NOW & THEN - LOWER STREET and ST MICHAEL'S WAY

When we first published an old late-60s black & white view of the town centre, seen from the Town Bridge in this MD Entry, quite a few people were puzzled and 'unable to get their bearings' (largely, as pointed out by Paul Greenwood, because the church itself wasn't in the picture to act as a landmark).
So, as promised, here's that view again, together with a 2012 view taken from a similar vantage point.
We can see that, like so many areas of Middlewich, the churchyard has been taken over by trees, and there are many more of them now than there were in 1969. The Town Hall would have been behind that clump of trees.
The curve of Lower Street to the left is still evident, although the only part of that road remaining is a short stub now used as a bus layby.
St Michael's Way goes off to the right of this on a fairly straight alignment before curving off towards the last remaining segment of Pepper Street and then sweeping around to the left to join Nantwich Road close to the old Red Lion..
In between the two - i.e. the remains of Lower Street and  St Michael's Way, are traffic islands and a 'taxi rank' which, as we mentioned here, in another Now & Then feature,does not seem ever to have been used as such.
The black square in the top right hand corner of the modern view, by the way, is part of one of the traffic signals controlling traffic on the Town Bridge.
We had to wait a long time to get the modern view without it being full of cars and trucks and, ironically, in the end managed to take a picture with even fewer vehicles in it than the 1969 one.
 This, it hardly needs to be pointed out, is very far from typical.
You can click on the photos for a closer view.