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
LACHE-WITH-SALTNEY, was a chapelry in St Mary on the Hill parish, Cheshire, and in the Hawardine parish
Marlston-cum-Lache comprised two manors, Lache held by St. Werburgh's minster, Marlston by Arni. Marlston had passed to William fitz Niel by 1086. Earl Hugh and his successors confirmed the new abbey in possession of a portion of Lache, but part of the manor appears to have been retained by the earl and was later given by Ranulph II to Basingwerk abbey. Later a single manor of Marlston cum Lache was held of the earl by the Blund family, one of whom became serjeant of the Northgate in the 14th century. In the 1350s and 1360s the nuns of Chester built up an extensive estate in Lache, including the manor.
At the Dissolution the nuns' holding was granted to the Brereton family. In 1654 Sir William Brereton granted the manorial rights to Thomas Minshull, having let the land on a long lease to Col. Roger Whitley, from whom it passed by the marriage of his daughter Elizabeth to Sir John Mainwaring of Peover. The latter's descendant Charles Mainwaring purchased the manorial rights in 1773 and the Mainwarings remained lords of the manor in 1939.
Lache Hall was sold separately to the Manley family, who retained it until the mid 18th century. It was then bought by John Snow, a Chester alderman, in whose family it remained until the early 20th century. Although the township was developed from 1919, Lache Hall was still occupied as a farm in 1934. It had gone by 1959 when the Lache Hall housing estate was established.
The Bradford family, serjeants of the Eastgate, held a further estate in Lache from the 1270s together with their estate at Brewers Hall within the liberties. It descended like Brewer's Hall to the Trussells in 1376.
In the 1920s and 1930s, the first significant "council houses" (social housing) 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.
