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The Cheshire Portal
Welcome Cheshire Plain from the Mid Cheshire Ridge
Cheshire is a ceremonial county in the North West of England. Chester is the county town, and formerly gave its name to the county. The largest town is Warrington, and other major towns include Congleton, Crewe, Ellesmere Port, Macclesfield, Nantwich, Northwich, Runcorn, Sandbach, Widnes, Wilmslow and Winsford. The county is administered as four unitary authorities. Cheshire occupies a boulder clay plain (pictured) which separates the hills of North Wales from the Peak District of Derbyshire. The county covers an area of 2,343 km2 (905 sq mi), with a high point of 559 m (1,834 ft) elevation. The estimated population is a little over one million, 19th highest in England, with a population density of around 450 people per km2. The county was created in around 920, but the area has a long history of human occupation dating back to before the last Ice Age. Deva was a major Roman fort, and Cheshire played an important part in the Civil War. Predominantly rural, the county is historically famous for the production of Cheshire cheese, salt and silk. During the 19th century, towns in the north of the county were pioneers of the chemical industry, while Crewe became a major railway junction and engineering facility. Selected article
Crewe Hall is a Jacobean mansion located east of Crewe. Described by Nikolaus Pevsner as one of the two finest Jacobean houses in Cheshire, it is listed at grade I. Built in 1615–36 for Sir Randolph Crewe, perhaps using drawings by Inigo Jones, Crewe Hall was said to have "brought London into Cheshire", and it was among the county's largest houses in the 17th century. The hall was extended in the late 18th century and altered by Edward Blore in the early Victorian era. It was extensively restored by E. M. Barry after a devastating fire in 1866, and is considered among his best works. The restoration also employed J. Birnie Philip, J. G. Crace, Henry Weekes and the firm of Clayton and Bell. The interior is elaborately decorated and contains many fine examples of wood carving, chimneypieces and plasterwork, some of which are Jacobean in date. The park was landscaped during the 18th century by Lancelot Brown, William Emes and Humphry Repton, and formal gardens were designed by W. A. Nesfield in the 19th century. The stables quadrangle is contemporary with the hall and is listed at grade II*. Selected image
Eaton Chapel was built in 1869–84 for Hugh Grosvenor, 1st Duke of Westminster, as the private chapel for Eaton Hall. An example of the Gothic Revival style with Alfred Waterhouse as the architect, the grade-I-listed chapel was retained when Waterhouse's hall was demolished in the 1960s. Credit: Peter I. Vardy (4 April 2010) In this month
5 June 1965: Engine fire on Crewe–Carlisle train between Crewe and Winsford fatally injured driver Wallace Oakes. 6 June 1690: William III stayed at Combermere Abbey on his way to the Battle of the Boyne. 7 June 1940: Actor Ronald Pickup born in Chester. 7 June 1954: Mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing died in Wilmslow. 8 June 1825: Ten to twelve thousand people attended the funeral of Sir John Grey Egerton of Oulton Park, MP for Chester and Freemason, at Little Budworth. 10 June 1878: Chester Tramways Company started operating horse-drawn trams in Chester. 10 June 1931: Chester Zoo opened. 14 June 1988: Lindow IV discovered at Lindow Moss. 16 June 1967: Daresbury Laboratory (pictured) officially opened by Harold Wilson, prime minister. 18 June 1886: Mountaineer George Mallory born in Mobberley. 19 June 2011: Fire damaged east wing of Peckforton Castle. 23 June 1999: Train crash near Winsford injured 31 people. 24 June 1604: Plague started in Nantwich, with around 430 deaths by the following March. 25 June 1897: Actor Basil Radford born in Chester. 26 June 1923: Jazz musician and bandleader Syd Lawrence born in Wilmslow. 27 June 1919: X-ray crystallographer Alexander Stokes born in Macclesfield. Selected list
Around 300 buildings in Chester centre are listed at Grade II, the lowest grade. The oldest Grade-II-listed buildings in central Chester date from the medieval era and retain some of their medieval fabric, for example, St Nicholas Chapel (1300). Early buildings are often timber framed, with some later encased in brick. Examples include the Old Custom House Inn, Nine Houses, Ye Olde Edgar and Stanley Palace. Many Georgian houses, in local sandstone or brick, are listed at this grade, including Park House and 10–28 Nicholas Street, as well as some Neoclassical buildings, such as Chester City Club. From the mid-19th century, Chester was at the forefront of the Black-and-white Revival (example pictured), reintroducing timber-framed buildings into the city. Grade-II-listed examples include The Chester Grosvenor Hotel, St Werburgh's Mount, St Oswald's Chambers, 30 and 38 Bridge Street, and several houses on Northgate Street. A few modern structures have been listed, including Newgate (1937–38), and Modernist buildings such as the former Odeon Cinema (1936) and Addleshaw Tower (1973–75), a free-standing bell-tower. Unusual listed structures include a scale model of Grosvenor Bridge, the War Memorial, a Cenotaph to Matthew Henry, a tombstone commemorating a soldier, a sundial, a birdbath and two telephone kiosks. GeographyTop: Map of modern Cheshire showing urban areas (grey) and the major road network. Chester (red) is the county town, and Warrington has the greatest population. Towns with more than 10,000 inhabitants in 2011 are highlighted; the size of dot gives a rough indication of the relative population. Wales and the adjacent English counties are shown in capitals. Bottom: Relief map showing the major hills. The Mid Cheshire Ridge is a discontinuous ridge of low hills running north–south from Beacon Hill (north of Helsby Hill) to Bickerton Hill. Most other high ground falls within the Peak District in the east of the county. Shining Tor (559 metres), on the boundary with Derbyshire, forms the county's high point.
Administration The ceremonial county of Cheshire is administered by four unitary authorities (click on the map for details): 2 – Cheshire East 3 – Warrington 4 – Halton In the local government reorganisation of 1974, Cheshire gained an area formerly in Lancashire including Widnes and Warrington. The county lost Tintwistle to Derbyshire, part of the Wirral Peninsula to Merseyside, and a northern area including Stockport, Altrincham, Sale, Hyde, Dukinfield and Stalybridge to Greater Manchester. Selected biography
Plegmund (or Plegemund) was a medieval scholar and archbishop who lived in the 9th and 10th centuries. Little is known about his early life, but a later tradition holds that he lived as a hermit at Plemstall, which means "holy place of Plegmund". By 887, King Alfred the Great had summoned him to court, where he worked to translate Pope Gregory the Great's treatise Pastoral Care into Old English. He was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury by the king in 890. He reorganised the Diocese of Winchester, creating four new sees, and continued to translate religious texts. In 908, he travelled to Rome, the first Archbishop of Canterbury to do so for nearly a century. Plegmund was canonised after his death, on 2 August in either 914 or 923. The second of August was celebrated as his feast day. Did you know...
Selected town or village
Poynton is a town on the easternmost edge of the Cheshire Plain, near Macclesfield and Stockport. The manor was first recorded in 1289. The town straddles the Red Rock Fault, which brings the Permo–Triassic sandstones and mudstones of the Cheshire Plain up against the Millstone Grit and shales of the Peak District. To the immediate east of the fault are the coal measures of the Carboniferous period. Coal was mined at Poynton from the 16th century, and its collieries were the largest in Cheshire. Anson Engine Museum, on the site of a former colliery, has a collection of stationary engines. Consequent urbanisation and socioeconomic development necessitated better transport links; these came with the completion of the Macclesfield Canal through the town in 1831, and the arrival of the Manchester and Birmingham Railway in 1845 and the Macclesfield, Bollington and Marple Railway in 1869. The collieries closed in 1935. The population has nearly trebled since 1945, to over 14,000 in 2011. In the late 20th century, Poynton became a commuter town for Manchester. In the news.JPG) Crewe Market Hall 29 October, 1 November: Warrington council and the mayor of Crewe each announce plans to bid for city status in 2022. 13–14 October: Prince Edward visits Chester and opens a Fire Service training centre in Winsford. 8 October: Castle Street shopping area in Macclesfield reopens after refurbishment. 4 October: Restoration of the grade-I-listed Bridgegate, part of Chester city walls, is completed. 25 September: A bronze frieze by the sculptor Tom Murphy is unveiled in Warrington, as a memorial to the band Viola Beach. 9 September: The fifth stage of the Tour of Britain cycle race takes place in Cheshire, starting at Alderley Park and finishing in Warrington. 24 July: The grade-II-listed Crewe Market Hall (pictured) formally reopens after refurbishment. 15 July: Crewe, Runcorn and Warrington are awarded potential funding under the "Town Deal" government scheme. QuotationGrinning like a Cheshire Cat. This phrase owes its origin to the unhappy attempts of a sign painter of that country to represent a lion rampant, which was the crest of an influential family, on the sign-boards of many of the inns. The resemblance of these lions to cats caused them to be generally called by the more ignoble name. On the origin of the Cheshire Cat, from The Treasury of Knowledge and Library Reference by Samuel Maunder (1853)
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