Crewe is a large town in Cheshire and a key junction on the West Coast Main Line. It's only here because of the railway so has pretty much no history before that arrived, and the railway's only here because the nearby towns of Nantwich and Winsford turned the Grand Junction Railway down. It's hardly the ideal spot for a day out, especially when its top visitor attraction is closed for the winter, so I allocated myself half a day and set out to explore. [Visit Crewe][10 photos]
Crewe station
It's only right to start here, a 12 platform monster of a station and a nationally significant interchange. Head to the peripheral platforms for Carmarthen and Uttoxeter, the central pair for Liverpool and Manchester or watch the fast lines through the centre for the occasional whooshing express to Glasgow or Euston. Two lengthy arched Victorian screen walls survive, attractively so, generating a sense of being either inside or outside, although the true divide is between northbound and southbound. There are better refreshments (and better toilets) on the latter. All sense of history is alas wiped away as you follow the footbridge through the ticket gates into a narrow 1980s steel shed, the gateway to Crewe and a heavy hint that the town beyond isn't going to be as evocative as its station.
Crewefact: The station was originally named after Crewe Hall, a stately pile a mile and a half to the east owned by the Earl of Crewe. The town that subsequently grew alongside is thus rare in being named after its station, not the other way round.
Crewe Heritage Centre
Because we're in Crewe 'Heritage' means trains, in this case several trains of all sizes and various other items of rail-related ephemera. The museum covers part of the grounds of the original Crewe Locomotive Works, some way north of the station, with various sidings allowing complete trains to be displayed. The most famous of these is the Advanced Passenger Train, the sadly flawed but much loved tilting train, specifically the later 1980s APT-P. Not only is this the sole exhibit placed by the entrance it's also visible from passing trains on the West Coast Main Line, most notably the Pendolinos it inspired. Alas the Heritage Centre’s 2024 season doesn't kick off until Good Friday so I couldn’t get any further, although by walking to the back of the neighbouring Tesco megastore car park I did enjoy squinting at Exeter South signalbox and an InterCity 225 train through the railings.
Crewefact: The Queen opened the CHC in 1987 to celebrate Crewe’s 150th anniversary. She and Prince Philip got in for nothing whereas you, stereotypical train-loving reader, will be asked for £8.
Crewe Alexandra
Crewe's football team sprang to life in 1877 as an offshoot from the local cricket club. It's named after Princess Alexandra, then Princess of Wales, suggesting had it been founded much later it could have been called Crewe Mary, Crewe Diana or even Crewe Catherine. These League Two promotion-chasers play immediately alongside the station, hence their nickname is the Railwaymen. The stadium is dominated by a millennial stand resembling a strutty warehouse and used to be known as Gresty Road. But money talks, even in the lower divisions, so its current name is the Mornflake Stadium, a ghastly moniker courtesy of a three year sponsorship deal with a local oat-based cereal manufacturer. Away supporters meanwhile get to spectate from the Whitby Morrison Ice Cream Van Stand, not that I suspect many are tempted to buy a chiming cornet-dispensing vehicle as a result.
Crewefact: While we're doing weird names, Gresty Road leads to the outlying village of Shavington, home to the parish of Shavington cum Gresty.
Memorial Square
Crewe’s civic heart is a cluster of buildings off the Earle Street roundabout surrounding Memorial Square. Crewe Town Council meet in the baroqueMunicipal Buildings on the north side, while nextdoor is the Victorian Market Hall. This was significantly spruced up a couple of years ago and now follows the Boxpark template of multiple small refreshment outlets surrounding a slew of shared tables. It's been nicely done, which is more than can be said for almost anything else in the town centre. Had I visited a day earlier I'd have stumbled upon an HS2 press event attended by local and regional politicians, but instead all I found on the podium was the list of timings Andy Burnham or one of his mates had left behind. Crewe’s really lost out from the northern leg being cancelled, taking with it plans for a new HS2 station surrounded by a commercial hub and thousands of homes. Crewefact: A new History Centre is rising on the site of the former Central Library - tagline 'A new kind of archive experience for residents' - but I'm not sure that's a good enough reason to delay a visit to Crewe until next year.
The shopping centre
Crewe's shopping centre is in a sorry state, in part due to economic slowdown and in part due to poor council decision making. Only the southeast quadrant of ordinary shopping streets survived postwar redevelopment, the remainder having been turned over to three undercover shopping malls of dubious architectural merit. The Victoria Centre has so many empty units that the only shop still open around its central brick piazza is a Cash Converters. The Market Centre is half tumbleweed now its anchor Wilko has vanished. M&S and JD Sports have fled to the Grand Junction retail park because that's where the Cheshire housewives are. And where the Royal Arcade used to be is a vast empty space because it was knocked down in 2020 with high hopes of redevelopment before harsher economic headwinds kicked in. It's left an appalling scar.
Phase 1 - a new bus station and multi-storey carpark - survived the cut and is now approaching green-walled completion. But this lurks on the far side of Phase 2 - the proposed leisure/retail cluster - which the council pulled the plug on in November due to increased construction costs. They're unlikely to be able to do anything significant with the site in the next five years so are considering a feeble raft of 'meanwhile' options like a children’s play area, go-karting and space for outdoor exercise. I’ve seen more disadvantaged towns, indeed the town centre doesn't truly reflect the suburbs, but if you want a 3-bed house for under £150,000 or a value Sunday carvery for £5.99 then Crewe sadly delivers. Crewefact: The local bus company is called D&G Bus, their website is dgbus.co.uk and one of their tiny buses has the registration number DG 57 BUS. I was so excited by this discovery that I almost took a ride.
(big sheds)
Crewe used to be synonymous with train manufacture and maintenance. The majority of the main locomotive works is now housing and a Morrisons, but Alstom still occupy a number of big sheds where trains are checked over and repaired. They're also due to be assembling HS2's bogies, which'll be marginal compensation for the trains whizzing past without stopping. A tad further out is the former Rolls-Royce factory, opened in 1938 to churn out Merlin aero-engines in preparation for fighting the Luftwaffe. After the war production flipped to motorcars, including the iconic Silver Cloud, but also increasingly Bentleys which are still turned out here in their tens of thousands. Don't go and have a look specially, I just happened to be passing. Crewefact: Famous Crewe residents include MP Gwyneth Dunwoody, BMX medallist Shanaze Reade and pouting soapstar Adam Rickitt. Celeb-wise Crewe's no big hitter.
Queen's Park
Crewe's best park is mighty fine, grade II* listed and worth the hike west of the town centre. It was gifted to the town by the London & North-Western Railway to celebrate their 50th anniversary and opened the following year to celebrate Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee. Unusually it's elliptical, with broad axes for promenading, leafy dells spanned by modern footbridges and the obligatory spiky clocktower by the gatehouse. In the centre is a large barnlike cafe, on whose terrace I saw many mums and pensioners enjoying a springlike beverage, and to the south is a splendid landscaped lake created by damming the Valley Brook. My photo shows the view from Doreen's bench where I stopped for a brew before dodging the geese and exploring the war memorial on Burma Star Island. Crewefact: The rats came as a surprise, four of them merrily tucking into the dry grass under a lakeside conifer, but the ducks and geese alongside didn't seem to mind.
If you're local, this is the one you won't believe I trekked out to see, but will be secretly pleased I did.
Joey-the-Swan
In the parish of Wistaston, where the Gresty Brook crosses Valley Road, the waterside parkland goes by the extremely unusual name of Joey-the-Swan. I looked for alternative more-official names on the notices in the car park but nothing was given. The name derives from a male swan who lived in the fish pool outside Wistaston Hall in the 1930s, originally with his mate but then for many years by himself. Joey was a bit of a pecker, apparently, and according to legend liked to venture out to gobble crumbs from the baker's van before one day it ran him over. As well as the greenspace that bears his name (brooky meanders, muddy coverts, mini-playground, millennium boulder, wooden owl) Joey is also commemorated as a wire outline on the village sign that overlooks the site... which, improbably, was designed by a resident called Eric Swan. Wistastonfact: The parkland known as Joey-the-Swan was donated to the people of the village by the Fathers of The Oblate Mission, an order of French missionaries who now use Wistaston Hall as a retreat.
I wouldn't normally waste £80 on a train trip to Crewe, indeed I didn't because I managed to buy a ticket for as little as £5.10 in the Great British Rail Sale in January, a sum I still genuinely can’t believe. I also took the opportunity to visit another town while I was up there, knowing Crewe would never sustain a day, so more about that tomorrow.
