Crewe
Crewe is a railway town and civil parish in the unitary authority of Cheshire East in Cheshire, England. At the 2021 census, the parish had a population of 55,318 and the built-up area had a population of 76,437.
Crewe is perhaps best known as a large railway junction and home to Crewe Works; for many years, it was a major railway engineering facility for manufacturing and overhauling locomotives, but is now much reduced in size. From 1946 until 2002, it was also the home of Rolls-Royce motor car production. The Pyms Lane factory on the west of the town now exclusively produces Bentley motor cars. Crewe is north-west of London, south of Manchester city centre and south-east of Liverpool city centre.
History
Medieval
The name derives from an Old Welsh word criu, meaning 'weir' or 'crossing'. The earliest record is in the Domesday Book, where it is written as Creu. The original settlement of Crewe lies to the east of the modern town and was historically a township in the parish of Barthomley. The original settlement formally changed its name to Crewe Green in 1984 to distinguish it from the newer town to its west.Modern
The town of Crewe owes its existence to Crewe railway station, which opened in 1837 on the Grand Junction Railway. When the route for the railway was being planned, alternative routes and locations for the main station in this area were considered; Winsford, 7 miles to the north, had rejected an earlier proposal, as had local landowners in neighbouring Nantwich, 4 miles away. The company then settled on the route through Crewe and the station was built in fields near Crewe Hall. The station was in the township of Crewe, but the land north-west of the station was in the neighbouring township of Monks Coppenhall, which formed part of the parish of Coppenhall.The company built its main locomotive works to the north of Crewe railway station; a railway colony soon started developing in the area north-west of the station. In 1840, Joseph Locke, chief engineer of the Grand Junction Railway, produced plans for a new town there. The railway company built much of the early town itself in the 1840s and 1850s. Although the nascent town was in the township of Monks Coppenhall rather than the Crewe township, it was known as Crewe from the start. The modern town of Crewe was thus named after the railway station, rather than the other way round.
The population expanded rapidly to reach 40,000 by 1871. The town has a large park, Queen's Park, laid out by engineer Francis Webb; the land for which was donated by the London and North Western Railway, the successor to the GJR. It has been suggested that their motivation was to prevent the rival Great Western Railway building a station on the site, but the available evidence indicates otherwise.
Webb took a great interest in local politics and was "the most influential individual in the town". "Described just before his retirement as 'the King of Crewe', Webb came to exercise control over the working lives of over 18,000 men - one third of the total LNWR workforce. Over half these lived in Crewe, around 8,000 being employed at the locomotive works. Several recreational and sporting organisations were a direct result of Webb's influence and others received benefit from his support." These included the LNWR Cricket Club and the Crewe Alexandra Athletic Club. However, Webb's influence allegedly also extended to intimidation of Liberal Party supporters. In September 1885, the editor of the Crewe Chronicle published charges against Webb, saying "That through the action, direct and indirect, of Tory railway officialism, the political life of Crewe is cramped and hindered beyond recognition". In November 1889, the borough council debated a motion which accused LNWR managers of working with Crewe Tories "to crush Liberalism altogether out of the town": "... by intimidation and persecution of your Liberal workmen, and by making the chances of promotion depend upon subserviency to the Tory political demands of the Management, they have created a state of political serfdom in the works." In December 1889, Liberal statesman William Ewart Gladstone wrote a letter to the Chronicle condemning the company's behaviour in the town.
The railway provided an endowment towards the building and upkeep of Christ Church. Until 1897 its vicar, non-conformist ministers and schoolteachers received concessionary passes, the school having been established in 1842. The company provided a doctor's surgery with a scheme of health insurance. A gasworks was built and the works water supply was adapted to provide drinking water and a public baths. The railway also opened a cheese market in 1854 and a clothing factory for John Compton who provided the company uniforms, while McCorquodale of Liverpool set up a printing works.
During World War II, the strategic presence of the railways and Rolls-Royce engineering works made Crewe a target for enemy air raids and it was in the flight path to Liverpool. The borough lost 35 civilians to these. The worst raid was on 29 August 1940 when some 50 houses were destroyed, close to the station.
Crewe crater on Mars is named after the town of Crewe. Crewe was described by author Alan Garner in his novel Red Shift as "the ultimate reality."
Crewe was mentioned in 1984 as the setting of the 19th episode The Flying Kipper, in the first series of Thomas & Friends.
The town unsuccessfully bid for city status as part of the Platinum Jubilee Civic Honours in 2022.
Governance
There are two tiers of local government covering Crewe, at civil parish and unitary authority level: Crewe Town Council and Cheshire East Council. The town council is based at 1 Chantry Court on Forge Street. Cheshire East Council also has its main offices in the town, at Delamere House on Delamere Street, with the Municipal Buildings on Earle Street being used for some council meetings. Some outer parts of the built-up area lie outside the parish, notably in the neighbouring parishes of Leighton, Woolstanwood, Wistaston, and Rope.For national elections, the town forms part of the Crewe and Nantwich constituency.
Administrative history
The original settlement of Crewe was historically a township in the parish of Barthomley. The area where the modern town developed was in the neighbouring township of Monks Coppenhall, in the parish of Coppenhall. Both Barthomley and Coppenhall parishes formed part of the Nantwich hundred of Cheshire.In 1859, the township of Monks Coppenhall was made a local government district, administered by an elected local board. The district's name was changed from Monks Coppenhall to Crewe in 1869. Townships were redefined as civil parishes in 1866, and whilst the local government district was renamed in 1869, the civil parish was not. As such, there was a Crewe district which contained the parish of Monks Coppenhall, but did not contain the parish of Crewe. An old, local riddle describes the somewhat unusual states of affairs: "The place which is Crewe is not Crewe, and the place which is not Crewe is Crewe."
In 1877, the Crewe local government district was incorporated to become a municipal borough. The borough council later built the Municipal Buildings on Earle Street to serve as its headquarters, opening in 1905.
The railway station remained part of the neighbouring parish of Crewe, rather than the borough of Crewe, until 1936. The borough boundary was significantly enlarged in 1936 to absorb the parish of Church Coppenhall and parts of several other neighbouring parishes, including the area of Crewe parish around the railway station. The reduced Crewe parish to the east of the town formally changed its name to Crewe Green in 1984.
The borough of Crewe was abolished in 1974 under the Local Government Act 1972. The area became part of the larger borough of Crewe and Nantwich, also covering the nearby town of Nantwich and surrounding rural areas. The government originally proposed calling the new borough Crewe, but the shadow authority elected in 1973 to oversee the transition changed the name to Crewe and Nantwich before the new arrangements came into effect.
In 2009, Cheshire East Council was created, taking over the functions of Crewe and Nantwich Borough Council and Cheshire County Council, which were both abolished. The area of the former borough of Crewe had been unparished since the 1974 reforms, but following the 2009 reforms it was decided to create a parish covering the area. A new parish of Crewe was therefore created in 2013, with its parish council taking the name Crewe Town Council.
Climate
Like most of the United Kingdom, Crewe has an oceanic climate, with warm summers and cool winters and relatively little temperature change throughout the year.Economy
The railways still play a part in local industry at Crewe Works, which carries out train maintenance and inspection. It has been owned by Alstom since 2021. At its height, the site employed over 20,000 people but, by 2005, fewer than 1,000 remained, with a further 270 redundancies announced in November of that year. Currently Alstom employs 6,000 people across the UK and Ireland. Much of the site once occupied by the works has been sold and is now occupied by a supermarket, leisure park and a large new health centre.There is still an electric locomotive maintenance depot to the north of the railway station, operated by DB Cargo UK. The diesel locomotive maintenance depot, having closed in 2003, reopened in 2015 as a maintenance facility for Locomotive Services Limited, having undergone major structural repairs.
The Bentley car factory is on Pyms Lane to the west of town. As of early 2010, there are about 3,500 working at the site. The factory used to produce Rolls-Royce cars, until the licence for the brand transferred from Bentley's owners Volkswagen to rival BMW in 2003.
There is a BAE Systems Land & Armaments factory in the village of Radway Green near Alsager, producing small arms ammunition for the British armed forces.
The headquarters of Focus DIY, which went into administration in 2011, was in the town. Off-licence chain Bargain Booze is also Crewe-based; it was bought-out in 2018 by Sir Anwar Pervez' conglomerate Bestway for £7m, putting drinks retailing alongside its Manchester-based Well Pharmacy.
Several business parks around the town host light industry and offices. Crewe Business Park is a 67-acre site with offices, research and IT manufacturing. Major corporations with a presence in the park include Air Products, Barclays and Fujitsu. The 12-acre Crewe Gates Industrial Estate is adjacent to Crewe Business Park, with smaller industry including the ice cream van manufacturer Whitby Morrison. The Weston Gate area has light industry and distribution. Marshfield Bank Employment Park is to the west of the town and includes offices, manufacturing and distribution. There are industrial and light industrial units at Radway Green.
The town has two small shopping centres: the Victoria Centre and the Market Centre. There are outdoor markets throughout the week. Grand Junction Retail Park is just outside the centre of town. Nantwich Road provides a wide range of secondary local shops, with a variety of small retailers and estate agents.
The Market Centre is the largest shopping centre in Crewe. It is situated in the heart of the town centre with a few national retailers, including B&M, Poundstretcher and Peacocks. There are three large car parks nearby and Crewe bus station is a five-minute walk from the shopping centre. It has a weekly footfall of approximately 100,000 visitors.