Wilmslow through time Vanessa Greatorex (Amberley Publishing £ 9.99)
Wilmslow, home to almost 40,000 people, including celebrities like Alex Ferguson and Coronation street Bill Roach, is the subject of a new book,Wilmslow through time, author and historian of Chester, Vanessa Greatorex. Using photos from 1890, as well as signatures, the recent history of the city of Bijou Cheshire is captured in the form of a collection of stories.
Now the homes of luxury cars, as well as the rich and famous (detached houses can cost as little as 6 million pounds), the former milling factories of the city and modest working houses, will earn their place in the century of Greatorex images and comments. Modern prosperity and comfort of Wilmslow are due to significant visual interference in the form of road markings, cars, lampposts and telegraph cables, as well as some rather awful modern architecture, as shown by Church Street photos. However, the author carefully identifies the reasons — usually non-fulfillment, sanitation, or damage from fire in previous decades — for new construction and demolition. In general, the book presents a clear picture of continuity, in which key points of architectural interest and natural beauty are preserved over time and form the basis of Wilmslow's reputation for well-established exclusivity.
Greatorex's excellent prose prose conveys many interesting and truly interesting pieces. For example, on the Jaw-Droppers page on Grove Street, a 1970's photograph of a single camel walking along the streets of Wilmslow sits next to a recent photograph of the equally strange looking Barclays Bank, which the author loudly describes as a more “seaside” pavilion than a bank . A very real sense of personal interaction with the city and its people is evident everywhere. The reader cannot help but share the author’s enormous disappointment by failing to find a spectacularly beautiful scene - a regulated line of winter poplars on the river bank, as well as their symmetrical reflection in water - photos of 1905 T.Baddely sepia.
As a thriller writer myself, I was particularly interested to see this, in true Killing Midsomer tradition, a dark flipside to the bucolic idyll proposed by photographs such as the Wilmslow Carnival pick-ups and horse floats with settler settlers. In 1984, Wilmslow made international headlines the site of Lindow Man, whose surprisingly well-preserved body was found in a peaty, common ground not far from Wilmslow.
Greatorex finishes his book with a prisoner depiction of an excavation site for his remains, complete with an inset of a wretched, crumpled, high-born, young man who was ritually murdered and his body thrown into the mud of Wilmslow. The shadow of his tragedy passes through time: in addition to Lindow Man, excavations excavated a fragment of the skull that prompted a local man, Peter Rein-Bardt, to confess to the murder of his wife in the 1950s. He was convicted, although a fragment of the skull belonged to the Iron Age (some archeologists claim Roman) Wilmslow.
Wilmslow through time is more than a well-presented, well-readable work. It is the labor of love of a highly professional researcher and writer, whose clear closeness and affection for the landscape of her childhood is evident in this carefully thought-out and well-presented series of anecdotes and images.
