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Crewe

I'll step over there and photograph it myself when I have time. :D
 
I'll just stroll onto the car park and snap away. ;)
 
There's a beer festival - the Rail Ale Festival - at the Heritage Centre this weekend! We'll be there, any more takers? :D
 
drbates said:
Coming from the direction on Nantwich Road you can peek over the wall of the Arms just as you come over the bridge and see a an area that apears tom have no use and looks like it leads to a tunnel..

http://www.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&so...=Y8rxHprTMkl2eSsocJS-XA&cbp=12,338.36,,0,4.86

Its that brick box dead ahead - the one the overlaps the left hand side of the hotel. Sadly the wall is quite tall, so unless you've well over 6ft you probably will not see over it :(

EDIT: Take a step to the left - Google insists on re-drawing the screen even though the link does refer to the correct view...

Right, here's an old photo of t'Arms.

The arch in the middle is for carriages to pass through. (Horses are present in spirit, look at the state of the road! :lol: )

Here it is now, with the arch bricked up.

You can wander around the forecourt/car park there and probably take a discreet photo or two as pedestrians often use it as a short cut to the station. So, that's what I'll do, if necessary. ;)
 
There's a ghost hunt at Crewe Station tomorrow night. I may be able to wangle a place on it. If there's another I'm certainly booking.
 
Today a work colleague shared a spooky experience he had in Crewe, in October 1968.

He had just walked a young lady home who had to be in for 10pm. This is important, because the couple were young enough not to be getting drunk!

So after delivering her safely to her door he set off home along Rigby Avenue and suddenly heard a church-type bell ringing the hour. Ah, he thought, only just ten o'clock! Her Dad must be pleased!

However, there's no church clock nearby and the local town clock, Big Bill, does the introductory chiming thing before giving the time. When that occurred to him he was looking down and noticed that the road was now a dirt track. He looked up and saw a man approaching, in full Royalist rig - tall hat, ruff etc. As he gaped in shock, the man, who was ignoring him, crossed the road and walked through a tall hedge. Everything then reverted to normal and my friend wandered home in shock.

Mad, eh!
 
Today a work colleague shared a spooky experience he had in Crewe, in October 1968. ...

Sounds like a good candidate for the Time Slips thread ... :thought:
 
Sounds like a good candidate for the Time Slips thread ... :thought:

He told us another story too. Back in the '70s when he was a railway guard, he was sitting at a ta able on a train chatting to a train driver called Edgar. Then suddenly Edgar was gone, vanished. My friend was a little puzzled but thought perhaps Edgar'd popped to the bog without him noticing. Then Edgar was back, just as abruptly.

My friend asked 'Where did you go to?' but Edgar said he'd been there all along.
Shortly afterwards, say a week or two, Edgar was accidentally run down and killed by a train while crossing tracks.
This is rare, but it happens when railway staff aren't on their guard. There was no suggestion of suicide.
 
And, AND, another colleague told us about The Noises From The Wall.

There are tunnels under Crewe Station which were used by the Post Office for moving wagons with sacks of mail between platforms. (I did that work and it was very physical and strenuous!)

These days some of the old GPO tunnels have been converted for use as passenger walkways, and very smart they are too.

One is thoughtfully preserved in its original condition - peeling ancient paint on bare brickwork, crumbly concrete floor, buzzing overhead lights, ferns growing out of walls, water dripping, rumbling of trains overhead, etc - as a staff-only passage. Possibly the most Gothic place in Crewe.

Anyway...
When the tunnels were being tidied up and incorporated into the new station entrance, a brick wall at one end had to be taken down and the ground behind it excavated. The workmen set onto it heard weird noises all the time they were there, like moaning and groaning, maybe a bit of screaming. It rattled them enough for some to walk off the job and they still won't walk through there.

Most excitingly, I'm told that a recording of the sounds exists, and is available on YouTube!
 
It does sound almost human. But the regularity and consistency of the sound leads me to think that it's something to do with the structure of the tunnel and the (apparent) flooding. I'm going to suggest that it's a siphoning effect, with water draining away and air coming out of a pipe.
 
It is defintely regular in its sound pattern. It could be the sound of some sort of machinery travelling through a pipe perhaps.
 
Just saw this thread tonight—I've had some crappy jobs, but never any as creepy as taking loads of mail through eerie tunnels like that! :ghunt:
Congrats on surviving, Escargot! Even tho' the regularity of the mystery noise makes me think the cause is mechanical or natural, it still sounds super creepy!
 
We visit now and then, wife is interested in family history and some
of hers lived in Crew, I like trains so a interesting time is had by all.
 
We visit now and then, wife is interested in family history and some
of hers lived in Crew, I like trains so a interesting time is had by all.

Ooooh, what part of Crewe did they live in? Did they work on t'railway?

My forebears came to Crewe, as everyone's did, from far-flung places. One lot arrived after a legendary cart ride from mid-Shropshire, where one of our number had been hanged for sheep-stealing. I am proud.
 
Ooooh, what part of Crewe did they live in? Did they work on t'railway?

My sister tells me that our family, who all seemed Northampton through and through, may have started off in Crewe and migrated south along the railways. They all ended up in the shoe industry rather than the trains.
 
Possibly of interest:

From the Cheshire Historic Towns Survey -
Crewe Archaeological Assessment

No treasure has been found locally although I'm told 'There was a superb archaeological find in around 1840 when GJR workers excavating a grave pit up near St Michaels uncovered the remains of "an antediluvian animal of immense size" including a tooth which weighed 7 pounds. The animal was thought to have been an extinct species of elephant.'

When I asked what happened to it, I was told 'It went off to Stafford where it was on display for a while. After that, no one knows.'
 
Valentine's day Crewe.jpg
 
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