Aldford

From Chesterwiki
Jump to navigationJump to search


Overview

Alt text
Click here for a map

Aldford is a village and former civil parish, now in the parish of Aldford and Saighton.The village is approximately 6.5 miles (10.5 km) to the south of Chester, on the east bank of the River Dee. The Aldford Brook joins the Dee just north of the village. It lies at the north end of a low ridge between Aldford Brook and the River Dee which extends southwards to Farndon.

On the banks of the River Dee, two Mesolithic flint scatters have been identified about one kilometre south west of Aldford. There is currently no evidence of either later prehistoric activity or Roman settlement, and, as yet, nothing to support the nineteenth-century identification of a Roman fort at Aldford (possibly a mistaken identification of Roman Bovium). The etymology of the place-name of Aldford township itself certainly suggests a place of ancient origin: Old English place-name elements mean ‘the old ford’ (Dodgson 1972, 77). This implies that the new route of the present B5130, which crosses Aldford Brook to the east of the castle, replaced the earlier Roman Watling Street (West) crossing of the river Dee at ‘Ettoneford’, or Eaton (Old English ‘farm by a river’: Dodgson 1972, 148−9), approximately 450 metres/500 yards to the north of the present castle earthworks.

There is a useful walking guide here.

A Brief History

"Blobb Hill", otherwise known as Aldford Castle.

It has been argued (see links below) that Aldford was associated with a possible Anglo-Saxon palace at Farndon, where Edward the Elder is said to have died, or indeed, that the Royal palace was at Aldford and Farndon was an associated monastic site. Indeed their are reasonable arguments that Edgar the Pacific did not sail along the Dee from Edgar's Field but from Aldford.

Aldford is not directly mentioned in the Domesday Survey of 1086. It became part of the scattered holding of Bigot de Loges. Prior to this Farndon, and probably also Aldford were held in part by the bishop and in part by Edwin, earl of Mercia (d. 1071) in 1066.

Aldford Castle (known locally as "Blobb Hill") is often said to be a late 11th or early 12th century earthwork motte and bailey fortress, founded by Richard de Aldford. The earthworks of the fortification are strategically situated between the confluence of the River Dee and Alford Brook. The location is strategic in terms of the river, and defended by water courses on all sides but the south. In addition, it marks the line of the Roman road – Watling Street – which heads south from Chester and crosses the Dee at the confluence of the Dee and Aldford Brook north of the castle (the ‘Old Ford’ = Aldford).

The earliest occupants after Domesday were the families of Bigot de Loges and the de Alfords. Sir John de Arderne (c.1190-1236) was the first of his family to move from the Midlands to Cheshire when he was granted the fee of Aldford in c.1220 by Ranulf de Blondeville, Earl of Chester. He took his name ‘de Arderne’ with him. Ormerod attempts a detailed geneology but notes many uncertainties. Some have argued that the Cheshire Arderne family produced Mary Arden, John Shakespeare’s wife, and mother of William. In the 1200s a market and fair was granted to Aldford to stimulate further economic growth.

The manor of Aldford remained in the Arderne family until 1464, when it passed to the Stanleys by marriage (Ormerod 1819, 757). The manor was seized by King Henry VII in 1546 following Sir William Stanley's execution for supposed complicity in the rebellion of Perkin Warbeck, and was then purchased some time after 1526 by Sir William Brereton, seventh son of Sir Randle Brereton of Shocklach. Sir William Brereton was chamberlain of Chester, and groom of the chamber to Henry VIII. He was beheaded 17 May 1536 for suspected dalliance with Anne Boleyn (see the page on Dutton for more of him}. The manor was forfeited to the crown. For thirty years until the early 1690s, it had been granted by the Crown to Edmund Peckham, the king’s cofferer. Later Queen Mary sold it to Sir Edward Fitton and Robert Tatton.

For the next two centuries it was rented and leased. The castle fell into decay and much of stone was robbed-out. Aldford was eventually sold to Richard Grosvenor of Eaton in 1729. The village was largely rebuilt by the Eaton Estate in the latter half of the nineteenth century with much being designed by John Douglas. It remains in the estate of the Grosvenors. The parish church of St John the Baptist, which was described as ruinous in 1818, was rebuilt by John Douglas for the Eaton Estate in 1866 in Gothic style. It has a spire with wooden shingles, added ten years after the rebuild.

Both the Motte and bailey were planted with trees and, with the water-filled bailey ditch, they formed a parkland. The large motte is encased by a wide wet ditch and stands within the remaining wide ramparts and wet ditches of a rectangular bailey. Excavations on the flat-top motte found the stone foundations of what was possibly a shell keep, flanked by a D-shaped tower. In 1959 a small excavation carried out by two local schoolboys on the motte, was visited by F.H.Thompson, who discovered a wall which may have been part of a shell keep and a stone piscina (a water receptacle, possibly from a chapel) of Norman date which is now in the possession of the Grosvenor Museum. Ormerod states that a manor house of the Ardernes was built in the bailey, based on its field name, Hall Croft or Hall Yard. No traces of a substantial building are visible and it is much more likely to have been built on the top of the motte where earlier structures could have been incorporated.

Sources and Links

Related Pages

Online

Retrieved from "https://chester.shoutwiki.com/w/index.php?title=Aldford&oldid=67505"