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Reflections in the Lake
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A BIT OF HISTORY
"Bottom" streetKnutsford - Cranford
"An evolving town."
I grew up close to Knutsford and went there often as a child on the way to visit my grandparents.
I got to know it as a place associated with King Canute - some said it was a corruption of the good king's name.
I preferred the association with one of my favourite authors - Mrs Mary Gaskell who wrote Cranford (said to be based on the years she spent there in her youth) and also author of Mary Barton - one of the earliest novels of the English Industrial Revolution.
By the 1960's Knutsford was becoming gentrified as a Cheshire dormitory town for Manchester. Over the following decades a rash of new money, new builds, incomers, bistro restaurants - featured in good dining guides - transformed the quiet town I knew into a very different place - with Fri-Sat No-Go areas .
But some of its charm remains and can be experienced on quiet days and the surrounding countryside, though twice as populated,is still amongst the best Cheshire has to offer.
