Janet Reeder talks to three people who are proud to call Lymm their home
Aiden Byrne
Chef and restaurateur, The Church Green
'We cooked for the people of Lymm and the surrounding areas and decided to give them what they want'
We moved here as a couple 15 years ago and because we took over the Church Green from my wife Sarah’s dad we lived above the pub for the first six months. Then we moved to a house just around the corner from where we are now and were there for eight years before coming to the 1840s Bath House, which we’ve been doing up for the past five or six years.
The Church Green has also been on quite a journey. When we arrived it was a drinking pub, very much fruit machines and whatnot – a typical boozer. We started off by trying to cook semi-decent food. We had a six-burner gas ring and only two of them worked; the oven door came off in my hand and there was a bank of microwaves.
We chipped away at it and didn’t tell anyone what we planned. We were doing four covers... six covers... a night until my book (Made in Great Britain: 150 New Recipes Using Delicious Local Ingredients), which I’d written when I was at the Dorchester, came out. I was booked onto BBC’s Saturday Kitchen to publicise it and I mentioned the Church Green then there was no turning back.
It has been an interesting journey. For the first couple of years we tried to do high-end fine dining food but we were only busy on a Friday and Saturday night. We said to ourselves, 'we won’t be here much longer if we carry on doing this' so we cooked for the people of Lymm and the surrounding areas and decided to give them what they want, which is family food. And we are still here.
There have been times we’ve been through the mill and along with Covid it’s been an interesting few years but we are extremely fortunate the people of Lymm support us. There are two things I believe keep us going: loyalty and quality.
When Manchester House closed it was a blow (Aiden was chef at the acclaimed city centre restaurant from 2013 until 2020) but I came home to focus on the Church Green and Sarah and I really enjoy working together. We are both 50 years of age and not going to put ourselves through insane hours, which you do when you are younger.
Obviously being a restaurateur /publican in the centre of Lymm we know everybody and everyone knows us. Our circle of friends, which we have built up over the past 15 years are all customers of the Church Green. We have parties and we do special nights and we are fortunate because they always sell out. It’s such a lovely, lovely place to live. I come from a council estate, and we’ve got three children – the youngest is 12 and has lived in Lymm all her life. The fact we are able to encourage our daughter to grow up in such a beautiful friendly place makes me feel extremely lucky.
Josie Collier
Partner at Andrew Collier Photography
'Lymm is much bigger than when I was a little girl, but it still has a lovely community spirit'
I lived in Lymm from birth to getting married to Andrew in 1985 when we moved to Grappenhall because we couldn’t afford to stay here but when the children had grown up we downsized and we’ve been back for eight years. I’ve got to say I appreciate it far more now than I did when I was a teenager. I used to wonder why anyone would want to live in Lymm but now I love being in a place that people want to visit.
My dad is no longer with us, but my parents were classed locally as ‘Lymm Greys’ as they’d lived here all their lives.
We have a lot of independent shops bars and cafes, nice little gift shops and a heritage centre and they all tend to be dog-friendly. A lot of people come here for holidays on the canals. There are nice places to walk, we’ve got the Bridgewater Canal, the Transpennine trail and Lymm Dam and you’re very quickly into open countryside. It really is beautiful. When we first moved here I was delighted to be able to walk into the village to buy bread and groceries without using the car. It was something I’d never known before.
Lymm is much bigger than when I was a little girl, but it still has a lovely community spirit and there’s lots going on – there’s the rugby club, tennis club, craft groups and fitness groups – but the thing I got involved with is the community choir, Lymm’s Big Sing. It’s just amazing, just joyful. Annual events include the May Queen Festival, Historic Transport Day, Lymm Festival, the Dickensian Christmas Festival, Carols from the Cross on Christmas Eve and we even have our own local radio station, which was set up during Covid so people could find out what was going on what help was available and kept everyone touch with each other.
My husband’s photographic business is home-based, and we also rent a room in the Hub. Lymm is a great base to work from as we have access to other parts of the country with a brilliant network of motorways.
I was a locum pharmacist for 36 years but gave that up to help look after my mum and dad. We lost my dad just before Christmas 2021 and mum had Alzheimer’s and we now have two little granddaughters, so I’m kept busy. We do Lymm Makers Market and the one in Knutsford, just to get the name out there; sometimes people don’t appreciate what goes into photography but at the end of the day, it’s a piece of artwork on the wall.
Karl Welsh
Owner of Karl Welsh Floral Design
'My wife Leah is from Lymm – she reminded me to say her family are *Lymm Greys'
Originally the business was in Grappenhall, which was just down the road then it moved to the centre of Lymm 14 years ago. During Covid, we didn’t shut for a day. We had a warehouse where we work at night and busy times, so we closed the shop we had in the village one Sunday and put the phone on divert the next day and that was it. Normal business resumed. Then people started calling down here so we got rid of the shop. We just had more and more people coming here. We moved into a second unit and now we have two massive units. One is a shop and one is all storage and more of a warehouse. It is a lovely place but like every small village we were getting less and less footfall and we were doing more business over the phone. So by moving we cut the cost in half as well. A guy came in one day and said, 'this is so much better than a shop. I can drive here to get my flowers, and there are no traffic wardens to worry about.' It was that man who gave me the decision to move permanently, and I don’t even know him. I’d love to know who he is.
We have a lot of corporate clients as well as regular customers. I recently dropped off some flowers for a TV show; it was in some old warehouses and there was a big wooden box and inside was a fully fitted restaurant. I love going on set to see it all We’ve done quite a few shows for the likes of the BBC and Netflix. I started working with TV about seven years ago. The first one we did was Last Tango in Halifax and we’ve done quite a lot now. We supply flowers, and plants for the venues.
For a fairly small shop in a small village, we do get some great jobs.
Mum and dad have been here for 55 years and my wife Leah is from Lymm – she reminded me to say her family are *Lymm Greys. Her family has a dance school – the Enid Wrigley Academy – and she’s a third-generation teacher.
We got married the year before last and had a massive wedding. We live on a farm and Leah’s family has a barn, so we had it there and there was a Gordon Ramsay lookalike chef who was amazing – even swearing at nanna!
Aiden (Byrne) is a good friend of mine and was at our wedding. The photographer took a picture of 'Gordon' and Aiden together.
I’m here because I’ve always lived in Lymm and always worked in Lymm. I don’t get very far. I always think we are lucky that the phone rings all the time and people want flowers.
*A Lymm Grey: someone whose grandparents came from Lymm and generally denotes the person belongs to a good old Lymm family. It is a title reserved for lifelong residents.
