Wednesday, 20 January 2016

Interesting buildings

Paul Balmer left a reply to my query about Southwich in yesterday’s post. “There are five original "Domesday Wiches" mentioned in the Domesday Book - Middlewich, Nantwich, Northwich, Leftwich and Droitwich.”

Today I went for a local walk through Middlewich and this time was looking up.  Two buildings captured my attention.  Both of them appear to be asian food outlets, but this wasn’t the thing I noticed.  The first building is located near the Bull Ring.

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It’s the front of the gable above the signage.  Why is there a bull’s head above the door and at either end of the roofline.  Perhaps this was originally a butcher’s shop?  Or was there a link to the adjacent Bull Ring?

Again look at the top of this next building.

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It Is now a chinese restaurant but the arched top to the facade and what appears to be numerous double doors on the ground floor suggest to me it may have been a theatre? 

After a short Google search I found the following link here which states “The Alhambra Cinema was operating prior to 1934. It had a 22 feet wide proscenium and was equipped with a Western Electric(WE) sound system. It was operated by Sandbach Cinemas Ltd.

In 1960 it was taken over by Miles Jervis Cinemas. Still open in 1966, it soon became a bingo club.”

The chinese restaurant was established in 2014.

2 comments :

Alf said...

The article states that the Chinese was in use by 2014, in fact I can remember patronising the establishment in 2002 when I first moved to the area.

Tom and Jan said...

Alf, I'd believe your local knowledge over The Net!