A Quick Cruise Around Crewe

9 min readSep 29, 2025

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Another of those places I’ve never visited. I’ve been through it a lot of times on the train, I’ve changed trains there, I’ve parked in the station car park in order to drop my mum off for a train there. But I’ve never set foot in the town outside the station.

To most people it is probably the same. And again to most it is the railways which define the town. It is one of the big five railway towns, those which had massive expansion due to the coming of the railways, along with York, Doncaster, Derby, and Swindon.

And yet again, it isn’t a place which calls out to be visited, so having the chance to do so, I took it, as although I can’t visit everywhere, I do like to try and see as many places as possible.

I was using football as an excuse, an early season Crawley Town away fixture against Crewe Alexandra. A nice warm (hopefully) August Saturday. It is possible to of up on the train, and go from the station to the football ground and back and see virtually nothing of the turn. Stepping away from the front of the station you can see the back of the stand at the stadium.

But I wanted to see more, and so I got a very early train from Crawley and was in Crewe just after ten in the morning.

Usually when I visit anywhere there is an obvious highlight (or two, or three) to go and see, and then outside of that it is a case of just mooching about and going off in random directions if something catches my eye.

Yet, unusually for me I did a bit of pre-reading. I wasn’t aware of any one highlight (apart from the railway station) and so I used the listed building website to find that Crewe has thirty-four listed buildings, all of which are Grade II, and ignoring Google Maps, I used the heritage site map to work my way around them.

Three quick notes on that. There are a lot more than thirty-four buildings in the listings as five of the listings refer to rows of terraced houses built for the railway workers to live in.

I didn’t make it to all thirty-four, two are older Tudor farmhouse cottages on the outskirts of the town, outliers which I didn’t have the time (or leg weary inclination) to get to, and a third could not be found, it isn’t anywhere near where it is marked on the map, and using the dreaded Google I couldn’t find any mention of the building either.

The third point should be obvious; there are lots of other interesting buildings to take pictures of which aren’t listed.

Such as pubs. I do like a photograph of a pub, even if I no longer drink, there is something about a pub building that calls out to be noticed. You can often tell buildings which used to be pubs, even if they are used for something else now, and Crewe has some fantastic examples of pubs.

And social clubs.

Although the night club I saw had definitely seen better days, it looks like the kind of place I would have frequented regularly twenty years ago.

Like Grimsby a couple of weeks before, when coming out of the station you are met by a wonderful monolithic Victorian brick hotel.

Welcome to Crewe.

The expansion of the railways came hand in hand with the Victorian industrial revolution, and Crewe expanded in that period due to its involvement in the railways, pushed by Francis William Webb and Joseph Locke, for whom the technical college in the town is named.

And so Crewe is full of wonderful Victorian red brick buildings, of all shapes and sizes. In fact I would say it should make more of its Victorian roots. I saw nothing like a heritage trail. I think it is crying out for a Victorian heritage trail to be put together, there is likely to be plenty of interest in that era, and Crewe is a town with plenty of wonderful examples of it.

There isn’t much older than Victorian to be seen in the town. The oldest church isn’t in one piece.

The nave and aisles are just a shell with no windows or roof, but the west tower and chancel are complete, and services are still held there.

There are some fine examples of Victorian churches, four of which are listed, three of them marking the furthest points in the various directions I walked that day.

In the centre of the town there is obviously work afoot to do something. What that is I don’t know, but around the bus station there is an open space where buildings once were, and there must be plans to put something there again in the future. It does make it seem a bit odd.

The municipal buildings (as a local I spoke to called them) are another good example of Victorian build, only this time in something akin to Portland Stone. Though trying to get a photograph of it was a case of trying to time it between wedding parties.

Next to it is the market hall, which is a great vibrant space, cafes, bars, restaurants, and stalls in a friendly atmosphere. The kind of place we could do with in Crawley.

I don’t seem to get far in any direction without ending up crossing railway tracks. There are reminders of the railways everywhere, such as engine names and dates along the pavements of one of the roads.

The final time I do I am at my furthest point out just behind Webb House. I can see the dome on the building through the treetops down one side of the property, and catch glimpses of it through trees and bushes, but you don’t see much of it behind its gates and driveway with security guards patrolling the grounds. It belongs to the railways, and by the looks of it, they’d like to keep it that way.

I cross over the road to get to Queen’s Park. It is somewhat reassuring to see that Audi driver are bell ends the country over. As I start to cross there is an Audi tootling along a few hundred yards down the road, when the driver sees me crossing the road he floors his accelerator. I’m not sure if they were showing off, trying to hit me, trying to scare me, but they came past a couple of seconds after I’d crossed the road they must have been doing eighty in the thirty zone and had to slam on to stop for the roundabout a hundred yards past me.

Queen’s Park is a lovely open space.

Both of the gate houses, the clock tower, and the war memorial further through the park are listed buildings.

There is a lake and in the middle of it is the Burma Star island.

From here I have a route which will take me back to the football ground. It is lovely wide avenues of semidetached houses, and amongst them at some point I must have left Crewe as crossing a road I see this sign away to my left.

The last listed building of my trek is the huge police training centre.

After which I start to leave the leafy suburbs and come back into an area full of shops and businesses and Victorian terraced streets. And dotted amongst them is the occasional little Art Deco build.

There was one business which caught my eye more than most, but that comes from being a Paul Weller fan.

There are more people around now, football fans on the way to the game. I’m not sure how many miles I’ve walled, but I’ve pretty much been on the move non-stop for four hours, so I’m glad to see the stadium and a chance to get a soft drink and sit down before the game starts.

Which wasn’t great from my point of view, and after the game perhaps I should not have taken the path of least steps and not gone for a curry at the mainly take away place in a direct line between the stadium and the train station.

The station is constantly busy. I noticed all the plaques up either side of the departure boards naming Crewe as the Cheshire station of the year. I have two observations about that. It’s not exactly a crowded field, and there are a couple of years missing.

All in all it was an interesting day. I’m not going to say it is a must visit town, but I’m glad I’ve had the opportunity to have a wander around. Apart from the football it was an enjoyable day.

And as waiting for the train on the station there was a mooch in their WH Smiths, where, appropriately for a railway town they had the biggest collection of train spotting books I had seen for years.