_Author of “A History of Nantwich,” “The Civil War in Cheshire,” &c._
Cheshire, in regard to its shape, has been said to resemble a bird’s
wing, an axe-head, and a shoulder of mutton. The late Colonel Egerton
Legh humorously compared it to a chicken with its head in Featherbed
Moss, Macclesfield in its crop, and the tail formed by Wirral. Perhaps
more seriously, but no less fancifully, it may be likened to a broad,
ear-topped shield of the College of Arms type, divided palewise by
a central line of hills, of which the isolated rocks of Halton and
Beeston occupy respectively the chief point and the fesse point of the
shield.
From the summit of Beeston Castle, or, better still, from the more
elevated escarpment of the adjacent Peckforton Hill, marked on the
survey map _Stanner Nab_--a name little altered from its original
Saxon, _Stan-es Nebb_, literally “front of stone,” or stone head,
and now commonly called _Tanner’s Nob_--nearly the whole county is
spread out in fine panorama of plain; the view extending from the
Wirral coast to the high moorlands of Macclesfield, a distance of
about fifty miles; and from the Mersey to the Shropshire border, a
little over thirty miles. A like distant and picturesque horizon is
obtainable from eminences such as Alderley Edge, Cloud End, and Mow
Cop on the east; Frodsham Hill, Helsby Tor, and Halton Castle on the
north; Carden Cliff, Harthill, and Belvidere in Wirswall on the south
border. From gentle uplands, the more circumscribed landscape presents
the effect of a tree-covered plain, owing to the great quantity of
hedgerow timber, chiefly oak, and the smallness of the fields. This
illusion is perfect when the view is taken from the cupola on the roof
of Doddington Hall; but in reality the county is almost destitute of
woods, excepting spinnies, often hidden in dingles, and the rather
modern plantations on the central hills. There are, however, extensive
parks at Dunham, Tatton, Tabley, Arley, Lyme, Peover, Somerford,
Oulton, Vale Royal, Eaton, Cholmondeley, Combermere, Doddington, and
Crewe; although some mentioned in history have been disparked, as at
Kermincham and Norbury Booths.
Cheshire is a county of large estates, many of which have descended by
a long ancestry to the present owners. The greatest estates occur in
the purely agricultural and sparsely populated districts of the south.
In order of their extent comes first the Peckforton estate, 25,380
acres (Lord Tollemache); next Cholmondeley, 16,842 acres (the Marquis
of Cholmondeley); then Eaton, 15,001 acres (the Duke of Westminster);
Doddington, 13,832 acres (Sir Delves L. Broughton, Bart.); and Crewe,
10,148 acres (Earl Crewe); but this last estate does not include the
railway town of that name. Other large landowners[47] (most of whose
names are historic in the county, and whose estates vary between 5000
and 10,000 acres) are--
The Lords--Egerton of Tatton, Harrington, Stamford, Derby, Haddington,
De Tabley, Delamere, Stanley of Alderley (Sheffield), Kilmorrey,
Shrewsbury, and Combermere. Also Sir Philip Grey-Egerton, Mr. Legh [now
Lord Newton] of Lyme, Mr. Legh of Adlington, Mr. Egerton-Warburton of
Arley, Sir W. G. Shakerley, Mr. Bromley Davenport, and Colonel France
Hayhurst.
[47] This list of names is taken from the published returns to the
House of Commons of the “Owners of Land” throughout the United Kingdom,
commonly called the _Modern Domesday Book_, of 1873.
These twenty-three gentlemen own collectively 203,533 acres, or a
little over one-third of the whole county; but, according to the same
authority, 2840 persons own lands varying from 10 to 1000 acres, also
3166 persons have holdings between one acre and ten acres, while 17,691
persons possess lands less than one acre in extent. The Crown lands
amount to 3581 acres, and the commons or waste lands to 6704 acres, so
that the total number of owners in Cheshire is 23,720, the total area
of the county being 608,922 acres, or rather less than 1000 square
miles.
Some houses of the gentry have from ancient times stood on the margin
of a natural mere, as at Tatton, Tabley, Mere, Rostherne, Arley,
Combermere, and Marbury; or beside an artificial pool, as at Crewe and
Doddington. But Bagmere, which once reflected the stately mansion of
the Breretons, has been drained, and Ridley Pool has long been “sown
and mown,” in fulfilment, as credulous people have believed, of Nixon’s
prophecy. Barmere is one of the few meres that have not been honoured
by a gentleman’s seat.
Of modern mansions, both the magnificent palace at Eaton and the castle
at Cholmondeley stand near ornamental sheets of water; while Peckforton
Castle, perhaps the most remarkable house in all England, being built
in close imitation of a Norman castle, is perched on a rocky eminence
like an eyrie.
In no part of Cheshire are so many gentlemen’s seats clustered together
as within a radius of a few miles around the old-fashioned town of
Knutsford. They are as follows:--
_Dunham Hall_, or Dunham Massey, as it was named in ancient times, when
it was held as a feudal barony by the Massey family until the death of
Hamon, about the year 1340, stands in what is known as the Old Park,
which is walled round for the protection of about a hundred head of
deer. The so-called New Park, nearly three miles in circumference, also
contains aged oaks and beeches, and is divided from the other park
merely by the road leading from Bowdon to Dunham village. From the
Masseys the estate descended to the notable family of Booth. At the
old mansion lived Sir John Booth, who was slain at Flodden Field; Sir
George Booth, created Baron Delamere in 1661 in honour of his staunch
royalist services to Charles I.; and his son Henry, second lord, who,
after having been three times unjustly imprisoned in the Tower, was in
1686 tried for high treason by his peers and acquitted.
_High Leigh._--Here two important mansions stood in close proximity,
namely, East Hall and West Hall. The latter, or what remains of it,
was changed into a farmhouse nearly a century ago. The former, rebuilt
towards the end of the eighteenth century as a brick mansion, is still
the residence of the Legh family, which has been seated there since the
time of Edward I. In the reign of Henry VII. there was much litigation
between the Leghs of the two halls.
_Rostherne Hall_, long the residence of the Masseys of Coddington, and
now the property of Lord Egerton, stands on the border of a broad mere,
as much famed for its curious legends as for the natural beauty of its
surroundings.
_Ashley Hall_, where, in 1715, ten Cheshire gentlemen, namely, Thomas
Assheton, the resident proprietor; Sir Richard Grosvenor, of Eaton;
James, Earl Barrymore, of Marbury; Charles Hurleston, of Newton; Amos
Meredith, of Henbury; Alexander Radclyff, of Fox Denton in Lancashire,
but born at Wythenshawe in Cheshire in 1677; Robert Cholmondeley, of
Holford; John Warren, of Poynton; Henry Legh, of Legh; and Peter Legh,
of Lyme; met to discuss the propriety of espousing the cause of the Old
Pretender, the Chevalier St. George, the decision arrived at being in
the negative by the casting vote of the owner of Ashley.
_Tatton Hall_, anciently the seat of the knightly family of Massey,
from the time of Edward I. to the time of Henry VI., descended in the
time of Charles II. to the Egerton family, and is now owned by Lord
Egerton. The present mansion, designed by the two Wyatts, has for its
chief external feature a portico of columns 25 feet high, and stands in
the centre of a park nearly 12 miles in circumference. The old hall,
half a mile away, is situate on low, sheltered ground at the north end
of the lake.
_Mere Hall._--The old hall, long the residence of the ancient family
of Mere, stood nearer the village, but only a portion of it now
remains, used as a farmhouse. This estate has been in the possession
of the Brooke family since 1652. Mr. Peter Langford Brooke, who, in
1834, built the present brick mansion overlooking the mere, had the
misfortune to be drowned while skating on the mere on 9th January 1840,
his wife witnessing the sad occurrence.
_Arley Hall_, the seat of the Warburton family for several centuries,
was demolished in 1833, and the present handsome structure, with its
chapel designed by Salvin (who was also the architect of Peckforton
Castle), was not completed until 1845. Over the stone porch doorway is
carved the following rhyme by the squire of the hall:--
“This Gate is free to all Good Men and True,
Right Welcome thou, if worthy to pass through.”
_Marbury Hall_,[48] possessed by the Marbury family for many
generations until the death of Richard Marbury in 1684. Since the
eighteenth century it has belonged to the family of Barry. The present
mansion, overlooking Budworth Mere, was built by the architect, Mr. A.
Salvin, in the French château style.
[48] On the southern border of the county is another _Marbury Hall_,
late the residence of Cudworth H. Poole, Esq., beautifully situated on
a hill that commands the view of two meres and a picturesque church and
village of the same name.
[Illustration: Tabley House and Chapel.]
_Tabley Hall_, which resembles Tatton in architecture, was completed
in the year 1769. The old hall, now in a ruinous condition, and in
danger of becoming a tumbled heap by its thick mantling of ivy,
together with a detached brick chapel dated 1675, stand on an island
in the circling mere. This was the home of Sir Peter Leycester, the
representative of a long lineage, and the first great historian of
Cheshire families, who was buried at Budworth in 1678.
The above-mentioned halls lie on the northern and western sides of
Knutsford; two others are on the south side of that town, namely:--
_Toft Hall_, another seat of the Leycester family for many generations,
and remarkable now for its fine avenue of elms in triple rows. Ralph
Leycester, who died in 1777, owned this estate for no fewer than 70
years.
_Peover Hall_ is associated with the Mainwarings from Plantagenet
times, whose surname, according to the antiquary Dugdale, had undergone
131 variations of spellings in old deeds. Sir Henry Mainwaring, who
died unmarried on 6th April 1797, was the last direct descendant.
By his will the estate came to his uterine half-brother, Thomas
Wettenhall, of Nantwich, who took the name and arms of Mainwaring, and,
dying the following year, on 12th July 1798, thus became the ancestor
of the present line of baronets of Peover.
Farther away from Knutsford, on the borders of Delamere Forest, stand
three notable houses; namely, _Delamere House_, designed by Wyatt, and
owned by Mr. Wilbraham, who is the direct descendant of the ancient
family of Wilbraham of Woodhey in the south part of the county; _Vale
Royal_, the seat of the present Lord Delamere, that estate having been
purchased in 1615 by the noble lady, Mary Cholmondeley, widow of Sir
Hugh Cholmondeley, and known in history as “the bold lady of Cheshire,”
who entertained King James I. on his progress through the county in
1617; and _Utkinton Hall_, now a farmhouse with some remains of its
former importance, which in the same year, 1617, was the residence
of the forester, Sir John Done, who had married Dorothy, daughter of
Thomas Wilbraham of Woodhey, whose manners and character were “so
amiable that to this day” (as Thomas Pennant says in 1782), “when a
Cheshire man would express some excellency in one of the fair sex, he
would say, ‘There is a Lady Done for you!’”
Very fine specimens of ancient timber houses are at Bramhall, Little
Moreton, Adlington; and the hall at Baguley, perhaps the oldest
building of its kind in the county, has massive oak beams, still in
good condition, proving the durability of that material for building
construction. Of stone and brick mansions, Brereton is the best example
of Tudor architecture; Dorfold and Crewe of the seventeenth century
renaissance; Oulton, Lyme, and Doddington of the later palladian style.
Other halls constructed wholly or in part of timber, and once occupied
by the yeomen class--the charterers or freeholders named on old manor
court-rolls--whose estates have been swallowed up in the larger
properties, were usually defended by deeply-dug, rectangular moats,
indicative of an unsettled and dangerous state of life in former times.
At Huxley Old Hall, at Harden, at Moreton, and elsewhere, moats and
drawbridges still exist; but some moated enclosures have been turned
into orchards, and a farmhouse has been built outside, as at Mickley in
Wrenbury parish, and at Stapeley in Wybunbury parish.
Formerly Cheshire people frequently married with neighbouring families
of like station in life, according to their common proverb, “It is
better to marry over the mixen than over the moor;” and even yet there
is a saying: “If you are going into Cheshire, remember they are all
cousins.”
The long-established peasant families must not be passed over in
silence. Suspicious of strangers, they understand “the law of the
land” very differently from the inhabitants of crowded cities and
manufacturing towns. Country people still speak with confidence and
respect of “our squire,” just as the landlords talk of “our people”;
although it must be admitted that the mutual social influences of old
English life are now fast waning. A former manifestation of goodwill
and good understanding among the tenantry of a large estate may here
be mentioned. On the death of the Rev. Sir Thomas Broughton, Bart.,
in July 1813, the coffin containing his remains was borne to burial
on the shoulders of relays of farmers by road from Doddington Hall to
Broughton Church, a distance of no less than twelve miles!
The numerous townships into which Cheshire is divided are almost
entirely rural in their situation; and in few parts of the county,
Wirral being the chief exception, are the dwellings sufficiently near
each other to constitute what is generally known as a village. I have
heard a countryman express this peculiarity in these words: “The common
people live in the lanes, but the quality (that is, the well-to-do
farmers) live up in the fields.”
With regard to Cheshire families in the dim past, Camden the
antiquary of the sixteenth century wrote:[49] “Cheshire is the great
nursing-mother of the gentry; for there is no other English county that
formerly supplied the King’s army with more nobility, or that could
number more knightly families.”
[49] The original words in the _Britannia_ read: “Cestria eximia
nobilitatis altrix; nec enim alia est in Anglia provincia, quæ plures
nobiles in aciem eduxerit, et plures equestres familias numerarit.”
Contemporary with Camden, John Speed, the historian, a native of the
county, calls Cheshire the “seed-plot of gentility.” In proof of this,
we refer to the statement already made in the historical introduction
to this volume, that William the Conqueror constituted Cheshire a
county palatine, bestowing the earldom on his nephew, Hugh Lupus, whose
title, Earl of Chester, has belonged, since the time of Edward I., by
hereditary right to the heir-apparent of the English Crown. Cheshire,
like Normandy in France, thus became an _imperium in imperio_, with
the Earl as titular sovereign and courts of justice, administered by
a Constable, Seneschall, Chamberlain, Justices, Barons of Exchequer,
Sheriff, Attorney, Escheator, &c. So constituted, the county preserved
its independent existence until the time of Henry VIII., when it became
subject to the Crown; and in the next reign the county sent its first
representatives to the national Parliament at Westminster. The first
Earl held a large part of the earldom in his own hands; and portioned
out the rest of the land among military men, whom he created barons,
or tenants _in capite_; and their hereditary honorary services for
their fees were due to him and his successors. In course of time these
fees became a civil establishment rather than a military plan, and the
services began to be compounded. Agricultural and other services grew
out of the sub-infeudations of the chief tenants; and eventually, by
a statute, 12 Chas. II., local baronies and manors became little more
than nominal institutions, and as such they continue to be.
It is said the Grosvenors are descended from Gilbert le Grosvenor, who
came over from Normandy with Hugh Lupus, his uncle; the Mainwarings
from Earl Randle; and the Egertons and Cholmondeleys from the Norman
Barons of Malpas. The ancient, but now extinct, families of Merbury,
Hatton, Rutter, Birkenhead, Vernon, Leftwich, and Fitton, each bore
three _garbs or_ (three golden wheatsheaves) on their shields, an
honourable charge claimed to have been assigned them by the sixth Earl,
Randle Blundeville, who bore the same device. In modern times the
_garb or_ occurs on the arms of Wicksted, Cholmondeley, and Grosvenor;
and, in the last named, since the time of Richard II., when Sir Robert
Grosvenor contended with the proud Sir Richard Scrope of Yorkshire in
the long heraldic suit (1386-1389) as to the right to bear _Azure a
bend or_, with the result that Sir Robert should bear a golden sheaf
instead of a golden band, as descended from the Earls of Chester.
In the ancient days of chivalry the military aristocracy promoted peace
and order within the county, and defended it against raids from beyond
the Welsh Marshes. Cheshire archers became famous; and, led by their
own knights, gained renown in the wars of the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries.
If military achievement be claimed in justification of the
proverb--“Cheshire, chief of men”--quoted by Drayton, it must be
remembered there was a rival in the field. The “Men of Kent,” who
boldly said to William the Conqueror--
“We are ready to offer thee either Peace or War at thy own
choice and election--Peace with faithful obedience, if thou wilt
permit us to enjoy our liberties; War, and that most deadly, if
thou deny it”--
have a prior claim for daring manhood. But while Grose, the antiquary,
insinuated that the proverb was given to our noble selves _by_ our
noble selves, it may, after all, have had no more serious signification
than that Cheshire men always boasted of their isolation from other
English people.
Truly the warrior-roll forms a long list of brave and hardy men,
from Roger Lacy, the Constable of Cheshire in 1200, that magnanimous
champion of war in both France and Wales, down to Field-Marshal
Combermere of Salamanca and Bhurtpore fame; but memorials abound of
heroic endeavour in the arts of peace, in law and letters, as well as
in the field.
Of famous lawyers were Lord Chancellor Egerton and Sir Ranulph Crewe,
the Speaker of the House of Commons, in the seventeenth century. In the
following century were Randle Wilbraham, ancestor of the Wilbrahams of
Rode, and of Lathom House (now Lord Skelmersdale) in Lancashire; Sir
John Chesshyre, who founded in 1733 a library at Halton, and was buried
at Runcorn in 1738 with this epitaph:--
“An honest man’s the noblest work of God”:
and Richard P. Arden, born at Stockport in 1745, who became Lord Chief
Justice, Baron Alvanley, and died in 1804.
Of talented men of letters were Dr. Broome, the poet, born at
Haslington in 1689; and in our own time Lord de Tabley, eminent
as poet, botanist, and author of the first work on the subject
of book-plates; Sir Philip Egerton, the learned geologist and
mineralogist; the Rev. A. P. Stanley, Dean of Westminster; and other
worthies whose names are enshrined in the volumes of the _National
Biographical Dictionary_.
Of benefactors of their fellow-men were James Neild, born at Knutsford
in 1774, the philanthropic prison-visitor; the Duke of Bridgewater,
pioneer of canal construction; George Wilbraham, Esq., of Delamere
House, who died in 1813, and was one of the first to introduce an
improved system of agriculture into the county; the first Lord
Tollemache, who in his lifetime was everywhere spoken of as Cheshire’s
model landlord; and many others who, holding positions of trust for the
general good, fulfilled their duties with integrity and honour, and to
whom we are all debtors.
There is another local proverb, expressed in curious rhyme and
alliteration, that relates to the number and distribution of four
Cheshire family names:--
As many Leighs as fleas; Massies as asses;
Crewes as crows; and Davenports as dogs’ tails.
This is easy of explanation when multitudinous plebeians bearing the
same surnames are added to the following lists of genteel families:--
There were _Leghs_ of Legh, Northwood, Sandbach, Booths, Oughtrington,
Adlington, Baguley, Lyme, and Ridge.
There were _Masseys_ of Massey, Coddington, Puddington, Tatton, and
Chester.
There were _Crewes_ of Crewe, Nantwich, Alvaston, Farndon, Holt,
Cholmondeston, and Utkinton.
There were _Davenports_ of Davenport, Woodford, Calveley, Wheltrough,
Bramhall, Henbury, Capesthorne, Blackhurst, Boughton, and Chorley.
The Davenport family had power of life and death over intruders
infesting the royal forest of Macclesfield; and their crest--a rogue’s
head, with a halter round the neck--must have been a constant reminder
that the Davenports were terrors to all evil-doers.
The Bramhall Davenports, who held that estate for more than five
hundred years, have persistently borne the name of William; and for the
same length of time the Tattons of Wythenshawe have been named Robert
and William alternately; while the owner of Carden has been John Leche
for sixteen successive generations!
In regard to curiosities of descent, it may here be restated that
Robert Hyde, of Hyde, Esq., who died about the year 1528, left a son,
Lawrence Hyde, who, leaving Cheshire for Wiltshire, became the ancestor
of the Hydes of Westhatch, from whom descended the celebrated Edward
Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, whose two granddaughters, Mary and Anne,
became in succession Queens of England.
Few counties in England have had their history so fully written
and re-written as Cheshire; and therefore from this epitome of a
wide-embracing subject the reader is referred to the writings of
Camden, Webb, Fuller, Sir Peter Leycester, the Lysons, and the
monumental volumes of Dr. Ormerod’s _History of Cheshire_; to the
published transactions of the Record Society of Lancashire and
Cheshire, and of the historic societies of Manchester, Liverpool,
and Chester; to many separate histories of towns and parishes in the
county; and to the genealogical works of the late Mr. Earwaker, whose
untimely death in 1895 is still deplored by all who take an interest in
the records of family history.
This chapter shall close with the words of two Cheshire poets--the
one Geoffrey Whitney, who, living in Queen Elizabeth’s reign, wrote
in praise of prominent Cheshire men of that time; the other, the late
Rowland Eyles Egerton-Warburton, “the rhyming squire of Arley,” in the
time of Queen Victoria.