Portal:Cheshire
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The Cheshire Portal
Welcome Cheshire Plain from the Mid Cheshire Ridge
Cheshire is a ceremonial county in the North West of England. Chester is the county town, and formerly gave its name to the county. The largest town is Warrington, and other major towns include Congleton, Crewe, Ellesmere Port, Macclesfield, Nantwich, Northwich, Runcorn, Sandbach, Widnes, Wilmslow and Winsford. The county is administered as four unitary authorities. Cheshire occupies a boulder clay plain (pictured) which separates the hills of North Wales from the Peak District of Derbyshire. The county covers an area of 2,343 km2 (905 sq mi), with a high point of 559 m (1,834 ft) elevation. The estimated population is a little over one million, 19th highest in England, with a population density of around 450 people per km2. The county was created in around 920, but the area has a long history of human occupation dating back to before the last Ice Age. Deva was a major Roman fort, and Cheshire played an important part in the Civil War. Predominantly rural, the county is historically famous for the production of Cheshire cheese, salt and silk. During the 19th century, towns in the north of the county were pioneers of the chemical industry, while Crewe became a major railway junction and engineering facility. Selected article
Chester Cathedral is a Church of England cathedral dedicated to Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary. It became the cathedral of the city of Chester in 1541, and has been the centre of worship, administration, ceremony and music for both city and diocese since that date. A Christian basilica is believed to have occupied the site in the late Roman era, and an abbey church containing a shrine to St Werburgh, patron saint of the city, was destroyed in 1090. The present cathedral was formerly the abbey church of a Benedictine monastery founded by Hugh Lupus in 1093. The existing building in New Red Sandstone dates from between the foundation and the early 1500s. Monastic buildings survive to the north of the cathedral. Extensive restorations were carried out during the 19th century, notably by George Gilbert Scott, and a free-standing bell tower, designed by George Pace, was added in the 1970s. The site is a major tourist attraction, and the cathedral is used for concerts and exhibitions. Selected image
Many of the listed buildings in the centre of Nantwich are half-timbered, black-and-white buildings built shortly after the Great Fire of 1583. This single-gabled example on the High Street, adjacent to the Crown Hotel, displays decorative panelling and a second-storey jettying. Credit: Espresso Addict (11 August 2007) In this month
5 June 1965: Engine fire on Crewe–Carlisle train between Crewe and Winsford fatally injured driver Wallace Oakes. 6 June 1690: William III stayed at Combermere Abbey on his way to the Battle of the Boyne. 7 June 1940: Actor Ronald Pickup born in Chester. 7 June 1954: Mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing died in Wilmslow. 8 June 1825: Ten to twelve thousand people attended the funeral of Sir John Grey Egerton of Oulton Park, MP for Chester and Freemason, at Little Budworth. 10 June 1878: Chester Tramways Company started operating horse-drawn trams in Chester. 10 June 1931: Chester Zoo opened. 14 June 1988: Lindow IV discovered at Lindow Moss. 16 June 1967: Daresbury Laboratory (pictured) officially opened by Harold Wilson, prime minister. 18 June 1886: Mountaineer George Mallory born in Mobberley. 19 June 2011: Fire damaged east wing of Peckforton Castle. 23 June 1999: Train crash near Winsford injured 31 people. 24 June 1604: Plague started in Nantwich, with around 430 deaths by the following March. 25 June 1897: Actor Basil Radford born in Chester. 26 June 1923: Jazz musician and bandleader Syd Lawrence born in Wilmslow. 27 June 1919: X-ray crystallographer Alexander Stokes born in Macclesfield. Selected list
Of the over 200 Scheduled Monuments in Cheshire, at least 34 date from after 1539, the end of the medieval period. Monuments are defined as sites deliberately constructed by human activity; some sites not visible above ground. They were formerly called "scheduled ancient monuments" but as they include structures dating from as late as the 1940s and 1950s, the word "ancient" has been dropped. They range in date from the early post-medieval period, through the Industrial Revolution, to the 20th century. Early post-medieval monuments tend to be similar in type to those from the medieval period, namely moats or moated sites and churchyard crosses. Unusual post-medieval structures include a dovecote and a duck decoy. Many structures dating from the Industrial Revolution relate to the canal network, including the Anderton Boat Lift and several canal locks and bridges (example pictured). Industrial sites include the Lion Salt Works, the remains of a mine and a transporter bridge within a factory. The structures dating from the 20th century were constructed for the World Wars or the Cold War. They consist of a former Royal Air Force airfield and the remains of three sites for anti-aircraft guns. GeographyTop: Map of modern Cheshire showing urban areas (grey) and the major road network. Chester (red) is the county town, and Warrington has the greatest population. Towns with more than 10,000 inhabitants in 2011 are highlighted; the size of dot gives a rough indication of the relative population. Wales and the adjacent English counties are shown in capitals. Bottom: Relief map showing the major hills. The Mid Cheshire Ridge is a discontinuous ridge of low hills running north–south from Beacon Hill (north of Helsby Hill) to Bickerton Hill. Most other high ground falls within the Peak District in the east of the county. Shining Tor (559 metres), on the boundary with Derbyshire, forms the county's high point.
Administration The ceremonial county of Cheshire is administered by four unitary authorities (click on the map for details): 2 – Cheshire East 3 – Warrington 4 – Halton In the local government reorganisation of 1974, Cheshire gained an area formerly in Lancashire including Widnes and Warrington. The county lost Tintwistle to Derbyshire, part of the Wirral Peninsula to Merseyside, and a northern area including Stockport, Altrincham, Sale, Hyde, Dukinfield and Stalybridge to Greater Manchester. Selected biography
Joseph Priestley (13 March 1733 – 6 February 1804) was a theologian, Dissenting clergyman, natural philosopher, educator and political theorist. He is usually credited with the discovery of oxygen, which he dubbed "dephlogisticated air", having isolated it in its gaseous state. He also discovered several other gases, invented soda water and wrote on electricity. He served as a minister in Nantwich (1758–61), and also established a school where he taught natural philosophy. It was here that he wrote the seminal work, The Rudiments of English Grammar. He was also a tutor at Warrington Academy (1761–67). Priestley's metaphysical writings attempted to combine theism, materialism and determinism; these works are considered to be one of the main sources for utilitarianism. Besides Rudiments, his contributions to pedagogy include the invention of modern historiography. He advocated equal rights for religious Dissenters and helped to found Unitarianism in England. Did you know...
Selected town or village
Runcorn is an industrial town and cargo port in the borough of Halton. It stands on the southern bank of the River Mersey where the estuary narrows to form Runcorn Gap, spanned by the Silver Jubilee Bridge (pictured) and the Mersey Gateway. The Manchester Ship Canal runs between the town and the Mersey, and is joined by the Bridgewater Canal. The earliest reference to the settlement is in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as Rumcofan, meaning "a wide cove or bay". A small, isolated village until the coming of the Industrial Revolution, various industries developed in Runcorn during the 19th century, in particular, soap and alkali manufacture, quarrying, shipbuilding, engineering and tanning. Only the chemical industry remains important, and diversification has been driven by good access to the transport network. A new town was built to the east of the existing town in the 1960s and 1970s which, together with later developments further east, has resulted in the population doubling to more than 60,000. In the news.JPG) Crewe Market Hall 29 October, 1 November: Warrington council and the mayor of Crewe each announce plans to bid for city status in 2022. 13–14 October: Prince Edward visits Chester and opens a Fire Service training centre in Winsford. 8 October: Castle Street shopping area in Macclesfield reopens after refurbishment. 4 October: Restoration of the grade-I-listed Bridgegate, part of Chester city walls, is completed. 25 September: A bronze frieze by the sculptor Tom Murphy is unveiled in Warrington, as a memorial to the band Viola Beach. 9 September: The fifth stage of the Tour of Britain cycle race takes place in Cheshire, starting at Alderley Park and finishing in Warrington. 24 July: The grade-II-listed Crewe Market Hall (pictured) formally reopens after refurbishment. 15 July: Crewe, Runcorn and Warrington are awarded potential funding under the "Town Deal" government scheme. QuotationBut to have the ability to read Latin and Greek in the original, and also to be the natural speaker of the language of the Gawain poet are riches enough. Where there may be an association that is necessary for me to celebrate in my work is in the Gawain language, for the speaking of which I had my mouth washed out with carbolic soap by a well meaning teacher at the age of five. ... The language of my childhood and of my native culture is, technically, North-West Mercian Middle English. Of course it has changed, as all living language changes, since the time of the Gawain poet. But when I read sections of the poem aloud to my father, he knew, and used, more than 90% of the vocabulary; and the phonetics of the vowels have scarcely changed. Alan Garner on the Cheshire dialect, elimae (2002)
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