Cheshire: pubs and their signs 7

Considering this is my seventh blog on pubs and their signs in Cheshire, you could be forgiven for thinking I drink rather a lot, maybe even attend regular meetings of AA. But, no! My fascination is with the pubs’ signs and their histories, not with the alcohol served within, though I do admit to having downed a half of cider at one of these taverns and enjoyed a rather scrumptious meal at another. So, let’s begin …

The Badger, Church Minshull

I just happened to be driving through Church Minshull one day with a friend when I screeched ‘Pub sign’ and she slammed on the brakes – I have her well trained! After a complete renovation in 2011, The Badger Inn is looking very sleek and proud of its long history. Their website explains:  

The Badger Inn was built of brick at the end of the 18th century, probably 1770 and was first called The Brook Arms, after the Lords of the Manor, who had just purchased the estate. There was almost certainly an Inn on the site previously, which makes The Badger one of the first buildings in the village to be rebuilt by the Brooke dynasty. The Brooke family crest was of a brock, better known as a badger, hence the change of name to that of the present day. It was an old coaching Inn and the two storey part of the building was a coach house before it became a garage with a single petrol pump. This was later converted into a restaurant. Bare knuckle fighting was a regular sport here. In 1916, Mr Tite, the landlord, who hopefully did not take his name too seriously, died and moved next door to St. Bartholomew's Church, which he had always actively supported. The Inn was pebble dashed in 1934 and is listed as 'of architectural merit'.

Cock o’ Budworth, Great Budworth

Though the pub’s website says it’s a former 18th century coaching inn, the Cock o’ Budworth is, in fact, a century older. The Historic England website says it was originally a farmhouse and barn, dating from mid 17th and early 18th centuries, and this earlier construction date is confirmed by the pub’s inclusion in a work of rhymed Latin and doggerel English verse called Drunken Barnaby’s Four Journeys to the North of England, written by poet Richard Braithwaite and published in 1638. 

Here’s what ‘Drunken Barnaby’ has to say about the Cock:

Thence to th’ Cock at Budworth, where I

Drank strong ale as brown as a berry:

Till at last with deep healths felled,

To my bed I was compelled:

I for state was bravely sorted,

By two porters well supported.

Hopefully patrons in the 21st century don’t end up quite so inebriated!

The George and the Dragon, Great Budworth

Just along the road and up the hill from the Cock is this perfect example of the English village pub. The George and the Dragon sits at the heart of Great Budworth, directly opposite the beautiful Church of St Mary’s and All Saints and nestled amongst the traditional heritage-listed cottages of this picture-postcard village.

Parts of the pub date back to 1722, as witnessed by the original stone bar and its inscription 'NIL NIMIUM CUPITO', ‘I desire nothing to excess’. In 1875, local lord Egerton-Warburton commissioned architect John Douglas to restore and update the simple three-bay Georgian inn – the architect’s drawing is shown above left. Douglas is responsible for the addition of the mullioned windows, the tall chimneys and the steep pyramidal turret. The pub sign is a beauty! According to Historic England, the cut-out pictorial sign was made in Nuremberg and the long wrought-iron bracket from which it hangs was made by the Arley estate blacksmith in the 1880s.

The Leigh Arms is the white building behind the bridge

The Leigh Arms, Acton Bridge 

I had been for a lovely long walk alongside the river Weaver the day I visited the Leigh Arms, and was feeling rather peckish. Unfortunately, the restaurant was fully booked – it’s obviously a popular place with the locals. The Leigh Arms sits conveniently between the River Weaver and the Trent and Mersey Canal so, in the summer months, it’s also popular with boaties and with walkers who enjoy the trails beside both waterways.

Dating from the 16th century and formerly called The Bridge Inn because it sat adjacent to the old stone bridge that crossed the river at this point, the Leigh Arms was also a steam packet inn, serving patrons who sailed the route from Northwich to Liverpool in the early 1800s. Though many of the original features have now disappeared, the pub does still have some wonderful stained glass, including this panel protraying Fat Thomas Forshaw promoting Threlfalls’ and another jovial character advertising Silver Buckle Ale.

The Riverside Inn, Acton Bridge

On the day of my Weaver walk, when we couldn’t get a meal at the Leigh Arms, my friend and I drove a short distance across the river to this place, The Riverside Inn, a Marston’s public house. It sits in a picturesque position right next to the river so is another popular place for canal boaters during the summer months, and the food was certainly very tasty.

I’ve since discovered that The Weaver Refining Company, which used to make glue and gelatine by rendering down the carcasses of cattle, had its factory not far from this place and the factory’s office block was on the site of the Riverside Inn. Thank goodness that factory’s long gone – the smell would be enough to put you off your dinner, let alone a nice pint of ale.

Cheshire walks: Acton Bridge to Dutton Locks

One thing I quickly realised about British winters is that blue-sky days can be few and far between, especially in the mostly grey days of January. So, when last Wednesday dawned bright, clear and cold, I just had to get out and enjoy it.

My housemate was amenable to an outing so in the car we hopped and off we headed to Acton Bridge. I wanted to photograph the bridge (for a project on swing bridges) and we hadn’t actually planned a walk but, sometimes, when you see a path leading off into the distance, you’ve just got to follow it … so off we went.

The Acton Bridge Swing Bridge crosses the River Weaver and, as it name implies, it can rotate to allow tall river traffic to pass along the river. Swing bridges are fascinating feats of engineering and are relatively common on England’s canals but more on that in a forthcoming blog.

The countryside was looking lovely in the sunshine – a patchwork of dark brown ploughed paddocks and bright green grassy fields edged by elderly oak, ash and beech trees. I thought that was a gate in the fence until I looked closer and realised it’s actually a hunt fence. Although the 2005 Hunting Act banned traditional fox hunting in this country, hunting is still part of countryside culture – only the manner of the hunt has changed.

The reeds lining the river banks glowed in the wintery sun and, though the slight breeze prevented perfect reflections much of the time, there was still a pretty rippled effect on the water. We weren’t intending to walk far as my housemate has a gammy knee but, when we saw that bridge in the distance, we just had to investigate.

And as we got closer the waterway divided and the view got even more intriguing. Now, we obviously had to go further and check out what that was in the river behind the bridge and then, of course, we would have to cross the bridge and check out those boats.

Though we didn’t realise it at the beginning of our walk, our route alongside the river is part of the Weaver Way, a 40-mile-long trail that runs from Frodsham in the north to Audlem in south Cheshire. As the signpost informed us, we were at the halfway point between Frodsham and Northwich. As this section of the Way is only 10 miles long, I plan to do it once the weather improves a little. I do love me a pretty canal-side walk!

From that pedestrian bridge we’d seen in the distance, the further structure became clear. These sluices were built way back in the 1870s, as part of the flood defences that made the Weaver Navigation (the man-made parts of this waterway) a leader in water management at that time. The architectural style is Baroque and each of the eight arches carries a sluice gate, though unfortunately we couldn’t see the water flowing out the other side.

The half-submerged boat, the M.V. Chica, has been in the river since 1993 and is something of a mystery. Some web research produced a report penned by a son-in-law of Thomas Henry Barlow, the last Master of the Chica, which states, amongst other things, that the ship was built in Norway in 1894, was commandeered by the Germans in 1940, was a trader along the North African coast for a time and, in its last incarnation, provided pleasure cruises along the Weaver.

The Chica sits just a hop, skip and a short swim from Dutton Locks. Built in 1874, when the River Weaver and Weaver Navigation were used to transport salt to the Port of Liverpool, this is one of five sets of double locks on this waterway. They were built as replacements for the original eleven smaller locks so that coastal freighters up to 1000 tons could use the river. Although the wooden lock gates looked a bit decrepit to me, the locks are still fully functioning.

We explored the locks, crossing from one side to the other and back again. But we couldn’t stop there. As you can see in the photos (above and below), from the locks we could see there were more things to look at just up ahead.

The former lockkeepers cottages are actually on an island – the river splits here, with one part flowing through the locks and the other through the sluices. That branch of the river rejoins the main stream under the twin-span footbridge known as the Dutton Horse Bridge. Built between 1915 and 1919, according to Wiki, this is one of the ‘earliest remaining examples of a laminated timber structure’ and ‘is also believed to be the sole laminated greenheart timber bridge in the country’. 

Up ahead, we could see the Grade II listed Dutton Viaduct, where the West Coast Main Line railway crosses the River Weaver. Its 20 arches were built in 1836 of red sandstone at a cost of £54,440. 

We didn’t get any closer to the viaduct. My housemate’s gammy knee was beginning to feel the strain of our walk and the clouds were building, making the day feel even colder, so we called it quits at the Horse Bridge. We retraced our steps back to Acton Bridge, drove a short distance further along the river and rewarded ourselves with a delicious lunch at The Riverside Inn, enjoying lovely views of the river as we ate. What a thoroughly pleasant outing it had been!