Warrington’s South east Quarter
In the area to the South-west, between Bridge Street and Sankey Street, the medieval town extends west across Bridge Street as far as modern-day Barbauld Street, before giving way to orchards and gardens and then open countryside. A distillery, tucked away in a courtyard near the Eagle and Child Inn, is the original site of the renowned Warrington gin, the basis of the famous Greenall‘s brewing empire.
The bottom corner towards Bridge Foot, the site of the Austin (Augustinian) Friary, founded around 1280 and a later casualty of Henry VIII’s Reformation, is now punctuated with small-scale industrial works: Jolley’s File Manufactory, Friar’s Green Cotton Manufactory, Friar’s Green Old Tannery and Friar’s Green Saw Mills. To the left of these are signs of eighteenth-century development, including the lovely houses of Stanley Street, designed by the famous Warrington painter and engraver, Hamlet Winstanley. A rented building on Friar’s Green is the earlier home of the Warrington Library, started by the Presbyterian minister Dr John Seddon, later founder of the Warrington Academy, in 1760. It was amalgamated with the Natural History Society’s Museum in 1848, the same year it was taken over by the newly-fledged Warrington Corporation to become the first municipal library in Britain. Continue reading
Re-imagining Warrington 