THE MIDDLEWICH DIARY: FIVE YEARS ON

The Middlewich Diary celebrated its fifth birthday on the 11th June 2016.
The idea for the blog came from the interest generated after we posted several colour pictures of Middlewich on Facebook, starting in April 2011.

After a few weeks, and after many people had asked for more, we began to post the pictures on the now long-defunct 'Salt Town Site', the Salt Town Poets website. 

Facebook 21st April 2011

This proved to be very time-consuming and inefficient and we looked around for a better way of  publishing the photographs on the web.
At that time the Crewe.tv blog was very popular and several people got in touch to suggest that we created a blog along similar lines.
The original idea was to publish our faded and battered collection of colour slides, mostly taken during the years 1967-1972, but we soon realised that the blogging medium could be used for much more than that; it could be used to present photographs and articles about Middlewich and its history, as well as promoting what was happening in the town in the 21st century.

'A Middlewich Diary', as it was then called, at middlewichdiary.blogspot.com, got off to a bit of a shaky start:

 

But, as we got to grips with the relatively new concept of blogging, we soon got into our stride

and began to feature more and more photographs from our own collection and from other sources.

Then, as now, we had an almost pathological need to explain ourselves, even finding it necessary to tell people what the grainy background of the blog was supposed to represent.

After a while 'A Middlewich Diary' had become 'The Middlewich Diary' - mostly because that's what everyone called it anyway.

By April 2012 the blog had become popular enough for us to be given one of the Town Council's 'Local Hero' Awards (forerunners of the 'Middlewich Oscars')

The Award was also made in recognition of work on the campaign to re-open the Middlewich Rail link to passengers.

We're planning a re-launch of the Middlewich Diary once all the hullabaloo of the FAB Festival is out of the way, and we're also hoping  to tackle the large backlog of photos and articles which a combination of circumstances has caused.
 We still have a lot to tell you about the history of our town and the way it is growing and developing (not always, it has to be said, to everyone's satisfaction) and we hope you'll stay with us for many years into the future.

In the meantime, let's take a look back to what we like to think of as the start of The Middlewich Diary Proper, five years ago.

Here's the first Diary 'entry'. A look at an iconic Middlewich building which once stood on the corner of Kinderton Street and King Street. Just the sight of this lovely old building is always sure to induce sighs of nostalgia from those who remember it.

Although we try to steer clear of the blatantly untrue 'Middlewich used to be lovely but now it's ruined' school of thought, no one can deny  that our town has never been the same since the sad demise of Moreton's Farmhouse.

MORETON'S FARMHOUSE 1970