A pint …… four stamps ……… and an option on a telegram please

There are many ways of saving a redundant public building.

Now I don’t share the politics of the owner of Wetherspoons, but I must acknowledge the company has saved more than a few iconic buildings which otherwise would have been demolished for a heap of town houses, or apartments.

But it has survived.

The blue plaque which sits beside the main entrance, tells me that it was designed by H.M. Office of Works in 1914 and is a listed Grade ll building.

 

I have yet to find out when it closed, but I know that before it was built the Post Office was on the opposite  side of Witton Street.

I do know that it was "A timber-framed building designed to be lifted up in the event of subsidence. It has recessed plaster panels, and a tiled roof. The building is in three storeys plus an attic. Its architectural style is Elizabethan with ornate decoration. Above the entrance is an oriel window"*

To which I can add that "It was built between 1914-19, as the town’s main post office.  Although the building was finished in 1915 it was not opened and used because of the First World War taking place.  Instead it was left closed until 1919, after the end of the war, when it was finally opened.  It was the town’s ‘largest liftable building’.  It became a public house in the 1990s and takes its name from the world’s first-ever adhesive postage stamp".**

*Listed buildings of Cheshire; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Listed_buildings_in_Northwich

**Northwich Townscape Heritage Progect, Listed Buildings, https://www.northwich-th.co.uk/buildings/listed-buildings/

 

Location; Northwich

Pictures; the former Post Office, Witton Street, Northwich, 2023, from the collection of Andrew Simpson