BackTrack
This is the story of two towns and the ‘Gingerbread Line’ connecting them. The sobriquet ‘Gingerbread’ alludes to the putative making of gingerbread in the Shropshire town of Market Drayton, an industry dating back to the eighteenth century.
During the 1850s Market Drayton was isolated from the growing railway network, despite the town's importance as an agricultural centre. A sense of isolation affected many towns in England and Wales during the expansion of railways and Jack Simmons sums up the situation as follows:
“The early trunk railways were planned primarily to serve large towns and industrial districts. They ran directly, except where the configuration of the country imposed deviations, and that meant that some smaller towns, which might have claimed from their trade or industry, a place on the railway system, were at first ignored by it. So Tewkesbury, Odihamj Stony Stratford, Saffron Waldron, Kendal – even Worcester, Halifax, and Bradford; the first railways swept past them all at a distance.”
Market Drayton fell into this category. The nearest access to a railway that Market Drayton inhabitants (4,947 in 1851) had in the 1850s lay at Whitchurch or Prees, both 8½ miles away as the crow flies
Nantwich featured in Samuel Smiles's book Rides on Railways, first published in 1851. “Nantwich, about five miles from Crewe, is one of the towns which supplies Cheshire's salt exports, Middlewich and Northwich being the other two. In all, rich brine springs are found, but the celebrated mines of rock salt are found at Northwich only. The trade of this place has derived much advantage from the junction of the Chester, Ellesmere, and Liverpool & Birmingham canals close by.”
Unlike Market Drayton, Nantwich had the benefit of the LNWR's Crewe to Chester line within four miles to the north of the town. The inhabitants of Nantwich (5,579 in 1851) had to travel 3½ miles to reach the first Nantwich station on the Crewe to Chester line. On 1st September 1858 the old station received a new name – Worleston – a more appropriate one since that was where it
