| There was a time when Bollington had its own police station
with its own policemen - and its own prison! This was known
as the Bridewell. And it is still there although put to better
use today; it's the local electricity sub-station.
You will find it in Round
Gardens, behind the Dog & Partridge pub. The
sign has badly eroded over the years but if you look
carefully you may still see the stone block
engraved with the word BRIDEWELL , it
is just possible to read the name, although the date
is harder to decipher. It is actually 1832.
The police station was opposite, the stone house on
the corner of Round Gardens and Adlington Road.
The word 'bridewell' is
synonymous with a place of detention. I
always think of it as Scottish but that may be just because
the wrod was used in Scotland long after it fell into disuse
in England.
The big doors are almost certainly a modern change, used
to provide access to the power equipment now kept inside.
The main (only?) door in police days would have been immediately
under the Bridewell stone which is in fact the door lintel.
The lighter coloured stone in the wall (in front of the
dovecote) is the closed access to the yard in front of
the Bridewell.
I don't know when the Bridewell went out of use, but once
closed, prisoners would have been taken to Brunswick Street
police station in Macclesfield. Since 2004 that detention
facility has also been closed and today arrested persons
are taken to the custody suite at Middlewich which serves
all of the eastern side of the county. |
