A Secret Treasure of Audlem

A secret treasure of Audlem

The field behind my house has been made from the removal of several boundary hedges with the result that it stretches in the West from the river Weaver and in the East to the canal.

I think, it all at one time belonged to' Springfield' and the Mathews family, all now deceased.

At the South end is my garden and at the North end the departing rail link to Nantwich.It has many nooks and crannies each of which has great charm.

There is at the South end a huge hole where material was dug to build the railway track.Pat Mathews always referred to the hole as the 'Ballast Hole'. The ballast hole is in a cutting and has one very steep side about 150 metres long.

During January and most of February it is covered by a carpet of Snowdrops. When these have faded they are replaced by a carpet of Bluebells.

A little beyond the cutting where the embankment starts there is a rather dangerous wooded swamp which will soon be covered in Kingcups or Marsh Marigolds and on the rail embankment grow Prim roses.

I walk past these treasures each morning with my dog and I often feel that it is a great shame that only I see them. I have from time to time seen Badgers, Foxes and Pheasants and an abundance of grey squirrels. I have seen a viper sunning itself. I have seen a mother Stoat moving her young in a close circle around her.

At this time of year I hear a Woodpecker tapping and see the Buzzards hunting.The Badgers and rabbits are not my favourites as the former dig up my lawn and the latter raid my carrots and Parsnips.

And then there are the watercress beds which were made by Pat Mathews in the nineteen thirties. He was a very clever man who harnessed the warm spring and created two parallel streams which discharge into the Weaver. He then planted watercress in each of his streams and harvested them in turn.

He told me that during the nineteen thirties he employed a man full time to tend the beds and divert the spring water down each stream in turn. He also told me that his sales in Manchester wholesale market brought in £40 each week. This is when a bricklayer earned say two pounds each week. The cress still grows along the active stream. As I say a very clever man. I'll tell you some more about him sometime.

On an even earlier historic note. You may have read that the Daily Mail offered a substantial prize for the winner of an air race in 1910 from Croydon to Manchester. Pat recalled that he saw one of the competitors land in the field and refuel his aircraft and make adjustments to his engine and take off again for Manchester. If Pat was sure of what he did see there were only two contestants and the race rules dictated that only two landings were to be made on the journey and both contestants had used up their landing allowance before they came over Audlem. This means that the schoolboy Pat was witness to cheating. Not altogether surprising as the prize was ten thousand pounds which would have been several millions now.

My house is constructed on the railway track which continues on through to Nantwich and Crewe.

This may have been the reason that Springfield was built by Pat's grandfather as, being a surgeon employed by shipping magnates at Liverpool he commuted regularly to Liverpool to tend seamen who had been injured falling from the rigging on incoming ships.

All this from the history past and present of one of Audlem's fields.

A hidden treasure indeed.

Cheers for now

Geoff Farr April 2018.

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