STATION GARDEN AT MIDDLEWICH 1950s

Photo courtesy of David Myles

Old black and white photographs have their charms, of course, but don't you wish that, in this case, David 'Jock' Myles, Middlewich Station's most distinguished signalman, had used colour film?

Jock was a keen gardener and made use of his skills and his spare time creating this wonderful garden on the Up (Crewe bound) platform at Middlewich Station in the 1950s. 

In fact, so colourful and pleasing to the eye was the garden that it won Middlewich First Prize in the British Railways (London Midland Region) Best Kept Station Garden Competition towards the end of that decade (when, of course, the station closed to passengers).

This is just one in a series of pictures of the garden and shows BR's original 'lion & wheel' emblem above an exhortation to 'Travel British Railways'

Sitting on top of the whole assemblage is - what else? - another one of those Middlewich witches ( and there's another one to the right of the picture).

Original and creative use of railway equipment was made in putting together the garden, as we'll see in some of the other pictures in this series.

We're grateful to  Jock's son, also called David Myles, for passing these photographs on to us.

Originally published 4th October 2011

Re-formatted and re-published 4th October 2016