Nantwich is indeed the attractive market town the guidebooks promise it to be. We strolled down Welsh Row from the canal past elegant Georgian houses and smart Victorian terraces with perfect gardens, over the River Weaver bridge and into a town centre that has remained remarkably unsullied by the corporate architectural savagery of the building societies, banks and High Street multiples whose bland facades have destroyed many a similar town.
No, Nantwich is charming, a maze of irregular streets and local shops. It is also extremely affluent, a mix of Cheshire land owning 'old money' and footballers' wives 'new money'. The biggest shop in town is a massive Christians Kitchens, the bespoke kitchen builders so sure of their place in the commercial world that the windows are clothed by blinds and you have to go in the shop to examine the wares! Right across the road is a sizeable Aga shop and everywhere you look are expensive clothes shops and chic coffee parlours. But there was a delightful little indoor market of largely amateur stallholders selling bric a brac - plus (inevitably in such posh environs) a plethora of charity shops so we could re-stock Star's paperback library.
Posh it might be, but Nantwich is a town like many towns used to be and all too few are today.
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