Rear of Church Road across Mere c1905
The Mere
The Cheshire volume of The Buildings of England may be a bit sniffy (‘a small town with a small Mere in the middle’), but the Mere is Alsager’s open secret. It has however been private property from time immemorial.
The area of water formed part of the Alsager estate, and was expressly excluded from the Alsager Inclosure Act 1821. The surrounding land was in any case subject only in part to any customary rights of manorial tenants, even before these were extinguished by inclosure under the Act. In 1876 the estate assumed that the Mere fringes would be prime building land, and offered them for sale in a single lot together with the Mere itself. This didn’t sell, but was immediately afterwards bought up privately by investors, six of whom – including Edward Fox Leek, Arthur Tomkinson, George Plant and Robert Beswick – became its owners, divided up the waterside plots, reduced the area of water and in 1882 formed a trust to own the Mere itself.
The riparian owners and occupiers – originally the Alsagers and their heirs, with their agricultural tenants – seem to have long permitted informal public access, passive though this permission may have been. Access was not difficult: there was a public track running from Sandbach Road North westward to a waterside cottage, along approximately what is now the northern limb of the Avenue, and the inclosure map shows a proprietary pathway round the water, except on the west side. Though there are stories of horse racing, there is no evidence that it took place here, and stories of markets for crops probably reflect documented auction sales at the original Lodge inn and farm. There are several accounts of accidents by and on the water, and a few sad suicides. Uncertainty about the status of skaters and boaters may, immediately after the estate sale of 1876, have encouraged money-making enterprises along Crewe Road to exploit their position, and at times there were boats for hire as well as a fashion for skating. All this may have informed the formation of the trust, which prohibited commerce and restricted access for boating and fishing to the invitees of riparian owners. In practice public swimming apparently first took place between the wars, when ‘persons bathing in the Mere’ were perceived as causing a nuisance, and riparian owners invoked the police to prevent trespassing.
The Council’s interest in the Mere may have originated with their ownership of a fire-engine, at one time stationed opposite their offices on Crewe Road. In 1936 they acquired a waterside site (now Coronation Gardens) on Sandbach Road North from the then owners of the Wood, the house then standing immediately to the north. Though they acquired it for a public garden, the council feared anti-social behaviour, and use was confined to the fire services until after the war; the Coronation in the name was presumably that of George VI. Northolme Gardens had by then been acquired, and both sites were made available to the public after WW2. The Mere continued to have a use in fire prevention: in 1953 pipes were laid all the way to The Hall to help put out a blaze.
In 1944 the Council took counsel’s advice, which was to the effect that the trust deed permitted only the trustees and their friends to boat or fish in the water, and said nothing about swimming. They concluded that they could use the land like any other landowner, and no-one by that time in existence could prevent any use of land or its adjacent water by a person legitimately on that land. However the Council concerned itself with control and safety of the public as well as the interests of landowning neighbours, and made rules against general access to the water.