Lache

Overview
In 1870-72, John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales described Lache thus:


 * "LACHE-WITH-SALTNEY, a chapelry in St. Mary-on-the-Hill parish, Cheshire, and in Hawardine parish, Flintshire; near the river Dee and the Chester and Holyhead railway, 3 miles SW of Chester. It was constituted in 1855; and its post-town is Chester. Pop. in 1861,2,194. Houses, 450. Pop. of the Hawarden portion, 1,313. Houses, 266. The property is much subdivided. The living is a p. curacy in the diocese of Chester. Value, £55. Patron, the Bishop of Chester. The church was repaired in 1859."

Nowadards, The Lache (sometimes simply Lache) is a housing estate with a population of around 10,000. The etymology of the word Lache possibly derives from the Old English word "loecc", meaning a body of water. Similarly, the name Latchcraft, or Latchcroft is still a popular house name in nearby Shotton, as well as being the name of a coalfield, but its origin is also uncertain. It may be derived from the old English words meaning "a boggy stream".

A Brief History
In the 1920s and 1930s, the first significant "council houses" were built in Chester at Lache and Handbridge. Many of them were needed to replace slums in the City Center, which were demolished in the 1930s. Prior to this there had been some limited construction of affordable accomodation and almshouses elsewhere in the city but the majority of the less well off lived in poor quality rented accomodation.