This summer, the Town Council want to celebrate members of our community, past and present, who have made a significant contribution to Crewe by recognising their achievements in specially made plaques.
Local schools are invited to take part in both the plaque design and a debating competition to decide on the names of those to be recognised.
Design Brief
Schools may submit a maximum of three designs for consideration. Schools may wish to run an ‘in house’ competition to decide upon their shortlist.
Design submissions need to consider the following criteria:
• All 20 plaques will share the same design, only the text will change.
• The plaques will be made from acrylic so they are durable.
• The plaque cannot exceed 297 mm x 420 mm which is the same size as a piece of A3 paper.
• The name of the nomination, and any additional information about their achievements, is limited to 160 characters.
• A single font must be used but more than one font size is acceptable.
How to submit
Submissions for the design need to be made in two parts by Friday 24th May:
1. An A3, full scale drawing of the design, including an example nomination and accompanying text. This may be hand drawn or computer generated.2. An accompanying information sheet explaining your design choices including specifying font choice, specific dimensions of the design, colour selection. You may decide to provide the design and information on a single sheet by annotating your diagram.
Send your design submissions to Will Chitty at Crewe UTC: [email protected]
Nominations for Plaque Candidates
Each participating school will submit two nominations for consideration. Schools may decide to run an ‘in house’ process to shortlist their two submissions.
Criteria for Nominations:
• Has made a notable contribution to the town of Crewe and/or the people of Crewe
• Could be someone who has become very well known; historical figures, celebrities
• Could be someone in your family, school, sports club, scouts/guides group who is known only to those around them
• Is/would have been happy to be recognised for their contribution
• Alive or dead
All schools will be invited to present a team of not more than 6 students to a debating competition, to be held at Crewe UTC on Friday 28th June, where the final 20 nominations will be decided upon. There will also be an award for the top three debating teams!
Crewe Town Council launched a Heritage Plaque Scheme for Crewe in July 2022 which aims to celebrate important people, places and events from Crewe’s past.
There are three types of plaque – blue, grey and red:
Blue Plaques
To qualify for a plaque, recipients must:
Grey Plaques
Grey Plaques are similar to Blue Plaques but are used when a building no longer exists or has been altered so that the recipient would no longer recognise it.
Red Plaques
Red Plaques are part of the Red Wheel Scheme which was created by the National Transport Trust to recognise and commemorate the most significant sites of historical importance to transport heritage in the UK. There are over 120 plaques in the UK.
The first red plaque was unveiled at Crewe Heritage Centre on Monday 4th July 2022. The date coincided with the 185th anniversary of the first train passing through Crewe in 1837. The plaque celebrates the Crewe Works Narrow Gauge Railway, which was a small tramway system which ran inside the engineering works. Between 1862 and 1932 it moved materials between the different parts of the site. The section connecting Spider Bridge to the Station was built in 1878.
The first blue plaque was unveiled at Mirion House, 57 Earle Street on Saturday 9th July 2022 to celebrate the first Mayor of Crewe – Dr James Atkinson. The son of a blacksmith from Hazel Grove, Dr Atkinson was born in 1837, trained as a doctor and came to Crewe in 1863 as the assistant to the LNWR’s resident surgeon, Edwin Edwards. After Edwards’ death in 1865, Atkinson became the LNWR head surgeon. He was involved in many sporting committees and was also president of the Crewe Orchestral Society.
Mirion House was built for Dr Atkinson upon his marriage to Mirion Hill and was paid for by her father – John Hill – who was the financer of the Market Hall.
The next Crewe plaques will commemorate Ada Nield Chew and Wilmot Welch.
