Qualla: Second Battle of Middlewich

Second Battle of Middlewich: Introduction

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nilfanion, created using Ordnance Survey data, CC BY-SA 3.0. Two days after Christmas, in fields and along hedgerows just outside Middlewich, men killed each other for an hour in close-quarters fighting that the surrounding villagers later had to bury. The Second Battle of Middlewich on 26 December 1643 left two hundred dead on the Parliamentarian side and many more wounded on both. It was a Royalist victory in a Cheshire campaign that had begun two weeks earlier with Lord Byron leaving Chester at the head of five thousand troops, and it would end barely a month later with the King's army shattered outside Nantwich. For a few weeks at the turn of the year, however, Charles I's cause in northwest England looked briefly resurgent.

Image: Nilfanion, created using Ordnance Survey data | CC BY-SA 3.0

Second Battle of Middlewich: Cheshire Divided

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nilfanion, CC BY-SA 4.0. Cheshire was a divided county in the first phase of the English Civil War. After the First Battle of Middlewich on 13 March 1643, Sir William Brereton's Parliamentarian forces held the eastern and central two-thirds of the county from their base at Nantwich, while the Royalists h...

Image: Nilfanion | CC BY-SA 4.0

Second Battle of Middlewich: Byron's Brutal December

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nilfanion, created using Ordnance Survey data, CC BY-SA 3.0. On 12 December 1643, Byron left Chester with 4,000 foot and 1,000 horse. He planned to capture Nantwich, clear Brereton out of the rest of Cheshire, and then move on Lancashire. The campaign that followed was unusually brutal even by the standards of a civil war. Byron took Beest...

Image: Nilfanion, created using Ordnance Survey data | CC BY-SA 3.0

Second Battle of Middlewich: Booth Lane

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nilfanion, created using Ordnance Survey data, CC BY-SA 3.0. On 25 December, Byron's army was camped at Sandbach, and Royalist sympathisers brought word that Brereton was deployed around Middlewich, about seven kilometres to the northwest. Brereton's scouts had been skirmishing with Royalist outposts. Both commanders moved quickly. Brereto...

Image: Nilfanion, created using Ordnance Survey data | CC BY-SA 3.0

Second Battle of Middlewich: What the Town Was Left With

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nilfanion, created using Ordnance Survey data, CC BY-SA 3.0. The inhabitants of Middlewich came out of their houses and onto the field to attend to the wounded and bury the dead. The town itself was ransacked, food and valuables carried off, and within weeks plague broke out for the second time in living memory. The trauma of the battle wa...

Image: Nilfanion, created using Ordnance Survey data | CC BY-SA 3.0

Second Battle of Middlewich: The Reversal at Nantwich

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nilfanion, created using Ordnance Survey data, CC BY-SA 3.0. Byron's victory at Middlewich opened the rest of central Cheshire to the Royalists. Over the following weeks he took the Parliamentarian garrisons at Northwich, Crewe Hall and Doddington Hall, before attacking Nantwich itself on 18 January 1644. Nantwich, however, held. The town ...

Image: Nilfanion, created using Ordnance Survey data | CC BY-SA 3.0