LAST week we had a look at the work of Herman Eugene Falk, the German immigrant who brought German workers to work his mines at Meadow Bank, Winsford during a strike.

This was only temporary as the German workers had stopped off in Liverpool on the way to a new life in America. Falk did discover, however, that these men worked harder and for less pay than the local ones.

At the beginning of 1876 and into 1877 when the Liverpool Germans moved on, he recruited more foreign workers. This time 162 men and some with their families from Hungary, known as Russian Poles from Austrian Galicia, Germany, Poland, Austria and Prussia. Seven from Austria were to work on his farm, as well as a few Bosnians and those from Herzegovina. At first, there was considerable resentment among the English workers and the general population of the Meadow Bank district against the foreigners.

Northwich Guardian:

Basse Meadowbank School around 1900

Falk owned about 100 cottages at Meadow Bank. The building materials for the houses consisted of basse, or better known as clinker from beneath the large salt boiling pans.

The Basse Houses had brick corners and were not the most comfortable. They were built along Bradford Road opposite the works and in streets around the area with the names Willow Bank, Cocoa Cottages, Castle Terrace and the one that still forms Meadow Bank today, School Road. This latter road got its name from the school that Falk built in 1872 for the children who called it Meadow Basse school.

Northwich Guardian:

A family outside a basse house

That was constructed in basse but was closed in the early 1900s, and a few years later in 1912, a new school was built in brick on the same site. That is no longer a school having been closed in the 1970s and is now commercial premises.

Northwich Guardian:

Meadowbank School in 2009

Only a small number of these cottages were allocated to the foreign workers with a great deal of overcrowding. Only four persons were supposed to occupy one cottage, but this was ignored. Each cottage had a captain in charge who paid Falk 4 Shillings a week. Falk also owned a large house that he tried to use as a lodging house for the immigrants but decided later to turn it into apartments for them. The immigrants lived in abject poverty; the small cottages contained primitive sanitary arrangements, straw for beds, lousy food and clothes made from sacking.

Northwich Guardian:

A basse house in Winsford

In 1886 the Sunday Chronicle in a lengthy report described the Meadow Bank housing as ‘A CHESHIRE SALT HELL’. Slowly over the years, the foreigners moved on, mainly to North America and the Basse Houses were demolished in the mid-1940s. All that we can see now is evidence of basse on the verge opposite the Salt Works and foreign names in the Whitegate church list of burials. Next week we will look at the Winsford Watermen’s Strike.