Congleton

Overnight Thurs and Fri just north of Congleton

Our house is around eight miles from Congleton, however other than driving through the outskirts, which aren’t very inspiring, we’ve never bothered to penetrate the town further.

Well, travelling by boat we see it from a canal’s perspective, and the centre of the town has some really nice feature buildings. The canal encounters one the roads in to Congleton at an aqueduct, and from the water it doesn’t seem to stand out, however from the road below it’s a rather attractive 200 year old feature, and still in great condition.

On the aqueduct

….from below.

We walked in to the town for some shopping and the first building to catch our eye was the Town Hall built in 1866 :

We came across a reference to bear-baiting, and a little bit of research revealed that Congleton had become notorious in the 1620s when bear-baiting was a popular sport.  The original bear was a bit tame, and the income from the spectacle wasn’t great, and so the town lacked the money to pay for a new, more aggressive bear from the proceeds. By all accounts, they had to use money saved to buy a bible and then replenished the fund with the income from the increased number of spectators !

Other buildings dating from the 17th and 18th centuries are mostly pubs or hotels now, but still worthy of recording in our view ……

Now a Wetherspoons

In Little Street

Back at the canal side it’s good to see the integration of an old mill and warehouses into a newer development…