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Crewe Leasing

Did You Know?

The town is perhaps best known as a large railway junction and home to Crewe Works; for many years, it was a major railway engineering facility for manufacturing and overhauling locomotives, but now much reduced in size. From 1946 until 2002, it was also the home of Rolls-Royce motor car production.

The towns railway station is a railway station in the town of Crewe in Cheshire, England. It opened in 1837 and is one of the most significant train stations in the world. It has twelve platforms and a modern passenger entrance containing a bookshop and ticket office.

The modern urban settlement of Crewe was not formally planned out until 1843 by Joseph Locke to consolidate the "railway colony" that had grown up since around 1840–41 in the area near to the railway junction station opened in 1837.

"When the firemen on the footplate of the old steam trains were approaching the station and they had enough steam to get home they would say, 'It's time to put the shovel up the tender.' It was also used for coming to the end of other jobs in Crewe works."

"There was the Blue Door Inn that served really great rump steaks with maitre d’hotel butter on the top (posh for Crewe then. Always had to talk quite quietly because if it got too loud the lady would come from the back and say 'quiet please , the chef is very temperamental ' "

The land Crewe sits on has been inhabited for many year. It sits on part of the town of Monks Coppenhall, which was part of a parish of the same name. Although it was sparsely populated, the people there could attend church in nearby Church Coppenhall. Although we couldn’t find any evidence of archaeological digs in the area, we did manage to trace the town in the Domesday Survey.

The railways were built en mass after 1841 and, by 1843, the junction that all railways passed through had become so large that it needed its own town. Crewe was named after the railway station  and planned out by civil engineer Joseph Locke. It was built expressly to house the railway builders.

In 1854 a cheese market was opened in the train station. Where else would you put your cheese shop? In 1866, a fire broke out in Crewe Hall, destroying it almost completely. 1871 saw a cemetery added with 1877 seeing the Crewe Urban Sanitary District was set up. This was a team of people who could hire street cleaners, ensure the town was paved and well lit.

In 1877, the football club was founded. They are known as Crewe Alexandra and would eventually become one of the founding members of the Football League Division 2. By the turn of the century, they had a population of nearly 30,000 people.

Unlike other towns of the time, Crewe flourished early in the Industrial era, then began to mellow out. By 1901 the population had leapt to 42, 000, and it added a further 10k over the next decade. Back then, it was sizable.

The Bentley Motor Factory, although one of the weirder Crewe landmarks we have reviewed, is exactly that. You can take a tour, which is nice. This is the factory that originally housed Rolls Royce, so it has a lot of history behind it.

The Crewe Heritage Centre is a must-see for all your trainspotters and track lovers out there. It documents the rise of the train station, the junction, and the town, all in one convenient place. You can learn a lot about the industrial era here.