ABSTRACT
The railway town of Crewe first came into being on 10 March 1843, when some 221 working men and their families had been transferred from the Grand Junction Railway (GJR) Company's old works at Edgehill, Liverpool, to the Company's new works. They formed a novice 'railway colony' at the isolated railway junction which was to become Crewe. By 1872, the Crewe Works was a massive complex based on three separate sites in the town, and employing a large workforce in a number of different industrial processes. The town's population had grown to 19904. A 'railway town' in its creation and its economy, Crewe was no less a railway town in its physical and spatial form. Railway, Works and Company literally 'shaped' the town. The physical appearance and spatial form of New Crewe was therefore of a distinctive 'railway character'.
