Visit to Northwich & Weaver Hall Museum & Workhouse

Thursday 21^st September

We are staying put today as it is rain forecast for this morning so we are getting the bus to Northwich.  We walked down to the bus stop and waited for the bus and yes it was raining, quite heavily as well.

The bus came and off we went into Northwich.  We had a walk around and did some shopping and then went for a coffee before getting the bus back.

The sun had come out by then and also we had a day rider ticket. There is a museum in Northwich which we have kept meaning to visit so we decided to get the bus back into Northwich to visit that and also get good value from our ticket!

Weaver Hall Museum & Workhouse

The Workhouse

The buses are very frequent, every 20 minutes so we were soon back in Northwich and walked the half mile to the Weaver Hall Museum and Workhouse which used to be the local workhouse.

Master's Sitting Room

The museum is housed within the old Northwich Union Workhouse building built from 1837-39 and would have provided a last refuge for the poor of mid-cheshire. The workhouse closed in 1968 and half of the structure was pulled down but the famous author Robert Westall campaigned to save the building and so it survived to become the Museum in 1977.

One of the Displays

The displays tell the story of the workhouse from the daily routine to the diet of the inmates and you can explore the school room, the master’s sitting room and the Guardian’s boardroom where weekly meetings took place to make decisions about the care of the poor.  The Guardian’s were all men and wealthy land owners.

School Room

It also has displays about the Northwich industries such as boatbuilding, chemicals and salt mining and the history of Northwich and the floods that have occurred.

Guardian's Boardroom

It is a really interesting place and we had a good couple of hours wandering around, don’t think I would have wanted to go to the workhouse, far too much like hard work to me!

We then wandered back to the town and walked around the marina and then back to the bus and back to the boat. 

We are staying here tonight then moving on tomorrow.