Cheshire

We have traced the story of Cheshire from prehistoric times. For long ages the story was one of war and bloodshed, of conquest and defeat, of the coming and the passing of many...

Among the friends of Earl Hugh who visited him at his castle at Chester was Anselm the great churchman, who afterwards became Archbishop of Canterbury. Anselm was at the time pr...

In the early months of the year A.D. 1070 the Saxons of Cheshire fled before the approach of an army of discontented and almost mutinous troops who had cut their way through the...

Many of the changes described in the last three chapters were but partially accomplished in Cheshire, when a young princess of eighteen years became Queen of England. The power...

A piece of leaden water-piping discovered in Eastgate Street, Chester, bears the name of Julius Agricola. Agricola was made Governor of Britain in A.D. 78. Tacitus, a Roman hist...

When Charles was restored to the throne the bishops also came back to their bishoprics. The records of the churches of Chester tell of the payments made to the ringers for the r...

When Edward the First completed his conquest of North Wales, and the Welsh chiefs swore fealty at Chester to the first English Prince of Wales, the fighting squires of Cheshire...

With the capture of Chester (Chap. VII) Ecberght's conquest of Mercia was complete. Northumbria, Kent, and East Anglia also submitted to him. But neither Ecberght nor the kings...

The chief event with which all boys, I imagine, connect the name of Queen Elizabeth is the defeat of the Great Armada sent against these shores by the King of Spain. Doubtless o...

In the western porch beneath the tower of Prestbury Church are a number of fragments of broken grave-slabs of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. On nearly all is carved a cro...

Twenty years before steam locomotives were used to draw passenger trains over the earliest railways in Cheshire, a steam packet boat had been built to ply between Liverpool and...

Many of the largest and finest churches in Cheshire were built during the Wars of the Roses, and in the reigns of the early Tudors. This fact shows us more than anything else pe...

Throughout the Middle Ages, until the end of the Wars of the Roses, war was the chief, almost the only occupation of the leading men of Cheshire. A few entered the Church, Richa...

Earl Randle 'the Good' had no son to succeed him, and when he died the earldom passed to his nephew John the Scot, the son of Randle's eldest sister. John married the daughter o...

Few English counties owe more of their history to their geographical position and surroundings, and to the character of their natural features, than Cheshire. Not only in the pa...

Many attempts were made by the Tudor sovereigns to conquer the Irish. From time to time expeditions were sent across the sea, and the troops embarked at various points on the Ch...

In 1645 word was brought to Chester that the king himself was coming, and the drooping spirits of the Royalists revived. Charles entered the city with about three hundred follow...

On one of the walls of the Parish Church of Macclesfield is a small brass plate, a few inches square. It is called a 'Pardon brass', and represents the Pope bowing before Christ...

Simon of Whitchurch received the Abbey of S. Werburgh from the hands of another and a greater Simon, the powerful Earl of Leicester, who was engaged in a grim struggle with the...

Three streets in Chester in the neighbourhood of the Church of S. Martin bear the names of Grey Friars, Black Friars, and White Friars respectively. During the thirteenth centur...

A few years ago some workmen digging on the high ground of Alderley Edge came across a number of flint stones, which from their shape and the marks of chipping upon them had cle...

During the latter part of the seventeenth century the people of Cheshire began to repair the damage done to the churches, mansions, and public buildings during the Civil Wars. I...

In the previous chapters all that we know of Cheshire and its people has been learned from unwritten records, 'stories in stones', and from such scanty remains as have been brou...

The greatest churches which the Normans planned were on such a scale that they could not be finished in the lives of their designers. The work was carried on more or less contin...

The Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth century laid the foundation of modern manufacturing England. With remarkable rapidity great industries came into being, and new metho...

After the making of canals came the railways, and the mighty power of steam, that had wrought such a vast change in the cotton industry, was to be the moving force of the new in...

'Poor Jack' was John Bradshaw, whose name is the first on the list of those who signed the warrant for the execution of the king. On January 1, 1649, Parliament decided that Cha...

Nearly every Cheshire boy has visited at some time or another a quarry in the neighbourhood of the town or village where he dwells. He will probably have noticed that beneath th...

In the 'Stag Parlour' of Lyme Hall is a framed piece of needlework done by Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, when she stayed at Lyme. When she was deposed by her Scottish subjects sh...

Charles proclaimed war on Parliament in the year 1642, and both sides prepared at once for the struggle. Roughly speaking, London and the south-eastern counties were on the side...

Henry the Fourth belongs partly to Cheshire, for a Duke of Lancaster had married the heiress of the Lacys, who were descended from Nigel, Baron of Halton and Constable of Cheste...

illustrations. 3s. 6d. Complete, Pp. 1068, with over 400 illustrations and index. 10s. Also in six Sections: (1) 55 B.C.-A.D. 1485, 2s. 6d.; (1a) 55 B.C.-A.D. 1714, 4s. 6d.; (2)...

In the year 1785 cotton was brought into the Mersey from the United States of America. Long before that time so-called 'cotton' stuffs had been made in Cheshire villages. But th...

As the Romans retreated southwards, tribes of Picts, a fierce race inhabiting the northern parts of Britain followed in their wake plundering and destroying the cities built by...

Let us now visit some quarries in East Cheshire. We shall find considerable difficulty in reaching some of them. It will be necessary to get permission from the owners of the qu...

During the latter years of the Roman occupation there must have been many among the Roman soldiers stationed in Cheshire who had heard the message of the Gospel, and, following...

The people of Cheshire were not all thieves and robbers in the eighteenth century. If the rich and the idle were given to folly and extravagance, and poorer men also too often l...