MaccAbout
An introduction and/or a
reminiscence of buildings and places in Macclesfield town structured
around the leaflets Town Trail and Silk Trail produced by Macclesfield Borough Council
...
... giving a potted history
of the town and of individual buildings and places of interest.
The Town Trail starts at
the Sunday School on Roe Street, now also known as The Heritage
Centre where the large assembly hall is used for concerts and
the Silk Screen Film Society
and which also houses a unit of the Silk
Museum, their Silk Shop and the Mulberry Tree Coffee Shop.
At a time when universal
education was not available, the Sunday School was instituted
in 1796 and lessons were held in factories and workshop until
this building was erected. The leaflet tells us the building was
opened in 1814, having taken less than a year to build. Of the
£5600 cost, over £1500 was raised by the pupils and
teachers.
Number 2 on the itinerary,
the Quaker Meeting House (1703), off Mill Street, is not currently
accessible.
Of Mill Street, the leaflet
points out that it comprises mostly 19th Century buildings behind
the modern shopfronts but offers no information on this striking
building, now a restaurant, previously for many years an electrician's
showroom and earlier, I believe, one of Macclesfield' s many public
houses.
Opposite is the white edifice
(1922) of Macclesfield's last operating cinema and theatre: the
Majestic, now a disco pub.
A general view, from 2003,
back down Mill Street, with the Majestic building prominent.
Down an alley, standing
guard on the site of Macclesfield Castle (actually a castellated
mansion - long since obliterated)(5), the premises of Brian Ollier
- Portrait Photography (a proper photographer) with the
Hovis Mill in middle background.
The steep cobbled hill of
Church Street (8) ...
... and Churchside (late
Churchwallgate) (9) at the top of the hill with the pillared entrance
of an 18th century building (no. 43) believed to have been the
townhouse of the Leghs of Lyme.
At the end of the churchyard,
the 108 Steps (10), one of the three stepped pedestrian ways down
the bluff and linking to the Waters Green area of town.
On the right St Michael's
Terrace (11) perched on the edge of the drop. Here with its rather
unprepossessing and much patched exterior, is No.5, built in the
sixteenth century.
Further round, behind the
church is the Brocklehurst Memorial Garden known universally as
Sparrow Park (12) with views over the lower town and to the hills
behind. Showing from this angle the unmistakable frontage of Arighi
Bianchi's rather grand furniture and furnishings emporium,
surprisingly absent from the Town Trail, with the fields and copses
of Higher Hurdsfield on the skyline.
The Town Hall (15) viewed
from the Market Place (13). The original section with portico
facing the entrance to the Parish Church was built in 1824. The
larger and deeper portico and section on the left and facing Chestergate
was added in 1870.
Also fronting the Market
Place this newly and sympathetically refurbished building (1913)
...
... and facing the Parish
Church, these two. 'Ye old shop' is the legend on the dark panel
above Donald Massey's name-board but the building doesn't rate
a mention in the Town Trail.
To be Continued
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