, having given them the name Betley Place, after the Staffordshire settlement which had been the family home of his late wife Catharine Warham.
At the eastern corner the Manchester and Liverpool District Bank, and Parr’s Bank opposite, were established by 1896. Both were ‘open Tuesdays and Saturdays’ initially, and both eventually built their own premises. These banks were both subsequently absorbed by the NatWest (which itself has now given up its local branch). The corner is however still known as ‘the Bank Corner’, having previously been Fairview corner then ‘Club Corner’, on account of a reading room founded on the north side in 1897 and active for more than a decade.
