Category:Neighbourhoods

This is a list of Chester neighborhoods with links to brief accounts of their local history. Anyone is free to expand upon any particular place. Some such as Upton have thriving Local History websites (see: Upton for a great example and Hoole for another). Further afield there are many other local history websites such as those for Farndon and Pulford.

Local level history is important for several reasons. The course of a road or the coming and going of a local industry can have far reaching consequences on the lives of individuals both at the time and years later. Local history can also help illustrate and understand more general trends on regional and larger scales, often by reflecting the identity, experiences and aspirations of relatively small groups. This can frequently illustrate the complex by reference to the familiar. Often, major historical events will have very local roots, and in one sense the everyday struggles and triumphs of "ordinary" people are as important as those of well-known historical figures.

Locations and objects in a community, sometimes things as mundane as names of streets, can reflect the long heritage of past generations. Although it is pleasant to do so, people do not need to visit Rome, Giza, or Machu Picchu to see reflections of the past, a trip to Hoole can be simpler.

Summary of Development

In this article "neighbourhood" is used both in the sense of original townships which have which have grown-up into what are now generally called "villages" and townships which have grown larger until they join together until the form a larger unit or become adsorbed into a city as suburbs. Other neighbourhoods developed from land developed as housing estates.

Although Chester within the walls was regarded as the city proper, by 1066 it was grouped with nearby holdings to form a wider jurisdictional unit. The Hundreds were the earliest known geographic divisions of Cheshire for administrative, military and judicial purposes. They were introduced in Cheshire some time before the Norman conquest. Similar divisions of land are known as wapentake, herred (Danish) with related twrms being used in other Scandinavian/Germanic countries and cantref (Welsh). The origin of the word is obscure and it may once have been the land needed to support a hundred households - something dependent both on how good the land was and the size or living-standard of households. The area of land needed to support a household was known as a "hide", and was later approximated to 120 acres. A hundred could also have been the land needed to provide 100 warriors in time of war. A recent theory, which does seem to be supported by evidence, is that the hundreds arose during the establishment of Mercian christianity. Higham has shown that eight of the 10 hundreds in 1086 were based on pairings of the great parishes of the early minster churches, and that in many instances there is evidence of a royal grant of land to the relevant churches. This implies that the hundreds were the product of a degree of coherent planning long before the Conquest, and as is the case elsewhere there is a growing body of evidence to suggest that some may conform with Romano-British land divisions. A hundred was headed by a Hundredman (hundred eolder). Before the Norman Conquest hundreds were divided into tithings, each contained 10 households. The tithingman was responsible for collecting the tax. Within each hundred there was a meeting place where wealthy and powerful men of the hundred would meet to discuss local issues and where the hundred court was held. The name of the hundred was normally associated with the meeting place. The manor was a landed estate originating in the Middle Ages. It was administered by and for their lords, with dependent tenants living on the land, and its business was carried out in the manor court before the steward. Manors varied in size, from a few acres within a single parish to manors covering several whole parishes, and even parcels of land scattered across several parishes but not adjacent to one another. They were, however, administered by their lords as a single unit. These general rules cannot be applied in every case.

The hundreds of Cheshire have varied in extent and their names over the years. For example Atiscross was one of the original twelve Hundreds of Cheshire bordering the Welsh Kingdom of Gwynedd to the west. It appears in the Domesday Book in 1066 under the control of Earl Edwin. Atiscross later became a principal part of Flintshire during the reign of Edward I. Early Ordnance Survey maps show the "Supposed site" of Ati's Cross (from which the Hundred derives its name) a little inland from Pentre Ffwrndan, adjacent to Croes-Ati (or Groes-ati) Mill, at (OS GR) SJ 252730.

In their eventual form they became the seven hundreds of Broxton, Bucklow, Eddisbury, Macclesfield, Nantwich, Northwich and Wirral. Broxton Hundred for example comprised at various times parts or all of about twenty parishes. Broxton itself was a township in Malpas ancient parish and was presumably the place where the Hundred court originally met. Courts, or Eyres, were normally held annually in the region, a week after the close of the county court. The Justice of Chester presided over the courts, and he would spend several days visiting each hundred in the region. On 13 October 1445 he held an Eyre at either Middlewich or Northwich for the Bucklow and Northwich Hundreds, grouped together for convenience, hence by a fairly early date the Hundred Courts had moved away from their ancient locations.

The Hundred of Chester

The Hundred of Chester included "Redcliff" and the bishop's borough south-east of the walled city, Handbridge and Lee "beyond the bridge" to the south, and Newton to the north-east. All the holdings in the hundred, except Newton, were later included within the liberties, which emerged in the 12th and 13th centuries and had been defined with some precision by the 14th. Boundaries are discusseed in further detail under Flookersbrook and Parishes.

Sources and links

Related Pages

• Quarters;

Online

• Cheshire Towns and Parishes;
• local history societies;