The stories making the headlines in Northwich, Winsford and Middlewich 100 years ago this week...

100 years ago

‘THREE Little Treasures’ was the heading as a group of boys were caught stealing nine-and-a-half pounds of apples in Barnton.

When asked what they were doing, the three Treasure siblings and a fourth boy, all aged between eight and 12, replied ‘knocking apples off’.

Three of the boys were fined 2s 5d and ordered to pay the 16s costs between them. One was let off.

A WINSFORD woman was fined £1 for using foul language within her home, to the extent that a nearby policeman thought the house was collapsing.

The PC told Northwich Petty Sessions that the obscene language sounded, from a distance, as though the roof had fallen in.

‘The house was more like a slaughterhouse than anything’, the PC reported upon opening the door, with the woman bleeding from the face and her husband from the throat following a quarrel.

50 years ago

THE pressing need to remove a ‘slum’ area of land between Church Road, Paradise Street and Witton Street was discussed by the Northwich Urban Council.

It was thought to cost around £250,000 to raze the area, which included 65 unfit homes, a church and a hotel – and 70 families.

A NEW ‘city’ centred on a triangle formed by Northwich, Middlewich and Winsford could eventually supersede London as the capital of England, an MP said.

Charles Mapp, secretary of the group of 53 Labour MPs representing the north west, said the cheap land, the infrastructure and proximity to the motorway and airport all made ‘Mid Cheshire City’ in the Cheshire Plain ‘ideal for a city’.

TRAFFIC lights were planned for Winnington Hill, to be phased into the Bull Ring lights in a £10,864 scheme.

25 years ago

A NEW dense soda plant at Brunner Mond’s Lostock Works was in the pipeline, with fresh plans costed at £5 million.

SECURITY cameras in Northwich town centre were backed by Vale Royal Borough Council.