Tour 1

Tour 1
Tour 1 begins at the Hop Pole pub, by the bus station, and takes us down Horsemarket Street, Buttermarket Street, into Church Street, back up Mersey Street, Academy Street and through Time Square to Market Gate.
Warrington Interchange The Hop Pole	We begin our tour at Warrington Interchange (as the bus station is now called). This was opened on 21 August 2006 and cost £7million to build and stands on the former 1970s ring road that was Golborne Street, known as the Inner Circulatory Road. Attached to the Golden Square shopping centre and close to Warrington Central railway station, Golden Square forms the hub of the retail area of the town centre. A new retail, hotel and leisure complex with a town centre cinema is planned along Winwick Street to the north of Midland Way and is due to be completed by around 2010 or 2011. However, by March 2009 work had not yet started. The Hop Pole pub on Horsemarket Street is right outside Warrington Interchange. It was established in 1762 and known as Coops at the beginning of the 20th century. A horse market was once held in Warrington, hence the name, but was actually held near Central Station where the street was wider.¹
Prince of Wales (The Theatre Tavern)	Diagonally opposite the Hop Pole is the Prince of Wales pub on the corner of Scotland Road. It has also been known as The Theatre Tavern. Scotland Road itself is so named because it was where Oliver Cromwell rounded up Scottish prisoners in the Civil War in 1648.²
Scotland Road viewed east (above) and west (below)	Off Scotland Road is Cockhedge Shopping Park, opened in 1984, and originally the site of Cockhedge Mills. It appears in one of the photos on the Memory Lane page. The town's first theatre was the Regent, on Scotland Road, built around 1805 but closed in 1838 when entertainment was moved to another location.³ The building had a new lease of life as a bingo hall until its demolition in the 1980s. The site is now occupied by Cockhedge car park, on the left of the image shown. The view left is from October 2005, whilst the one below left shows Golborne Street in February 2004, before the bus interchange was constructed. My dad tells the story of The Regent building which included an iron veranda with glass to keep customers dry in the rain. A bus driver drove onto the pavement to avoid a delivery truck and crashed straight into it, causing damage to the bus but not to the veranda.
Parr's Bank	The final building of note is occupied by NatWest bank on Winwick Street - Parr's Bank. A plaque on the side dates the current building to 1877. The yard at the side is known as Westminster Place. The owner of the bank donated the funds to build the Parr Hall, to be seen in Tour Two. If you look above the doorway you will still see a sign for Old Bank. The bank was founded in 1788 as Parr & Co and named after Joseph Parr, a sugar refiner. The picture, left, was taken in 2003, before the Golden Square redevelopment began.
START WALKING FROM HERE	From the stone pillars outside the Hope Pole, with the bus station behind you to the right, walk south down the pedestrianised Horsemarket Street towards the fountain. The buildings on the left form part of Cockhedge Shopping Park with a footbridge linking the two sections.
Hatters Row	On the right is Hatters Row, a charming shopping arcade (look up for the sculpture shown left). Hatters Row connects the name of Lewis Carroll to the town, although I don't know how he is connected to Warrington because he was born in Daresbury, a village outside the town to the south, nowadays administered by Halton Council. Maybe the reader can enlighten me. He wrote Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Alice Through The Looking Glass.
Town Hill	Walk along until you reach the first street on the left. This is Town Hill, once known as Pig Hill because a pig market used to be held there.⁴ In 1907 a pub called The Boar's Head stood on Town Hill. The Royal Bank of Scotland building was previously Williams & Glynn's Bank and stands on the site of The Griffin Hotel. See a photo of the bank in a street scene from the 1970s in Memory Lane (Walking Through Time Part 4). The white building on the left is the former Lloyds TSB bank, which merged with its Time Square branch and moved to Golden Square in March 2009. In the 1970s it was Burgess's toy shops where I bought my first set of Top Trumps cards while still at school, a series which is still a popular pastime for youngsters of today. Waysiders on the opposite corner was the former location of Timothy Whites.
The Blue Bell	Opposite is the Blue Bell Inn, pictured. This image is from 1995 and features a blue bell. It was removed soon after because the pub didn't have planning permission to display it. You will also notice the street was not pedestrianised at that time. For a short period in the mid-1990s it operated under the name of TJ Appleton's Food and Drink Emporium, but this was changed back to the Blue Bell later. Lyme Street leads into Golden Square shopping centre and the Old Fish Market to be seen in Tour 2.
	The fountain near the Blue Bell was built in conjunction with the structure further up the street which we will see shortly. It is very effective when operating and captures the imagination of many a child and adult alike. Walk up towards the Thomas Cook travel agent on the right. As you approach it, you will notice a plaque dedicated to Eyre's Press, a printing company where the earliest newspaper in Lancashire was published in 1756, Eyres Weekly Journal, "The Warrington Advertiser".
The 'Skittles'	Continue walking up Horsemarket Street until you arrive at the large circular green structure with a fountain in the centre. You are now at the very centre of Warrington, Market Gate. Market Gate is the meeting point of Warrington's four main streets - Horsemarket Street, Buttermarket Street, Bridge Street and Sankey Street. More on these later. The structure is known locally as the Skittles, and is an award-winning design by American artist Howard Ben Tre. It represents the Ten Guardians and the Well of Light; the Ten Guardians symbolising the people who have protected or worked for Warrington over the past couple of thousand years, those who do now and those who will in the future. The design cost a reputed £5m to build and the townsfolk are still split on whether our money was wisely spent.
Buttermarket Street	We now venture east (left) onto Buttermarket Street, so named because it was once the location of a butter market.⁵ The first block to the right, now the Halifax bank, used to have four pubs side by side - The Currier, The Wheatsheaf, the Fox and the Crown and Sceptre.
	On the opposite side was the Pelican hotel, now housing the Cheltenham & Gloucester building society. Look up to the roof for a sculpture of a pelican.
Bank Street old and new	Next building on the left, Ethel Austin's, replaced the impressive Empire picture house. In between was a billiard and snooker hall with 18 snooker and 2 billiards tables. You entered the hall down some steps. Click here to view it on the Warrington museum website. We now approach Bank Street (on the right). A redevelopment of Time Square was planned which would have transformed the existing site into the leisure and residential complex shown left, containing a cinema, retail, leisure and living accommodation. The artist's impression is courtesy of The Big Apple Warrington, the consortium behind the new scheme. Sadly, the Government refused to grant planning permission in July 2007. A new 30-year vision announced by Warrington Borough Council in 2009 sees an alternative idea which would stretch down to the River Mersey. We will walk back through Time Square later.
Edwin Allen	Next to the British Heart Foundation shop is the oldest surviving business in Buttermarket Street - Edwin Allen arts and crafts shop, which opened in 1894. Look for a date of 1914 on one of the drainpipes. The British Heart Foundation building used to house a branch of Lloyds Bank. On the opposite side is The Lower Angel pub at No 27, pictured. Notice the architecture of the buildings in this part of the town centre, especially the ones on the right. They just don't build them like this anymore.
The Lower Angel	In the olden days (before 1995!), the street was still a bus route. When my dad drove the buses in the 1950s the bus stops were Orford, Kingsway (outside Greenwoods furniture shop by the entry - now the Britannia building society) and the Manchester number 10 was on Scotland Road, close to the access road to Cockhedge Shopping Park. The Lower Angel pub served its last pint on Saturday 7 July 2007 - unless of course you fancied reopening it yourself. Well somebody did because it re-opened again on 26 November 2007. Further along was Syd Ellison's cycle shop.
	On the opposite side of the road there were the gas and electric showrooms Remember them? All call centres and internet now! And a branch of a small supermarket called Tesco... It was previously a Fads decorating shop and Irwin's Grocers. Nowadays an employment agency, bank and a discount goods store occupy those buildings, seen here on the left. Along this section in 1905 was John Gandy's boot and shoe dealer & clogger, and yes, there is a family connection, but I haven't researched my family tree yet so I don't know how we are related, but I believe he was my grandad's cousin.
The former Yates's Wine Lodge is now The Looking Glass (Wetherspoons)	On the corner is The Looking Glass pub, opened on 26 February 2010 as part of the J D Wetherspoons chain. The building was previously Yates's Wine Lodge. This stands on the site of one of Warrington's premier cinemas - The Odeon. I was emailed by Carl who went to The Odeon in Buttermarket Street. He remembers eating the best sausage, egg and chips in a cafe that was up the side alley of the Odeon. It was actually in the same building entered from the alley, but he can't remember its name. Maybe somebody can enlighten us. You can see a photo of the Odeon in Peter's Gallery. If you wish to see a film in Warrington nowadays you have to travel about 3 miles west to Westbrook. Incidentally, that cinema has now been renamed The Odeon! The Wire Works development on Winwick Street (if it gets built) will bring cinema back into town centre.
Scotland Road New Town House	We now come to the junction at Scotland Road. In 1802 Peter Stubs' toolmaking factory occupied the site of the current TK Maxx building. Stubs was born in Warrington in 1756 and ran a file-making business behind his pub in Bridge Street before moving to the Scotland Road site. His files were exported to Europe and America. He died in 1806. The business itself moved to Wilderspool in 1973 when the Scotland Road site closed. The large council office block, New Town House, opened in 1976, is on the site of the Britannia Hotel, which was incorporated into the block before becoming the Toledo restaurant. In 2007, New Town House was voted the ugliest building in Warrington by readers of the Warrington Guardian (it isn't that good!) Walk to the right past the building selling school uniforms (which used to be Russell's Furnishings) and go round into Academy Street until you come across a large stone on the ground.
Glacial erratic Friends Meeting House	It is believed this is a relic of the ice age, having been brought down from the Lake District between 2 million and 10,000 years ago at a time when woolly mammoths still roamed the country. It reminds me of the 'Carry On Cabby' film where Sid James' character tries to convince his wife the new coat he bought her for her anniversary was genuine mammoth - it says Mammoth Fur Sale on the shop window, he quips! It is known to geologists as a "glacial erratic". The first story I ever heard about this stone was that it was a meteorite that had landed on the town from outer space! Do you think somebody was having me on? Find the plaque on the wall behind it. Also in this area is the hidden gem that is Friends Meeting House, often locked up, but you might be lucky enough to walk up the path today. The first building was erected in 1720, with a second in 1830. You might have spotted one entrance to it as you turned the corner. Another entrance is further on past the beauty salon.
Porter's Ale House	Make your way back to Buttermarket Street and continue walking east past the former Kwik Save supermarket until you reach Porter's Ale House. This used to be known as the Cross Keys. Note the crossed keys in the window arches. Immediately past the pub up the driveway there used to be a school close to where Priory Court is now. Opposite Porter's Ale House is Orford Street, which leads to Cockhedge Shopping Park. This is built on the site of Cockhedge Mills, a major employment site for Armitage & Rigby's cotton mill, whose old roof beams have been incorporated into the shopping centre. Read the story of the 1872 fire in Memory Lane. In the Cockhedge area in 1844 was the Crown Glass Works (on Crown Street, which Orford Street originally ran to). By 1905 the site was occupied by Warrington Wire Works.
St Mary's RC Church Ave Maria stonework Photo © Albert Hickson	Continue along Buttermarket Street until you reach the magnificent building that is St Mary's Roman Catholic Church. It was built in the 1870s on the site of a former cotton factory. The designer was Edward Welby Pugin (1834-1875), whose father, Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (1812-1852), designed the Palace of Westminster (more popularly known as the Houses of Parliament). The tower of St Mary's was completed in 1906 and the church is now a Grade II listed building. It is built in pale Pierpoint stone and red Runcorn sandstone. Notice Ave Maria carved into the stone in Albert Hickson's close-up photo. When the church was renovated a few years back, they found a extremely deep hole at one end which went on forever. Engineers quickly backed away from it. Somebody joked that if you don't say your prayers this week you get thrown in as a short cut to the unmentionable place!
The former nunnery	Across the road the white building has served as a nunnery and Warrington Savings Bank, established in 1918, which had a branch at Green Street, Bank Quay (where the roundabout is now on Liverpool Road). More recently it served as the offices of Warrington Housing Association, until they moved into the Gateway building on Sankey Street, which we will pass in Tour 2.
Warrington Conservative Club	At this point, cross the road onto Dial Street and walk a little further down until you reach Warrington Conservative Club. Notice the plaque dedicated to Anna Laetitia (Aikin) Barbauld, who was born in 1743, in Kibworth Harcourt, Leicestershire, and died in 1825, at Stoke Newington in London. She stayed in Warrington from age 15 until she was 30. She was a writer, poet, and editor who wrote on political and social themes. She wrote the hymn "Life! I Know Not What Thou Art", whilst her most important poems included "Corsica" (1768) and "The Invitation" (1773). She edited William Collins' Poetical Works (1794) and The British Novelists, 50 vol. (1810).⁶ Read more about her in Warrington People. [Warrington Library has a book of her poems]
Ampleforth Apartments St Mary's Social Club	Ampleforth Apartments is built on the site of St Mary's Catholic Social Club, shown below left. The photo was taken on 12 May 2005. St Mary's Social Club is seen on 24 May 2003. Cross back over to Buttermarket Street and head towards the roundabout with the Borough Arms pub on the corner. In this section of Buttermarket Street at the beginning of the 20th century, you could benefit from the services of John Himsworth (cutler and tool dealer), William Clegg (draper), James Johnson (tripe dealer) and Peter Lawless, beerhouse keeper at the Borough Arms itself, among others.
Buttermarket St and Dial St	On the way notice the newly landscaped area of Buttermarket Street and Dial Street, which was added in February 2006, creating a much-needed attraction to a run-down area of town. This area was known as Howard's Place in 1905, and when I was a youngster in the 1960s and 1970s it was a car park with a pub on one corner of Fennel Street and Dial Street. I see this area as a desirable place to live with the three brand new apartment blocks - if you can afford them!
Site of the Bridewell as it looked on 3 May 2004	In the 19th Century a site close to the roundabout housed the town's prison, the Bridewell in Irlam Street. It was replaced in 1820 by a larger building and remained on this site until a new building, the current police station, was erected on Arpley Street in 1900. Church Street itself used to be the focus of the town's fairs and markets up to the 13th century.⁷ Take care crossing Mersey Street and walk past the roundabout until you reach historic Church Street.
The Bulls Head	As we walk up the street we pass the Bulls Head, parts of which are said to date back to the 17th Century. Next to it in the 18th century was Warrington's Workhouse. The inmates of the building were orphans and old people, the poor, the sick, and the mentally ill, or lunatics, as they were unfortunately described in those days. Even children worked there, manufacturing pin heads. The workhouse building no longer exists.⁸ The site now features an apartment block, which replaced the Thomas Locker factory, a long-standing wire company, in 2004. You can see the factory in the photo above, "Site of the Bridewell" (the white building), and also in Peter's Gallery (section on Buses 1990 Part 1, white Goldline image)
National School	Further along, past Pinders Farm Drive, is the section of the apartment block which incorporates the front of the old National School building. Rector Powys founded the National School, with funding coming from the state.⁹ The school opened in 1834 and closed in the 1960s.¹⁰ Notice the memorial stone and plaque at the far end of the front path.
Marquis of Granby	The next building is the Tudor-style Marquis of Granby public house, which dates back to around 1660. This was originally the house where James Stanley, 7th Earl of Derby, held his headquarters during the Warrington Siege in 1642-3.¹¹ Notice the plaque on the wall. See also a biographical account of his life in Warrington People.
The former General Wolfe pub and Cottage restaurant	As we approach the traffic lights, cross the road to view the black and white building that is The Cottage restaurant. Oliver Cromwell stayed near here in 1648. According to tradition, he stayed at The Spotted Leopard next door. The site of the Spotted Leopard was more recently occupied by the General Wolfe pub, but has now been converted into private accommodation, seen here on the left of this photo from 12 Apr 2009. It is a listed building in the middle of a conservation area and dates from the middle of the 19th century. The white building in the middle is said to date from the 18th century. The Star Kinema, one of Warrington's earliest cinemas, stood to the left of the General Wolfe between 1914 and 1956, where Apple Court nursing home is now.¹² Read more about Cromwell in Warrington People.
Next you come to Sainsbury's supermarket. This is built on the site of one of Warrington's most famous wire manufacturers, Rylands. The factory was closed in the 1980s and the buildings made way for the supermarket.
Parish Church of St Elphin	Cross the road again and walk down to our final historical feature in this section of Church Street, the Parish Church of St Elphin. Founded in 642AD, it has stood the test of time. The early church was made of wood, and later rebuilt in stone. The 281 ft spire was completed in September 1867.¹³ The church is now a Grade II* listed building. You can venture inside the building on Wednesdays and Saturdays between May and September (check for opening times).
The route we have just covered from Buttermarket Street to Church Street formed part of the No 6 tramway which continued along Manchester Road to the Cemetery. Trams ran in the town between 1902 and 1935. Now walk back towards the roundabout and turn left into Mersey Street.
St Mary's Church Warrington Spiritualist Church	Mersey Street, as you might imagine, leads down to the River Mersey, but we will see the river in Tour 2. Cross over the road at the first pelican crossing and walk along the right side of the street. As you approach 'Club Wired' (the Casi nightclub until 2008), pause to take another look at St Mary's Church down the side street. The Ordnance Survey map of 1905 (now reprinted and in the shops) shows Smith Street at this point. Next along, the map describes a large building as Running Pump between Mersey Street and the back of St Mary's Church. One of three tanneries on Mersey Street was roughly where the Adelphi Vaults pub is now. Opposite is the now-closed Mersey pub. The other two tanneries were further down Mersey Street, out of the range of this tour. Continue walking and turn right into Academy Street, passing Warrington Spiritualist Church on the corner. You can read their 7 principles on the noticeboard outside.
Salvation Army citadel	Next on the right is the Salvation Army Citadel. Look for a blue circular plaque on the front of the building, dedicated to the famous scientist Joseph Priestley, who live in a house which occupied this site. Read his profile in Warrington People. Also, in 1905, Richmond's Gas Stove and Meter Works stood on the site of the citadel. The school mentioned after Porter's Ale House earlier stood back to back with Richmond's.
JJB Leisure Centre	Cross over the road and walk along Academy Way with JJB Sports on your left, B & M store on your right and the market car park and footbridge in front of you, until you reach the pub (called Tamarind Table in 2009). On the site of JJB between 1902 and 1935 was the old Corporation tram depot, leading off Mersey Street at the corner of Lower Bank Street. The gas works stood where the JJB car park and Academy Way is now, with Gas Street between Academy Street and Lower Bank Street. There was a missionary chapel on Lower Bank Street, and also some houses (my dad lived in one of them). Bank Street was an S-shaped street with Holt Street running into the bend, further north than where Academy Way is now (roughly where B & M is located).
Time Square (Academy Way) Market 750th anniversary	Turn right after the pub. You now enter Time Square, the retail and leisure part of town which incorporates the market on the left. Warrington received its royal charter to hold a market in 1255. 2005 saw the 750th anniversary celebrations on the town centre streets. See the Warrington Market page for more. The current market was built on this site in 1972. It used to stand where Golden Square shopping centre is now. Around 100 years ago, however, Warrington Farm occupied the current market site. Milk was one of the main outputs. The animals were kept in sheds as there wasn't actually a field or any grass. The milk section closed in 1911.¹⁴ Don't forget to pay a visit to the Market if you reach this point before 5pm. It is closed on Sundays and Bank Holidays. See Warrington Market.
	Continue your walk through Time Square (Bank Street) until you reach the junction of Buttermarket Street by the British Heart Foundation charity shop. Say hello to Tony on his spud wagon on the way past - he used to work with my dad!
Turn left and walk 50 metres to Market Gate and the Ten Guardians of the town, the green skittles. Look around the area of Market Gate and you will see some plaques on the walls describing more of that area's history.
The Skittles
This brings the first tour to an end. Click here for Tour 2