CHESHIRE. ROADS

OXFORD COUNTY HISTORIES
CHESHIRE

BY CHARLES E. KELSEY, M.A.

WITH TEN MAPS AND FORTY-NINE ILLUSTRATIONS

OXFORD
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
1911

HENRY FROWDE, M.A.
PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
LONDON, EDINBURGH, NEW YORK
TORONTO AND MELBOURNE

PREFACE

The aim of the present volume in the Oxford Series of County Histories for Schools is to assist the study of the progress of the English people by an examination of local antiquities, visits to ancient sites and buildings, and suggestions of big national movements from local incident. An attempt is made to foster the powers of observation in children by showing them how to connect various styles of architecture, for instance, with successive stages in the story of their county, and to construct from familiar objects the broad outlines of national history. Thus it is hoped that sooner or later the teaching of history may become, to some extent, an out-of-school subject and take its place side by side with outdoor Nature-study and Practical Geography in the curriculum of our schools.

In rural districts this end is obviously more easily attainable than in large industrial centres. In the latter the expense of moving classes of children from their schools to visit a site some miles distant would be no doubt considerable; but is it too visionary to hope that before long a motor-bus, capable of carrying a class of thirty or forty boys and girls, will be deemed by Educational Committees a necessary part of their 'apparatus'?

Apart from the educative value of such work there would, as the children grow up, arise a body of public opinion which could give valuable help in saving historic sites and buildings from loss or destruction, and preventing the removal of antiquities from their natural home. Cheshire has suffered perhaps more than her share of both these evils, and looks with sorrowful eyes at many of her treasures housed in the museums of towns beyond her borders.

All students of Cheshire history owe much to Ormerod's great work. But his history is largely genealogical, and personally I wish to acknowledge a greater debt to the labours and transactions of local societies, particularly the Chester Archaeological Society and the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society. Many learned members of these two bodies have made most important contributions to our knowledge of ancient and mediaeval Cheshire within the most recent years. Among other works consulted I may mention the Palatine Note Book, Cheshire Notes and Queries, and Morris's Diocesan History of Chester. I have received kindly assistance from several Cheshire clergymen, and to all who have given me permission to take photographs within their churches I express my thanks.

The maps, drawings, and photographs are original, with few exceptions. I am indebted to the Council of the Chester Archaeological Society, and the Grosvenor Museum for the loan of the block of a Roman tombstone from a photograph by Mr. R. Newstead, and to Mr. Alfred Newstead, Curator of the Museum, for photographs of the Runic stone and Roman altar.

The Rev. J. F. Tristram, of the Hulme Grammar School, read the two geological chapters and made valuable suggestions. To the Clarendon Press I am grateful for much kind help and criticism.

The Hulme Grammar School,
Manchester,
July, 1911.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I
POSITION AND NATURAL FEATURES OF CHESHIRE

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 past have the rocks and rivers of Cheshire helped to make history, but even to-day they have a very direct bearing upon the fortunes of Cheshire men and women. How many of us reflect, as our eyes travel over the plain to the distant hills, that on the wise and orderly arrangement of mountain and valley, forest and winding stream, our very existence and means of livelihood depend? Truly Nature has other work to do than merely create picturesque landscapes.

Cheshire is situated in the north-west of England, washed partly by the Irish Sea, and guarded as it were on its eastern and western sides by two great ramparts of hill country, that on the east formed by the southern spurs of the Pennine Chain, while the Welsh hills of Flint and Denbigh are the natural frontier on the west.

The western boundary, however, which has been frequently changed, now follows roughly the Valley of the Dee. A semicircle of hills of lesser height fringes the county on the south, and the river Mersey divides it from its northern neighbour, Lancashire.

In the north-west of the county a rectangular stretch of country known as Wirral is washed by two great estuaries and by the Irish Sea, and a wedge of moorland in the north-east penetrates into the heart of the Pennines. Here the hills reach their greatest height, Black Hill the highest point in Cheshire being just under 2,000 feet above sea-level. The low-lying lands enclosed by this amphitheatre of hills form the Cheshire Plain, broken only by ridges or terraces of low sandstone hills running north and south.

A glance at a map of the British Isles will show you that Cheshire lies in the very heart of the three kingdoms. Its geographical position has thus made it a meeting-place of nations, and you will see in later chapters that all the peoples that have helped to make our national history have in turn realized the importance of its position, and have fought desperately for its possession. Briton and Roman, Angle and Saxon and Dane, Welsh and Norman have all left some mark of their presence in the county, and from these many elements is derived the blood that flows in the veins of nearly all Cheshire boys and girls of to-day.

Now look at the map opposite. The shaded portions represent land over 300, 600, or 1,000 feet above sea-level. In the south, the eastern and western uplands slope gradually down towards the bit of white which touches the centre of the bottom of the map and forms what is known as the Cheshire Gap. Through this gap the Midlands lie open to the north-west and to the Cheshire Plain, and over these lower heights naturally passed the great highway from London to the Irish Sea. Chester, built on a rocky plateau at the head of the tidal waters of the Dee and protected on its western side by a natural bend of the same river, was clearly a position of great importance for guarding alike the coast road into North Wales and the roads to the north of England; and there is no doubt that it was held as a fortified post long before the Romans built the Roman city of Deva.

For many centuries this stronghold was one of the chief military outposts and frontier towns of England, not often free from war's alarms, and the sentinels on her walls and watch-towers ever on the look-out for the approach of some new enemy. Chester became the 'base' or head-quarters from which all military campaigns in the north-west, in Wales or in Ireland were carried out, united with the metropolis by the great road that passed through the heart of England, along which armies could march without any difficult hills to cross and hardly a river of any great size to bridge. In later and more peaceful times, for the same geographical reasons, the London and North-Western Railway, the lineal descendant of the ancient 'Watling Street', laid its lines on nearly the same ground as the old highway, and is thus the easiest as well as the most direct of all routes from London to the north-west.

CHESHIRE

Contour Map

With the exception of the Dee, which rises near Lake Bala in Wales, the rivers of Cheshire have their sources in the eastern or southern uplands. For eight months of the year moisture-laden winds blow from the sea across the Cheshire Plain and deposit their rains upon the hills. In the hilly country of the north-east, where the rainfall is greatest, the water is gathered and stored in a number of reservoirs in Longdendale; and the moist climate is the chief reason why this district is the seat of the cotton industry, for cotton threads become brittle in a dry atmosphere. In the valleys of the Tame and Goyt the abundance of fresh running water from the hills formerly caused many mills for the bleaching, dyeing and printing of calicoes to be erected on or near the streams. Nowadays, however, owing to the greater supply of water brought by pipes from a distance, mills are erected principally on the outskirts of the great towns and nearer the centres of population. Hence in the villages of the Goyt it is no uncommon sight to see the tottering walls of mills that have been abandoned and allowed to fall into ruin and decay.

The combined waters of the Etherow, Tame, and Goyt form the Mersey at Stockport. Only the left bank of this river is in Cheshire. Moreover, for a large part of its course it has been 'canalized', so that it no longer flows between its natural banks, but down the artificial channel of the Manchester Ship Canal. The estuary of the Mersey, which is three to four miles across at its widest point, narrows at Birkenhead to a width of barely three-quarters of a mile. At this point the river is kept open to the largest vessels afloat by constant dredging. Here in the docks you may see ships of all nations, and generally one or more of our huge ocean greyhounds riding at anchor in mid-river or awaiting but the turn of the tide to take out their cargoes of human lives to distant lands.

SOURCES OF RIVERS IN E. CHESHIRE

The Weaver, on the other hand, is wholly a Cheshire river, rising in the Peckforton Hills in the south-west of the county. The Mersey and the Weaver receive a number of tributaries, of which the Bollin and the Dane are the most important, from the eastern highlands,

the high-crowned Shutlingslawe

... with those proud hills whence rove

The lovely sister brooks the silvery Dane and Dove,

Clear Dove that makes to Trent, the other to the West.

At Northwich the Weaver becomes navigable as far as the Mersey.

The rivers flow mainly in a westerly or north-westerly direction. Spreading evenly over the plain in almost parallel lines, they serve to drain and fertilize the land, which thus affords the finest pasturage for cattle. Dairy-farming and stock-raising have therefore become the principal occupation of the inhabitants of the Cheshire midlands; and on market days the piles of the famous Cheshire cheese are generally the first thing we notice in the open market-places of our country towns.

The most noticeable feature of the county are the two estuaries of the Dee and the Mersey. The tract enclosed between them is for the most part flat, Heswall Hill, the highest point, being little more than 300 feet in height, and the lowest parts have to be protected from the inroads of the sea by long embankments. Several portions were in fact, at one time separated from the mainland, like Hilbre Isle at the present day, as is shown by the names Wallasey, 'isle of the Welsh or strangers,' and Ince 'an island'. In the Middle Ages, owing to the importance of Chester, the Dee was the principal outlet for the trade of the north-west, as Bristol was for the south-west of England. In those days Liverpool was but an insignificant town, and the Mersey was known as the 'Creek of Chester'. But in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the shipping trade of the Dee declined owing to the great accumulation of sand and silt in the channel. When vessels could no longer unload or ship their merchandise under the walls of Chester a quay was formed at Shotwick, some six miles along the northern shore of the estuary. In this neighbourhood over two thousand acres of land have been recovered from the sea that once flowed over them. Navigation was partially restored as far as Chester for small vessels by a new artificial channel, but since the rise of the cotton and other great industries in South Lancashire Liverpool and Birkenhead have replaced Chester and become the second port in the kingdom.

Cheshire also possesses a miniature 'Lake District'. Between the Bollin and the Weaver are scattered many lakelets or 'meres'. They are particularly numerous in the salt districts, where they are due to the pumping of brine which has been going on for ages, and caused the sinking down of the overlying rocks. In the neighbourhood of Northwich the sheets of water thus formed are called 'flashes'.

The county still contains much 'forest', that is, uncultivated land. The hilly country of the east consists mostly of bleak and barren moorland, affording but poor pasturage for sheep and used mainly for the preservation of game. Such names as Wildboarclough, Wolf's Edge, Cat's Tor, Eagle's Crag, and many others, show clearly the wild and desolate character of this district. Extensive woods are found in the valleys and 'cloughs' of the Etherow and Goyt. Delamere was once a deer forest extending as far as Nantwich, but in the last hundred years the greater part of it has been cultivated. Many towns and villages still retain their 'common' land, often bright with patches of broom and gorse, while the numerous and extensive parks of the great landowners are justly noted for their fine forest trees.

To many of you the natural features described in this chapter must be a familiar sight. Some of you have perhaps stood by the beacon on Alderley Edge or by the sham ruins on the summit of Mow Cop, and viewed wide stretches of the Cheshire Plain. Others have looked down from the Frodsham Hills upon the estuary of the Mersey mapped out at their feet, or from the walls of Chester have gazed upon the purple hills of Wales. But the surface of the county suffered many changes before it assumed its present aspect, and we must now see what story the stones have to tell us of bygone ages when Cheshire was yet in the making.

CHAPTER II
THE MAKING OF CHESHIRE. I
The Newer Rocks

There rolls the deep where grew the tree:

O earth, what changes hast thou seen!

There, where the long street roars, hath been

The stillness of the central sea.

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 the two or three feet of soil at the top of the quarry the rocks are arranged in beds or 'strata' piled one upon another in horizontal rows, or sometimes sloping in parallel lines towards the bottom of the quarry. When and how were these beds of rock formed and laid down?

If our quarry is in the central or western parts of Cheshire we shall find that the rocks are of a reddish colour, generally hard and gritty, but sometimes so soft that pieces may be crushed into fragments with the fingers. These rocks are known as the New Red sandstones, and are largely used for building purposes. Chester Cathedral and a great number of Cheshire churches have been built of this material; and the hillsides where the rocks crop out above the soil often glow with a rich warm red in the evening sunlight. You may see them best perhaps in the railway cuttings in the neighbourhood of Frodsham and Chester, or in the great quarries at Storeton-in-Wirral and Runcorn.

Geological Map

These beds of sandstone are really wide stretches of the sandy shores of an ancient sea, which have been pressed into a solid substance by the weight of other layers of rock deposited over them in later ages. Thus they belong to a group of what are called 'water-laid' rocks. We know that seas once flowed over them because some of the beds show the ripple-marks that we see so often in the sands when walking by the sea-shore. A fearful looking monster, with the equally terrible name of labyrinthodont, in appearance rather like a gigantic frog, has left his 'footprints in the sands' in the rocks near Lymm and Weston. You will probably not be able to find these footprints, but in the museums at Manchester and Warrington you may see them on large slabs of sandstone rock. How would you like to meet one of these reptiles to-day, wallowing in the mud on the shores of some Cheshire mere? On the same slabs you will see suncracks which tell us of the baking of sand and mud in the sun's rays when the tide has gone down.

The lower layers of the New Red Sandstone are of a paler colour, light brown or almost white. To these the name of 'Bunter' has been given to distinguish them from the upper and therefore later deposits known as 'Keuper' sandstone. The Bunter beds are found chiefly in the west of the county, and in Wirral, where you may see the Keuper rocks of Storeton Hill sticking up above the layers of Bunter stone that surround and underlie them.

The greater part of the surface of Cheshire consists of these rocks. Alderley Edge and Helsby Hill, the hills of Delamere and Peckforton are composed of it, and it crops out often in our village streets. The steps of the village cross at Lymm are cut out of a piece of rock which sticks out in the middle of the road.

In the sandstone beds at Northwich, Winsford, and Middlewich are layers of rock salt from which we obtain our salt for food and other domestic uses. The salt was formed at a time when the sea was gradually disappearing from the surface of Cheshire leaving inland salt lakes, which, becoming dried up, deposited beds of salt crystals. These, like the sandstone, became pressed into a solid condition by the weight of other layers. Where the salt has been taken out of the earth the upper layers have sunk from time to time. At Northwich the land is continually sinking, and you may see houses and chimneys cracked and twisted out of their proper shape as if they had been visited by an earthquake. Often the hollows where the land has sunk have become filled with water and produced the numerous meres or small lakes dotted about the county. In the valley of the Weaver they are locally known as 'flashes'.

Striated Boulder (Erratic): High Legh

When, in the course of time, the red sandstone formed the dry land of Cheshire, it became covered by a great ice-sheet which extended over Britain even as far south as the Thames valley. Beneath this covering of ice the rocks were crushed and ground to atoms by the movement of the ice-sheet over them. This formed beds of a substance called boulder-clay, containing lumps of rock which must have been brought by the ice great distances, for they are of a kind found only in the north of England or in Scotland. Some of these 'boulders' are of great size. Several have been placed in Vernon Park, Stockport, and in the West Park, Macclesfield, you may see one that was dug up in the neighbourhood of the town. It weighs about thirty tons. On Eddisbury Hill is a mass of rock, ten feet long, of a kind found only on Skiddaw in the Lake District, and in the narrow lane behind the 'Wizard' Inn on Alderley Edge is a lump of granite from Eskdale, so that these rocks have been brought by the ice a distance of a hundred miles. Such blocks and boulders are called 'erratics', because they have wandered so far from their original home. Another proof of the existence of the ice-sheet may be seen in the scratchings and marks (called 'striae') on pebbles and rocks found in these beds. In the lane outside the church at High Legh are a number of large boulders which still show the lines of furrows and scratchings made on their surface by the movement of the ice over them.

The boulder-clay has been worn away by the action of water and weather from a great part of Cheshire, but in the west of the county large patches may be seen in the low-lying districts. You may observe the beds most clearly in the cliffs of boulder-clay on the estuary of the Dee between Heswall and West Kirby. In the neighbourhood of Chester, many of the villages—Tarvin, Christleton, Aldford, Saighton, and Barrow, for instance—are built on sandstone knolls and ridges which stick up through the boulder-clay, for the sandstone is drier and healthier than the clay to live upon, and the wells, especially those in the Bunter beds, provide the purest water.

As the ice-sheet melted and the glaciers or ice-rivers retreated northwards when the climate became warmer, beds of sand, gravel, and stones were spread over the Cheshire plain. These are called drift beds. The stones and pebbles are rounded by the streams of melted ice and snow which flowed from the mouths of the ice-rivers. Upon the beds of drift lies the surface soil in which grow the crops and grass, the herbage and the woods of to-day; and it is in the drift, as you will see in a later chapter, that traces of the earliest inhabitants of Cheshire are to be found.

CHAPTER III
THE MAKING OF CHESHIRE (cont.). II
The Older Rocks

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 quarries, put on a special suit of clothes, enter an iron cage, and descend many hundred feet perhaps into the depths of the earth's surface until we find ourselves—in a coal-mine!

Section of Rocks from Knutsford to Buxton

Unlike the New Red Sandstones, which are found for the most part in flat horizontal beds, the coal beds slope downwards from east to west. This is due to the uplifting of the East Cheshire hills, which we shall presently explain. When this uplift took place, the coal beds, which were originally flat, became raised in the east and equally lowered in the west. When the sea flowed over them they became covered by sandy deposits of such a thickness that in the greater part of Cheshire the coal cannot be reached. The earliest sands laid down formed what are called the Permian rocks, and the later layers the New Red Sandstone series mentioned in the last chapter. The Permian rocks may be well seen at Stockport, in the river beds of the Tame and the Goyt which have cut their way through them. In the strip of country between Stockport and Macclesfield, and again on the south-eastern borders of Cheshire, the upturned edges of the coal beds have been left exposed so that the coal is near the surface and can be easily extracted.

Coal consists of the vegetable remains of forest trees and their undergrowth. If you look at a lump of coal you will see that it has been pressed down into thin layers like the leaves of a book. When these layers are split apart there are often found the fossil remains of leaves and roots of trees, fronds of ferns, seed-cones and stems of plants which grew in the forests. Some of these, particularly the ferns, are often of great beauty. You may see a number of these 'coal pictures' in the Vernon Park Museum at Stockport. Here too you will find portions of the actual trunks of trees that have been dug up just where they stood when the seas flowed over them.

You may learn even to distinguish different varieties of these forest trees, just as you are able to distinguish the oak and the beech and the elm of to-day. Latin names such as Sigillaria, Lepidodendron, and Salisburia have been given to them. The most beautiful of all is a Maidenhair Tree-fern. The Calamites was a huge 'Horse-tail' plant of which you may find small varieties to-day on banks and in hedgerows.

On the coast of Wirral, between Meols and New Brighton, are the remains of a forest which has only in very recent years been covered by the sea. Boys who live in this neighbourhood may have heard their parents tell of the stumps of tree-trunks sticking out through the sands when the tide was low. This shows that the land is continually undergoing changes, at one time being raised above the seas, at another time sinking beneath the waves.

The beds or 'seams' of coal vary in thickness from a thin film to several yards, and are separated from one another by layers of hard clays and flagstones. From the flagstone beds are obtained the square slabs with which the pavements of our towns and cities are laid. In many of the quarries near the Cheshire coal-field you may watch the workmen cutting and shaping these stones.

The beds of clays and seams of coal make up what are called the 'Coal Measures'. These in their turn rest upon a foundation of hard rock, harder than any we have yet examined, called Millstone Grit or Gritstone. Boys who live in the hilly parts of East Cheshire are very familiar with it, for very probably the houses in which they live and the churches and chapels where they worship have been built of this stone. It is composed of coarse sand and grit, and, like the red sandstone, is a waterlaid deposit several thousand feet in thickness. The Pennine Hills, on the borderland of Cheshire and Derbyshire, are covered with Millstone Grit, which has been thrust upwards by the crumpling and arching of the rocks beneath it.

Below the Gritstone are still older rocks of a different character called the Limestone series. The uppermost beds contain layers of a sandy substance called Yoredale sandstones. Mixed with them are layers of shale, a dark bluish grey clay that crumbles into thin fragments when crushed with the hand, and thin seams of limestone and, occasionally, of coal. These are the oldest rocks that are found anywhere in Cheshire. You may see them in the hills east of Macclesfield and Congleton and the higher parts of Longdendale. Below these beds is a mass of Mountain Limestone which has been forced upwards into an arch by tremendous pressure of rocks from either side, and has lifted up the Gritstone above to a height of nearly two thousand feet. In this way the highlands of East Cheshire, and indeed the whole of the Pennine Chain, have been formed. The Mountain Limestone, which consists almost entirely of animal remains, especially shells and corals, extends right under the highest hills of Cheshire, and comes to light in the cliffs of the beautiful dales of Derbyshire. Only at one spot, a quarry near Astbury, does it appear at the surface in Cheshire.

The Coal Measures, Millstone Grit, Yoredale sandstones, and Mountain Limestone make up what geologists call the Carboniferous or Coal-bearing series, so called because in England our chief supplies of coal are obtained from this group of rocks.

But we should have to dig deeper even than the Mountain Limestone before we could reach the original surface of the earth in Cheshire. Long ages ago, ages so distant that not even the most learned men of science can reckon them, our earth was a globe of fiery molten rock. As the surface gradually cooled it became wrinkled, as a baked apple will when taken from an oven. Water collected in the hollows into which fragments of rock were washed down from the ridges, and thus the waters were raised and formed into seas and lakes. But we shall not find any of these rocks in Cheshire, though you may see them in great masses in the mountains of Cumberland and Wales, where they have been forced upwards by the violent movements always at work in the interior of the earth. It is of these molten rocks that the mass of stone which was brought by the ice from Cumberland and left on Eddisbury Hill is composed.

CHAPTER IV
EARLY INHABITANTS OF CHESHIRE

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 clearly been fashioned by the hand of man. Some of the flints were shaped like a knife blade with a sharp edge on their entire length, and others of a more or less oval shape had a keen edge on one of their curves. The former were the knives with which the earliest men of Cheshire cut the flesh of animals for food; the latter were the scrapers with which they removed the flesh from the bones or from the hides that provided them with clothing.

Flints, however, are not naturally found in any of the Cheshire rocks; they must be sought for in the districts where chalk hills abound. Clearly therefore these men must have brought their tools and weapons with them when they first came into Cheshire from the east or from the south. Afterwards, no doubt, they bargained for them, giving skins and furs in exchange.

Men first made their homes in Cheshire when the glaciers of the Great Ice Age retreated northwards and the climate became more suitable for human habitation. A flint arrow-head found during some excavations at Clulow Cross near Wincle, tells us that men lived then by hunting, depending for their food on the flesh of wild beasts. They lived in caves or in holes dug in the ground. The roughly-chipped stone axe in the Grosvenor Museum was made by these men.

The Flint men, or men of the Old Stone Age, probably came originally from the mainland of Europe to which Britain at that time was joined, the North Sea and English Channel being then dry land. The reindeer, the mammoth, the wild ox, and packs of hungry wolves and hyenas roamed over Cheshire in those days.

These Flint men were succeeded by other races of New Stone men who found that they could manufacture their necessary tools out of the boulders embedded in the drift and boulder-clay. The men who dug up the knives and scrapers of Alderley found near Mottram Common a heap of small boulders carefully placed in a pit dug in the ground and clearly selected for some useful purpose. For out of these stones were to be cut and shaped stone hammer-heads with which they learned to crush copper ore and axe-heads to cut down trees. Some of the hammer-heads themselves have been found in this locality, and they are made of a stone similar to that of the unbroken boulders. The stone 'celt' or axe-head in Vernon Park Museum shows that they were improving in their skill and workmanship, for their tools were no longer chipped into their required shape but ground with hard mill-stones and afterwards smoothed and polished. Afterwards, as you may see from the specimen in the Grosvenor Museum, which has a hole cut through it, the New Stone men learned how to fit handles to their axe-heads.

In the course of time these primitive dwellers learned to tame and train animals for their service and use. They were protected from attack by wild beasts by circles of piled stones or raised earth covered with turf. Traces of these circles have in recent years been found at Alderley Edge, but they have been mostly levelled for agricultural purposes.

They also taught themselves the art of pottery, making rough jars and urns of sun-dried clay and sand, jars wherein to store their water, and urns in which to place the remains of their dead. One of these urns, dug up at Stretton, may be seen in the Warrington Museum.

The Stone men were succeeded by tribes of an entirely different race called Celts. The Celts drove out the earlier inhabitants from their Cheshire homes, compelling them to seek refuge in Wales and Ireland. They came not all at once but in successive waves, the earliest arrivals being the Goidelic or Gaelic Celts, who in their turn were ousted by the Brythonic Celts, from whom the name of Briton is derived. These are the ancestors of the Welsh nation.

The Brythons, or Britons as we may now call them, were a more intelligent and civilized race than any that had hitherto dwelt in the land. They were a pastoral people, and brought with them great herds of cattle, as well as horses and dogs. They could spin and sew, making their spindles and needles of bone or horn, and grew corn, which they ground with hand-mills.

But the Britons must have been continually fighting against fresh incoming tribes, for on some of the hill-tops of Cheshire you may see the camps and earthworks which they made for their defence and refuge in time of war. Suitable positions were chosen, with one side guarded by precipitous cliffs if possible, the whole being enclosed except on the steep side by a raised rampart of earth and a ditch. These earthworks are circular or oval with gaps on either side for entrances. At Bucton Castle, high above Mossley and the Tame Valley, at Kelsborrow Castle in Delamere Forest, and Maiden Castle in the Broxton Hills, British encampments may still be seen.

The Britons were very particular about the burial of their dead. Over the graves of their chiefs they erected great round 'barrows'. Many of these barrows, or, to give them their Latin name, 'tumuli,' may be seen to-day, and several of them have been opened and examined. In a field near Oakmere, not far from the high-road that passes through Delamere Forest, is a cluster of barrows called the 'Seven Lows' which clearly mark an early settlement of considerable importance. They vary in size from fifteen to thirty yards in diameter. One of them, when opened, was found to contain an urn with charred human remains within it. The urn was inverted, the better to support the weight of soil above it, and was set in the middle of a floored space over which was a thin layer of charcoal. This seems to show that a funeral pyre was erected on which the body was first burnt, the remains being then gathered and placed in the urn. The barrow was erected over the urn by piling stones and covering them with soil and turf. Burial urns have been found at Castle Hill Cob and Glead Hill Cob in Delamere Forest, and at Twemlow where there is a group of five tumuli.

In the hilly district of East Cheshire, where rocks are plentiful, the burial grounds were marked by circles of upright stones. There are some remains of such circles on the moorland near Clulow Cross. Among the burnt bones in a barrow at this spot were found a flint[1] knife and arrow-head, for it was believed that the dead man would require his tools and weapons after death just as in his lifetime. For the same reason often the wives and slaves of a chief were sacrificed or cremated at his death to serve and wait upon him in another world. The barrows were also used by the tribes as a place of assembly for their religious rites, when prayers and human victims were offered to their gods and to the spirits of their dead leaders, who, as they believed, would continue to watch over them and help them in battle.

The Brythonic Celts came to Britain between 1,000 B.C. and 500 B.C., and were acquainted with the use and manufacture of bronze implements. Hence the period during which they arrived and lived in Britain is called the Bronze Age. The bronze 'celt' in the Grosvenor Museum was found in the camp at Kelsborrow, and when the railway was cut at Wilmslow an urn containing bones and a bronze dagger was dug up. The urn and dagger are now in the museum at Peel Park, Salford.

The river valleys and the lowlands of Cheshire were in those days swampy and unhealthy, so the Britons lived as much as possible in the higher parts, which were also more suitable for agricultural pursuits. On the crests or slopes of hills were tracks or ridgeways for pack-horses, leading from one settlement to another. On Werneth Low, Eddisbury Hill, and Alderley Edge, these ancient ridgeways may still be traced. When men went down to the rivers to fish they carried on their backs light coracles of plaited reeds covered with skin, such as the fishermen still use on the Dee between Farndon and Bangor where the water is too rapid or shallow for boats.

Roman writers have left us descriptions of the Britons who lived in the centuries immediately preceding the birth of Christ; from them we learn that, although the British tribes were mainly occupied in fighting against one another, a certain amount of trade was carried on with travellers and merchants from other lands, and that they dwelt in 'towns' or collections of wattled huts surrounded by a stockade and ditch. From the numerous fragments of British pottery that have been unearthed in the neighbourhood of Chester, we gather that there was a British town of considerable importance on the site of the later city, and traders from the Mediterranean, who visited this country, may well have moored their vessels in the tidal waters of the Dee.

CHAPTER V
THE ROMANS IN CHESHIRE. 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 brought to light by excavation and careful examination of the soil. From this time onwards our knowledge will be much more extensive and sure, for we shall have written records left by men who lived in the times of which they wrote.

Fifty-four years before the birth of Christ the British inhabitants of Cheshire must have heard of the landing on the southern shores of Britain of the drilled and disciplined soldiers of one of the greatest generals that ever lived. Julius Caesar, who first led the Roman eagles into Britain, has given us in his 'Commentaries' a description of the Britain of his day and of its inhabitants. Some of the fierce hill-men of East Cheshire may possibly have fought against him, for he tells us that the British tribes ceased making war on one another, and united themselves under a single leader called Cassivellaunus to resist the invaders. After a decisive victory—at least, according to his own account—Caesar returned with his legions to the Continent, and ninety years passed by before the Romans came again, this time to make a long stay of nearly four hundred years.

About the year A.D. 50 the Roman axe might be heard hewing a road through the dense forests which in those days almost surrounded the city of Chester. A Roman governor, Ostorius Scapula, was busy in the neighbouring county of Shropshire making war on the sturdy Welsh-Britons of the borderland of Wales, and fortifying the city which he built under the shadow of the Wrekin. From this point, slowly but surely, the Roman soldiers made their way through forest and foe to Chester, or Deva as it was then called. This was the chief town of a tribe called the Cornavii, a pastoral people occupying the present county of Cheshire, except the hilly districts of the north-east, where the Brigantes, a more warlike tribe than the Cornavii, had their homes.

The Romans did not, however, capture Chester without a struggle. The city was well protected on its western and southern sides by the river Dee, whose waters spread over the Roodee right up to where the walls of the city now stand. Only from the east could the place be attacked, and the highest points of Delamere Forest and the Peckforton Hills are still marked by the British encampments and earthworks where the Britons made their last stand, and by green earth-mounds or 'tumuli' where the dead bodies of their leaders were buried.

If you take up an Ordnance Map you will often find a length of road running quite straight for some miles. Such roads will nearly always prove to have been the work of the Romans, for the Romans made their roads direct from point to point, like modern railways, their chief object being to enable troops to march rapidly from one military station to another. Two straight pieces of Roman road enter the city of Chester, one on the south and the other on the east.

ROMAN ROADS IN CHESHIRE

The Romans were skilful engineers and did their work very thoroughly, clearing the forest land as they advanced, and draining marshes or laying stone causeways across them. Bridges were built, though not every bridge now called Roman was the work of the Romans. The 'Roman bridge' near Marple was not built until many centuries after the last Romans had left Cheshire, but it may well mark the spot where, according to tradition, a Roman bridge had once stood.

More often, where the roads crossed rivers, fords were marked by stakes, and the bed of the river carefully laid with stones. In the Museum at Vernon Park is a paving-stone taken from the Mersey at Stockport where probably the Roman road crossed the river. The Roman roads were paved throughout, except where they were hewn out of the solid rock.

The road through Delamere Forest was part of the 'Watling Street' which went in an almost straight line from Deva to Manchester, called by the Romans Mancunium. Stretford is the place where the Roman 'street' crossed the Mersey. The modern high-road from Chester to Manchester for nearly its entire length keeps very close to the line of the ancient Watling Street, only departing from the older road to avoid hills. At such points the straight track of the Roman road can still be traced in the fields and woodland. Often in the neighbourhood of Tarvin and Kelsall has the pickaxe or the spade of the labourer struck against the Roman paving-stones.

When an excavation was made at Organsdale, midway between the villages of Kelsall and Delamere, a portion of the Roman Watling Street, cut in the solid sandstone, was discovered, still showing the wheel-ruts worn on the surface by Roman and British carts. In other parts of the forest, when the crops are in, you may see lines of raised earth and gravel where the ancient road was laid along an embankment.

At Northwich, which the Romans called Salinae or the 'saltworks', a second road, which entered Cheshire at Wilderspool near Warrington, crossed Watling Street at right angles and ran in a perfectly straight line to Middlewich or 'Condate'. This road was called by the Saxons Kind or King Street, and was continued southwards to Nantwich.

Tombstone to Caecilius Avitus (Grosvenor Museum)

The Grosvenor Museum at Chester contains a large collection of stones with figures and inscriptions carved upon them, and other objects from which we may learn a great deal about the Roman conquerors. The inscriptions, which are of course in Latin, the language of the Romans, show that Chester was an important garrison town, and the head-quarters of the Twentieth Legion. A legion, or division, of the Roman army contained about five thousand men.

A number of these relics are tombstones of the legionary soldiers who were stationed here. You may distinguish them by the opening words DIS MANIBUS, or shortly D.M., which practically means in English, 'To the memory of.' The inscriptions then give the name of the soldier and his native place, his age, and the name of the 'century' or company to which he belonged. Women accompanied the legion, as you may see from a tombstone of a centurion and his wife. Another stone of which a picture is given, shows the ordinary dress, the tunic and belt of a Roman soldier. In most of the inscriptions on these stones are the letters VV, which are the initials of the words 'Valeria Victrix', the victorious Valerian, by which name the Twentieth Legion was known. The badge of the legion was a boar, and this also appears on many of the stones and tiles of the buildings put up by the soldiers of this legion.

These tombstones were discovered in the year 1883 inside the base of the north wall of the city of Chester while the wall was being repaired. It is probable therefore that there had been a cemetery outside the city wall at this point, from which the stones were taken during its construction.

The bodies of the Romans were burnt after death, and the ashes placed in urns of earthenware not unlike those of the Britons. Roman burial urns have been discovered on Winnington Hill near Northwich and at Boughton. You may see them in the Chester Museum.

Here also are a number of Roman altars dedicated, as their inscriptions show, to the Roman gods Jupiter, Mars, Minerva, &c. On one of them you can easily make out the words DEO MARTI CONSERV, which mean 'To the god Mars the Preserver'. The lower portion, which has been broken off, contained the name of the soldier who dedicated it. Another altar is dedicated to the 'Genius', or guardian spirit, of the century. On the sides of the altars are rough carvings of the axe and the knife, the jug and the dish, used in sacrificial ceremonies.

Altar: Genio (Grosvenor Museum)

A third group of stones are called centurial stones. These, like our modern foundation or memorial stones, were built into a portion of wall or building and gave the name of the 'century' of soldiers by whom the work was constructed.

At first the Romans were hard taskmasters. Heavy tribute was demanded from the conquered Britons, who complained loudly of the miseries of bondage, and of the insults and injuries put upon them. Gangs of British slaves were forced to work in cornfield and quarry under the whips of their Roman rulers, or compelled to fight with one another or with wild beasts 'to make a Roman holiday'. Rebellions were frequent, and were put down by the Roman officers with great cruelty; and for many years it was only the superior arms and military science of the Roman legions that made it possible to keep in subjection a discontented people.

CHAPTER VI
THE ROMANS IN CHESHIRE. II

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 historian, who married Agricola's daughter, wrote a life of his father-in-law and a narrative of his work in Britain. From his writings we learn that Agricola first turned his attention to the fierce tribe of the Brigantes who inhabited the hilly districts of Yorkshire, Lancashire, and North-East Cheshire.

Agricola made the preparations for his expedition at Chester, which became his head-quarters, and built the fortified outposts of Mancunium on the Irwell and Melandra on the Derbyshire bank of the River Etherow, connecting them with one another with new roads. Both Mancunium and Melandra have been excavated in recent years, and at the latter you may see the foundations of portions of the wall laid bare, and the base of one of the principal gateways leading into the fort.

A Roman camp was usually square, with the corners slightly rounded, as has been proved by the excavations at Melandra and by the piece of Roman wall lately discovered at Chester, which shows a distinct curve towards the Pepper Gate. Roads crossed the camp at right angles. The wall or 'vallum' was protected when necessary by a fosse or ditch, but Agricola chose his positions with such care that one side at least was usually already guarded by the waters of some stream. Watch-towers were placed at the corners and on either side of the gateways.

Chester still preserves the shape and plan of the Roman fortress. Its four main streets, which are hewn out of the sandstone on which the city is built, cross each other at right angles. The Welsh called it Caer Lleon or Lleon Vawr—the 'Camp of the Legion'. The present walls are not, however, the work of the Romans, though here and there they have been proved to have been built on the foundations of the Roman walls. The lowest courses of the North Wall near the Deanery Field, when excavated, were found to be faced with massive stones of Roman masonry, with a Roman 'plinth' running along the base. The stones fit very closely together and no mortar was used. The inside of the wall was filled with rubble.

From time to time portions of Roman wall have been found in other parts of the city. One big piece is in the cellars of Dickson's seed warehouse. When the foundations of the offices of the National Telephone Company in John Street were being excavated a year or two ago, a fine piece of Roman wall was unearthed. The builders have left it standing where they found it, and you may now see it in the basement of the building, protected from future harm by an iron grid.

On the Roodee is a portion of Roman masonry of finely jointed stones which is thought to have been the quay of the Roman city.

In the middle of a Roman fortress was the Praetorium or general's quarters. Traces of such a building are to be seen in the camp at Melandra, and at Chester the foundations of a large edifice discovered in Northgate Street may possibly be a portion of a similar building.

Inscriptions show us that another legion, called the Legio Secunda, was stationed at Chester for several years. When Britain was more or less pacified and required fewer troops this legion was recalled and sent to the Roman provinces on the Danube.

Tacitus tells us that Agricola spread civilization among the Britons, sent the sons of chieftains to Rome to be educated, and even in time taught the Britons to adopt Roman habits and dress and to speak the Latin tongue. But he would not at first let them join the Roman legions in Britain; those who wished to fight for the Roman emperors were sent abroad to the Roman provinces on the Rhine or the Danube.

The soldiers of subject races were not for many years after their conquest allowed by the Romans to fight in their own country. The tombstones mentioned in the previous chapter prove this, for not one of them bears the name of any British soldier. A bronze tablet dug up at Malpas, on which is engraved a decree of the Emperor Trajan, shows that the soldiers who fought in the Roman army in Britain were not all Romans, or even Italians, for it speaks of Thracians, Dalmatians, Spaniards, and men of other nations conquered by Rome.

For seven years Agricola was a wise and a humane ruler. He removed many of the burdens put upon the Britons by previous governors, and it was chiefly due to him that the Romans were able to make their rule acceptable to the Britons. In time Britons became proud of the name of Roman citizens.

We have seen from the character of the remains that Chester was peculiarly a military city. Thus it differed greatly from many of the Roman cities of southern Britain, which lost their military character as the tide of war rolled northwards and westwards. These cities soon became busy centres of trade and civic life, with all the conveniences and luxuries of Italian towns. They had their temples and their basilica or town hall, theatres and public baths, palaces and colonnades of shops, and handsome villas of Roman officials. But life at Chester, with the continual arrival and departure of troops and stores, must have been hard and monotonous, with the din of warfare probably never far distant. The Welsh were never really subdued by the Romans.

Yet even at Chester there were buildings of importance, as we can see from the broken fragments of pillars in the little garden by the Water Tower, and in the basements of Vernon's Toy Bazaar and other shops in Chester.

These pillars were made to support the porches and colonnades with which the fronts and sometimes the sides also of Roman buildings were adorned. No doubt you have noticed them in pictures you have seen of ancient Rome. In a later chapter you will learn that the Englishmen of the eighteenth century copied the Roman or Italian style of architecture in their churches, town halls, and other public buildings, and from the buildings then made you can get some idea of those of a Roman town.

The pillars were of three different patterns or 'orders', and by observing carefully their differences you will be able to tell at a glance to which particular order a modern building belongs. The capitals of the Doric and Ionic pillars are much simpler in design than those of the Corinthian, which were often of a very ornamental nature.

Roman Capitals: Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian

The Romans felt the cold and damp of the British climate, so different from that of their own warm and sunny land. Many of their houses and public buildings were warmed by 'hypocausts' or heating chambers, and every city had its public baths with rooms heated by hot air. In Bridge Street is a hypocaust remaining just where the Romans left it. The pillars which you see in the illustration are those of another hypocaust found many years ago in Bridge Street.

The pillars were set up in rows on a solid foundation, being fixed in their places by cement. On the top of these a second floor of cement and bricks, several inches thick, was laid. The space between the two floors was heated by hot air, introduced through an opening in the side wall communicating with a furnace or oven. In their own country the bath was an important event in the everyday life of the Romans.

Remains of Hypocaust, Chester

The floors of Roman buildings were paved with tiny blocks of brick called 'tesserae', three to four inches long and one inch wide. A piece of flooring in the Grosvenor Museum shows that the bricks were laid on a bed of cement or concrete in 'herring-bone' pattern, that is, with the bricks at right angles to one another. A large number of tiles used in roofing have been found all over the city; on many of these you will see the stamp LEG XX VV of the Twentieth Legion. There was a tile factory at Holt on the Dee where also many of these tiles bearing the same stamp have recently been found.

The Romans taught the Britons many useful trades. 'Veratinum' or Wilderspool became under the Romans quite a busy manufacturing town, the forerunner of a modern Warrington or Wigan. The site of the ancient Roman town has been carefully dug over. Traces have been found of many pits, hearths, furnaces, and ovens for the manufacture of glass and pottery, a bronze foundry, and an iron smelting furnace, and an enameller's workshop. In the museums at Warrington and at Stockport are many fragments of pottery found here. Most of it is of a rough brown-red ware, called 'rough-cast', of which the commoner utensils, water-jugs and bowls and funeral urns, were made. A more ornamental kind is called 'Samian', and is of a darker colour, highly glazed and decorated with embossed figures of men and animals. Many articles of iron, knives, padlocks, keys, nails, found on the same spot show that Veratinum was the Birmingham of the Roman occupation.

Roman coins have been dug up in large numbers at Chester and other sites along the Roman roads. Many of them are to be seen in Chester Town Hall and in our museums. Nearly all the emperors of the first four centuries are represented upon them. Several emperors came to Britain, and we may be sure that in their tours of inspection they paid visits to the important garrison city of the 'great legion'.

Some of these coins bear the name of Constantine, the first Christian emperor, who was born at York, and whose mother was perhaps a lady of British birth. There is unfortunately nothing to show that there was any Christian church in Roman Cheshire, though many of the Roman soldiers must have been familiar with the Christian faith. Romans who became Christians were allowed to worship in the basilica, which in after days, as we shall see, became the model upon which Christian churches were built.

On a house near the East Gate of Chester are carved these words: 'The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life.' This is the translation of an inscription on a Roman coin found when the workmen were digging the foundations of the building. The coins of the Emperor Magnentius show the monogram of the first two letters of Christ.

The Roman rule lasted for 370 years. During this period they had transformed a desolate and barren land, inhabited by a people that were almost savages, into a fertile and prosperous province; Britannia Felix the Romans themselves called it. Large tracts of forest land were cleared and brought under cultivation. Britain became one of the chief granaries of Rome. In the museums you may see the Roman querns or handmills with which they ground their corn.

The Romans worked the copper mines on Alderley Edge; stone hammer-heads with which the Britons crushed the ore for their Roman masters have been found there. A 'pig' of lead weighing over a hundredweight, dug up in the Roodee, shows that lead mines were extensively worked. The lead was brought to Chester from the mines of Denbighshire and was part of the tribute paid by the Britons to the Roman emperors. Salt, a scarce commodity in many countries, was obtained, as at the present day, from the salt beds of Northwich.

At the end of the fourth century the Roman empire was overrun by hordes of barbarians from Northern Europe. The Romans, weakened by luxury and wealth, were unable to beat back the ruthless invaders. Legion after legion was summoned from the distant parts of the empire for the defence of the imperial city itself. About the year A.D. 380 the 'Conquering Legion' marched out for the last time through the city gates of Chester, and by 410 no Roman soldiers were left in Britain.

With sorrow and despair the Britons watched the last soldiers depart. Their own fighting-men were far away in distant lands, and they knew that without the protection of the Roman legions on whom they had so long relied, they were left a defenceless prey of the foes that were threatening them on all sides.

CHAPTER VII
SAXONS AND ANGLES COME TO CHESHIRE

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 the Romans, and everywhere falling upon the defenceless Britons. We know little of the doings of this terrible time, for with the departure of the Romans there descended upon Britain a veil of darkness that was not to be lifted for 150 years.

In the latter part of the fifth century the tide of Pictish invasion was rolled back by other races who landed on our southern and eastern coasts. These were the Saxons, Jutes, and Angles, the rude forefathers of the English people, who left their homes in Northern Germany to make new settlements and found kingdoms in our country. You will read elsewhere of the long and gradual conquest of England by these barbarian invaders. 'Field by field, town by town, forest by forest, the land was won' from the British inhabitants.

According to the story usually told, though I am obliged to admit that we have very strong evidence for it, it was not until the year 584 A.D. that any of them reached the part of the country that is now Cheshire. By that time the West Saxons, one of the most powerful of these tribes, had fought their way from the English Channel to the River Severn and Shropshire, where they destroyed the great Roman city of Uriconium. Under their leader Ceawlin they appear to have made an attempt to reach Chester, but were met near Nantwich at a spot called Fethanleagh, now probably the modern village of Faddiley, by Brocmael, Prince of Powys or mid-Wales. The Saxons were routed and retired quickly to the South. Chester was saved for a time and became the capital of the Welsh kingdom of Gwynedd.

Thirty years later, however, a greater than Ceawlin appeared before the walls of the Roman city. The Angles, who had founded on our north-eastern shores the powerful kingdom of Northumbria, crossed the Pennine Hills under their leader and king Aethelfrith, and descended upon Cheshire. Once more Brocmael put himself at the head of the Britons and Welsh. We are told by Bede, the earliest of our English historians, who wrote in the succeeding century, that 1,200 monks from a great monastery at Bangor-Iscoed on the Dee accompanied Brocmael after a fast of three days to the battlefield to offer up prayers for victory. Aethelfrith watched the wild gestures of the monks and bade his followers slay them first of all. 'Bear they arms or no,' he said, 'they fight against us when they cry against us to their God.' Brocmael left them to their fate and fled from the battle, which ended in the utter defeat of the Britons.

The victory of Aethelfrith was followed by the capture of Chester, and Cheshire became a portion of a kingdom that stretched from the Tweed to the Dee. But the most important result of the 'Battle of Chester' was that the northern Welsh Britons or 'Cumbrian' Welsh were now completely cut off from their kinsmen in Wales. Everywhere the conquered Britons were driven northwards and westwards to the mountains of Cumberland or Wales, and the Britons as a united nation ceased to exist.

For forty years Cheshire was ruled by Northumbrian kings, but during the latter part of this period another kingdom was gathering strength in the Midlands of England. This was the kingdom of Mercia or the Marchland. The Mercian Penda defeated the Northumbrian king and added Cheshire to the lands over which he ruled. Mercia and Cheshire were frequently raided by the Welsh, and it was to keep them out that Offa, greatest of the Mercian kings, built his famous 'Dyke' from Chester to South Wales, many portions of which you may trace to this day.

Mercia in turn was conquered by the kings of Wessex, one of whom, Ecberght, is usually styled the first king of all England. Ecberght and his West Saxons overran Cheshire and captured the city of Chester in the year 828. Thus did three kingdoms strive for the possession of Cheshire, which from its central position must have been the scene of many an unrecorded fight.

Numbers of Cheshire villages show by their names their Anglo-Saxon origin. Davenham, Frodsham, and Warmingham speak to us of the 'hams' or homesteads that the Saxons made for themselves in their newly won lands. Bebington, Bollington, and Congleton take their names from the 'tun', the enclosure or hedge of a farm or village; Prestbury, Marbury, and Astbury from the 'burh' or fortified house of the headman of a tribe.

Runic Stone, Upton

Goostree is perhaps the 'God's tree' where the land was parcelled out among the villagers and punishment meted to wrong-doers; Thurstaston, or the tun of Thor's stone, the place of sacrifice to their heathen god Thor.

The ash tree gives its name to several Cheshire villages, Ashton, Ashley, Astbury, for instance. This fact tells us that the tree was held in great veneration by the Angles and Saxons. Even to this day the tree is thought to possess the power of bringing good or evil. A superstitious Cheshire labourer will not, if he can help it, cut down an ash tree for fear it should bring him misfortune, and churn staves made of ash are used by farmers' wives to prevent the butter from being bewitched.

It is in fact from the Angles and Saxons that we have inherited the priceless possession of our English tongue. The oldest traces of our language in a written form in Cheshire may be seen in the Grosvenor Museum at Chester. Here on a plaster cast is an inscription written in strange letters, 'Runes' or 'mysteries' as they are called. This cast is a copy of an inscribed stone discovered at Upton-in-Wirral when the old church was pulled down. The stones of this building had previously been taken from the ancient ruined church at Overchurch. Learned scholars examined the stone carefully and made out these words: FOLCAE AREARDON BEC[UN]. [GI]BIDDATH FOR ATHELMUND. The meaning is 'Folk reared tomb, bid (i.e. pray) for Athelmund'. You can see that the words are English, though their form has changed considerably during the 1,200 years or more that have gone by since the runes were carved.

Fierce and bloodthirsty were these early ancestors of ours, 'hateful alike to God and men,' as Gildas, a Welsh monk, described them. Yet even they were taught in time to abandon their strange gods and turn to the worship of Christ, and through the land in town and village uprose a cross of wood or stone, the outward symbol of a new and better faith.

CHAPTER VIII
THE CROSS IN CHESHIRE

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 example of their emperors, professed the faith of Christ. But, as we have before stated, there is no proof that a Christian church existed in Cheshire in those days, though tradition says that where the cathedral church of Chester now stands there was a church dedicated to S. Peter and S. Paul, which had previously been a temple of Apollo.

In Wales and Ireland the Church flourished greatly through the troublous period of the Anglo-Saxon invasions. We are told that Kentigern, the first bishop of Glasgow, on his return to Wales landed in Wirral and founded a church there. In the previous chapter we have seen that at Bangor-Iscoed on the Dee there was a monastery of great importance, which after the victory of Aethelfrith of Northumbria was razed to the ground.

Yet it was from Northumbria that Christianity was destined to be brought and preached to the Angles and Saxons of Cheshire. Oswald, the son of the heathen Aethelfrith, had during his exile in Scotland been converted by Celtic missionaries. During the reign of this 'most Christian king, a man dearly beloved of God, and fenced with the faith of Christ', missionaries from Scotland 'began with great and fervent devotion to preach the word of faith to those provinces which King Oswald governed, baptising all such as believed. Therefore churches were builded in places convenient: the people rejoicing assembled together to hear the word of God,' The ancient churches dedicated to S. Oswald at Chester, Malpas, Brereton, Peover, Bidston, and Worleston, are proof of the great part played by King Oswald in the conversion of Cheshire and of the high repute in which he was held as a champion of Christianity.

The tiny hamlet of Chadkirk near Marple suggests to us a famous missionary who lived at a time when Cheshire had become part of the kingdom of Mercia. This was Ceadda or Chad, who was sent by the Irish saint Colomba to preach the gospel to the people of Mercia, and became in later times the patron saint of the bishopric of Mercia, founded by King Offa. Chad, who like Oswald had received Christianity from the Celtic missionaries of North Britain, continued the good work of the Northumbrian missionaries. At the village of Over were formerly two stone crosses which may well mark the spots where Chad preached to the Saxons of Cheshire, baptizing the converts in the river Weaver that flows hard by. The old church of Over is dedicated to him, as are also the churches of Farndon and Wybunbury. It is worthy of note that all the Cheshire churches named after him were built on the banks of streams, which leads us to suppose that S. Chad, like S. John the Baptist by the banks of Jordan, chose places where his preaching might be immediately followed by the ceremony of baptism.

At Sandbach are two stone crosses which are thought to be closely connected with the conversion of Cheshire. The story goes that Peada, son of Penda the heathen king of Mercia, wished to marry the Christian daughter of Oswiu of Northumbria. To win the maiden the young man consented to forsake his old religion and become a Christian; whereupon the crosses were set up to commemorate his conversion and marriage.

If you look carefully at the Sandbach crosses you will see that the Angles of Mercia had reached a very high level of art in sculptured stones. Carved upon them are several scenes in the life of our Lord, the Nativity in the stable at Bethlehem with the ox and the ass kneeling before the infant Christ, the Crucifixion with S. Mary and Apostles below, Christ carrying the Cross, and Christ in glory with S. Peter on His right hand bearing the keys of heaven.

Few crosses were, however, carved so elaborately as these Sandbach crosses. The majority were doubtless of wood, set up in the middle of the open space round which clustered the huts and wattled dwellings of the inhabitants. Others consisted of a plain stone shaft set upright in the ground or on a base of stone steps, sometimes rudely adorned with scroll-work such as you may see on the fragments of a cross preserved in the churchyard of Prestbury. Most of them have perished, broken into fragments where they fell, or have been used for repairs to damaged buildings. Many were wantonly destroyed in the seventeenth century during the Civil War.

Anglian Crosses at Sandbach

Crosses were set up by the wayside at the junction of important highways or in towns at the crossing of the principal streets, as at Chester. Here in the open air the monks would gather round them bands of listeners, and preach the Word of God. Afterwards close to the cross was erected an edifice of wood or wattles in which the services of the Church were held, and in still later times these wooden churches would be replaced by stone buildings. Nowhere, however, in Cheshire are there any churches or even portions of churches remaining which can be said to have been built by our early Saxon forefathers.

The church of S. John's, Chester, is said to have been founded by King Aethelred of Mercia in the year 689. An ancient legend states that Aethelred 'was admonished to erect a church on the spot where he should find a white hind'. In the church you may see fragments of an ancient wall-painting or 'fresco' on one of the pillars of the nave which illustrates this story. A church certainly did exist here in very early times, for we read that in later days Leofric, Earl of Mercia, repaired and enriched the church of S. John's, which may mean that the earlier wooden church had fallen into decay, and a more substantial building of stone was erected in its place.

The house of the Mercian Penda produced yet another name closely connected with the story of the Cross in Cheshire. Werburga, a great-granddaughter of Penda, succeeded her mother as head of several great abbeys. She died at Trentham in Staffordshire towards the end of the seventh century, and two hundred years later, when the Danes (of whom you will read more in the next chapter) were harrying the land, her body was removed to Chester for safe keeping, and placed in the church of S. Peter and S. Paul which had been re-dedicated to S. Werburga and S. Oswald. For many centuries crowds of devout pilgrims made their way to Chester to offer prayers and gifts at S. Werburga's shrine.

CHAPTER IX
THE COMING OF THE NORTHMEN

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 that came after him were to be allowed to enjoy the blessings of peace, for a new and terrible enemy now appeared on our shores.

In the ninth century, the coasts of Britain were ravaged by the Northmen or Vikings, those

Wild sea-wandering lords

Who sailed in a snake-prowed galley with a terror of twenty swords.

The word Vikings or 'wickings' means creek-men, from a Scandinavian word 'wick', 'a creek'. These Scandinavian and Danish sea-pirates left their homes in the bays and fiords of North-West Europe, and made raids upon Britain and the neighbouring lands more at first from greed of plunder than with any idea of conquest. Large numbers of Danes landed on our eastern coasts and ravaged the midlands. Under their leader Hasting or Hastein, they seized and occupied the city of Chester. We can imagine the hasty flight of the monks, for the abbeys and churches were always the first objects of attack by these heathen invaders. You will read elsewhere how King Alfred finally saved the greater part of England from the Danes and converted their leaders to Christianity.

The little village of Plemstall (or Plegmundstall), near Chester, reminds us of Plegmund, a Saxon hermit, who took refuge here to escape the Danes. Plegmund had been a friend and tutor of King Alfred. When Alfred's work was done, and peace made with the Danes, he called Plegmund from his lonely retreat in the marshes of the Gowy to be Archbishop of Canterbury.

Meanwhile, the Scandinavians had sailed round the north and west coasts of Scotland, plundering the rich monasteries that had been built by S. Patrick and his followers, and making new homes for themselves in the Isle of Man and in Ireland. Towards the end of the ninth century they crossed into Wales and sailed up the Dee to the walls of Chester, drawn thither perhaps by the report of the wealth of the great church that had been built on the banks of the river. But they found only a deserted city in ruins, and retired to the shores of Wirral, where they settled and tilled the land, and devoted themselves to the more peaceful pursuits of agriculture.

In the Wirral peninsula many of the names of the villages still show their Scandinavian origin. Thus Shotwick means the south wick or creek. This village stands at the edge of a strip of land that has been recovered from the sea. In early times, boats could run along the creek right up to the rising ground where now stands the village church.

An interesting name survives in the little hamlet of Thingwall, situated almost in the centre of the Wirral. Thingwall is the field where the 'thing', that is the tribe, assembled to divide the land and to dispense justice. You will recognize the same word in the town of Dingwall in the North of Scotland, and at the present day 'thing' is the Norwegian and Danish name for Parliament.

The ending '-by' in the villages Kirby, Irby, Raby, Frankby, and Helsby, is the Danish name for a township, and we see the word in our modern word 'by-laws', that is town laws. You will not find this ending in the names of villages in any other parts of Cheshire.

Norse Hog-back, West Kirby

In the museum in the old school-house by the churchyard at West Kirby you may see a stone, which, from its shape, antiquaries call a 'hog-back'. The hog-back was a tombstone or grave-slab that marked the burial-place of some Scandinavian chief. The carved ornamentation as well as its shape is like that of other similar stones that have been found in the parts of Britain where the Northmen settled. The stone gives you some idea of the homes from which these pirates came, for the carved oval shapes represent little wooden tiles; and the interlaced lines are the wattles or osiers of which their huts were made. The heathen Scandinavian liked his place of burial to be as much like home as possible, which may be taken as a proof that he did not think that his soul would perish along with his body. In the same museum is another stone with a head shaped like a wheel, which is also the work of the Vikings.

We are, fortunately, able to tell almost the exact time at which the settlements in the Wirral were made. We read in an old chronicle that in the year 900 A.D. Alfred's daughter Ethelfleda, Lady of the Mercians, granted lands in Wirral to one Ingimund who had been driven out of Ireland. This lady, Ethelfleda, fortified Chester and rebuilt the walls which had lain in ruins since the departure of the Romans. Perhaps Ingimund and his followers had already become Christians during their stay in Ireland. If they had not, we may be sure that Ethelfleda did as her father had done in his treaty with the Danes, and insisted on their becoming Christians in return for being allowed to settle in Cheshire.

It was in the reign of Alfred that many English counties or shires first received their modern names. Cheshire or Chester-shire, like Staffordshire and Warwickshire, took its name from the chief city or fortress which dominated the district and protected it from the ravages of the Danes.

Alfred also ordered an English history to be written, in which the chief events of each year were recorded. This Old English Chronicle, as it is called, was kept up in the reigns of the successors of Alfred, and is the principal source of our knowledge of England under the Anglo-Saxon kings.

The Chronicle tells us that, in order to prevent any fresh landing of Danes, Ethelfleda built a castle or 'burh' at Runcorn at the head of the estuary of the Mersey. The very site of her castle has now disappeared, for 'Castle Rock', upon which it was built, was destroyed when the Ship Canal was made.

Another fortress was erected by Ethelfleda on Eddisbury Hill, the highest point of Delamere Forest, where, probably, there was a large camp in British times. Her brother Edward, who succeeded Alfred as King of England, also fortified Thelwall on the Mersey, as an inscription on the gable of an inn at Thelwall tells us. For the next twenty years he carried on a vigorous war against the Danes of the 'Five Boroughs', Nottingham, Leicester, Derby, Stamford, and Lincoln. But in many parts Saxon and Dane had already settled down side by side, the Danes abandoned the worship of their heathen gods Odin and Thor, and received the Gospel of Christ, and in the next century a Danish king was destined to rule over all the land and to advance greatly the cause of Christianity.

Edward's work was done when he received the homage of the chief kings of Britain, and made the royal house of Wessex supreme. In the year 924, as you may read in the English Chronicle, 'then chose him for father and lord the King of Scots ... and all those who dwell in Northumbria whether English or Danes, and also the King of the Strathclyde Welsh.'

Chester appears to have rapidly risen in importance, largely no doubt owing to its central position, and to have become a great and populous city. The walls were extended beyond the limits of the ancient Roman city, and a new fortress built where the present 'Castle' of Chester now stands, to guard the road over the river.

Henceforth, the city was kept in a state of defence by a custom which bound every 'hide' in the shire to provide a man at the town-reeve's call to keep its walls and bridge in repair. A considerable trade with the seaports of Ireland followed, largely it is to be feared in connexion with the slave traffic, and the city became a favourite resort of the English kings. Coins were minted here in the reign of Athelstan.

Athelstan must often have been in Cheshire, for this favourite grandson of King Alfred was brought up by the Lady of Mercia, and no doubt learned from her the ways of a strong and wise ruler. When Athelstan became king he was attacked by the King of the Scots and the Danes of Ireland. A great battle was fought, perhaps on Cheshire soil, and the English Chronicle breaks out into a wonderful song of victory.

Athelstand King

Lord among Earls,

He with his brother,

Gained a lifelong

Glory in battle,

Slew with the sword-edge,

There by Brunanburh ...

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Bow'd the spoiler,

Bent the Scotsman,

Fell the ship-crews

Doom'd to the death.

All the field with blood of the fighters

Flow'd, from when first the great

Sun-star of morningtide,

Lamp of the Lord God

Lord Everlasting

Glode over earth till the glorious creature

Sank to his setting.

Brunanburh has been thought by some writers of history to be the village of Bromborough in Wirral. We cannot be sure of this, but some day perhaps the land will give up its secret, when some labourer's spade shall dig up the javelins and the war-knives of the defeated Northmen.

'Edgar's field' is supposed to mark the site of the palace of one of the greatest of the Anglo-Saxon Kings of England. It is related that in the year 973, Edgar the 'Peacewinner' visited Chester, and received there the submission of many tributary kings. He assembled an imposing fleet of ships on the Dee, and was rowed from his palace to the minster of S. John's by six under-kings, the King of Scots, the King of Cumberland, the King of Man, and three Welsh princes, he himself taking the helm as being their head-king. 'Those who come after me', he said, 'may indeed call themselves kings, since I have had such honour.'

Guided by his chief adviser, the good Archbishop Dunstan, Edgar also did much to increase the power and influence of the Church. He gave a charter in 958 to the church of S. Werburga, and endowed it richly with lands. The English Chronicle thus speaks of him:

He upreared God's glory

and loved God's law

and bettered the public peace

more than the kings

who were before him

within man's memory.

God also him helped

that kings and earls

gladly to him bowed

and were submissive

to all that he willed.

In Edgar's reign we first hear of the division of the shire into 'hundreds' for the trial and punishment of evildoers. Why this name was chosen is not quite clear, but the Hundred probably denoted a collection of a hundred homesteads or hamlets. The Hundred had its 'moot' or assembly of freemen, held near some sacred spot or conspicuous landmark. In Cheshire some of them, Bucklow for instance, took their names from the ancient 'lows' or burial-places.

Early in the eleventh century fresh invasions of Danes took place, and in 1016 Cnut Dane became King of England. Cheshire formed a portion of a great earldom, embracing the whole of Mercia and governed by Earl Leofric. Cnut, who during his reign visited Rome and had there learnt much about church building, was a generous friend to the churches, rebuilding those that had suffered in the wars and erecting many new ones. The church of S. Olave or Olaf, in the south-eastern part of the city of Chester, probably owes its foundation to him, for the name shows that there was a Danish settlement in the city. The city itself was governed at this time, like other Danish cities, by twelve 'lagmen' or lawmen who presided over its law-courts.

Leofric, not to be outdone by his master Cnut, almost entirely rebuilt the church of S. Werburga in 1057, and if we may judge from the memorials of his work which he has left in other cities of his earldom, much of the new church was probably built of stone. It is doubtful whether he lived to see the completion of his work. In any case, before many years had passed, the church was again enlarged on a still grander scale and by a greater race of church builders than any that had gone before them.

CHAPTER X
THE NORMANS COME TO CHESHIRE

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 deep snowdrifts of the Pennine Hills. But neither the severity of the weather nor the hardships of the march seemed to have any effect upon the stern and indomitable Norman warrior at their head, who, like the Vikings whose blood flowed in his veins, set an example of energy and endurance to his half-starved fainting followers.

William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy, had landed in England three and a half years previously, and defeated the English King Harold at the battle of Senlac. But the real 'conquest' was yet to come; and after swift visits to the west and north of England William crossed the hills that lay between York and Cheshire and made a dash upon Chester, the one great city of free England that had not yet bowed to the might of the Norman invader.

There were at this time in Chester many English, the wife of Harold among them, who had fled thither after the defeat of Senlac, prepared on William's approach to cross the seas to Ireland. In the next century Gerald 'the Welshman' related the legend that Harold himself was not killed at the battle of Senlac, but escaped, and, after many wanderings, took refuge in a hermit's cell near the minster of S. John's, where he remained until his death. The story was no doubt invented by those who were unwilling to believe that an English king had been defeated by a foreigner.

William captured the city and received the submission of Edric the Forester and other Saxon leaders. Chester was put in charge of a Flemish noble called Gherbod, who, however, in the following year returned to his native land. Then, leaving a trail of fire and sword through mid-Cheshire, William marched southwards to Salisbury Plain, where he held a grand review of all his followers and distributed to them their rewards. You will not see him again in Cheshire. No part of the country ever needed a second visit from the 'Conqueror'.

The English who had borne arms against William were treated as rebels and deprived of their lands and possessions, which were parcelled out among the Normans. A parcel of land thus granted was called a manor. All the landowners, including those English who were allowed to keep their estates, were compelled to take the oath of fealty to King William in person. In this way William broke up the great earldoms which had been created by the Danish king Cnut.

Cheshire, however, in which the Saxon Earl Edwin, Harold's brother-in-law, owned vast estates, was from the first treated in a very special manner. Owing to its position on the border of Wales, William saw that it was very necessary to place a strong military power in this part of England to protect his newly-won kingdom from invasion from the west. So he bestowed the county upon his own favourite nephew Hugh d'Avranches, surnamed Lupus or 'the Wolf', and his heirs, giving him the title of Earl of Chester. The earl's duty was to repel any attacks that might be made by the Welsh, and permission was given him even to extend his earldom, if possible, beyond the Welsh border. Royal rights were granted to him over all land within the earldom, which was held by him 'as freely by the sword as the king held England by the Crown'. For this reason Cheshire was called a County Palatine, that is, a county whose ruler exercises all the powers of an independent prince, save only that he owns allegiance to his overlord the king. And the sword, the 'sword of dignity', as it was called, was no light one. You may see it if ever you visit the British Museum, a mighty two-edged weapon four feet long, with its inscription in Latin engraved beneath the hilt, 'Hugo comes Cestriae,' Hugh Count of Chester.

In the quadrangle of Eaton Hall is an equestrian statue of Hugh Lupus, an ancestor of the Dukes of Westminster, whose family derives its name of Grosvenor from Robert the 'gros veneur' or great huntsman of the Conqueror and nephew of 'the Wolf'.

An old engraving gives us a picture of the royal state with which Earl Hugh was surrounded. He is represented sitting on a raised throne and presiding over his council or parliament, which consisted of the four chief abbots and the four greatest barons of Cheshire. Behind a barrier at the lower end of the council-chamber a crowd of humble people are gathered, bearing petitions or grievances for the earl's hearing and consideration. For the earl possessed power of life or death over all offenders, could pardon treason and murder within his own domain, and give protection or 'sanctuary' to criminals, who, however, paid heavy fines for this privilege. He also raised taxes, appointed all the judges and justices of the peace in the earldom, and created his own barons, who were themselves permitted to hold baronial courts for the trial and punishment of evildoers. Gilbert de Venables, the Baron of Kinderton, and his successors held courts at their castle near Middlewich until late in the sixteenth century, when all these courts were swept away.

Ordericus Vitalis, a Norman monk who wrote in the early part of the twelfth century, says that Earl Hugh 'was very prodigal, and carried not so much a family as an army along with him. He daily wasted his estate, and delighted more in falcons and huntsmen than in tillers of the soil. He was much given to his appetite, whereby in time he grew so fat that he could scarcely crawl.' He was also a lover of minstrelsy and romance, and invited the best narrators of great deeds to live with him and spur on to rivalry the young nobles whom he delighted to gather round him at his court.

The mass of the English people became dependent on their Norman masters. The latter had learned the use of the lance and the longbow, and the fame of their mailclad mounted knights had spread through all Europe. They kept the English down by building strong castles in their midst. At Aldford, Shocklach, Doddleston, and Malpas on the Welsh borderland, where castles were naturally more numerous, little remains to be seen at the present day but the green mounds on which were erected the keeps or donjons of the Norman lords. Round the tree-clad hummock at Aldford—'Blob's Hill' the village folk call it—the moat that surrounded the Norman castle yet remains, now dry and carpeted in springtime with primroses, whose waters must often have been dyed with the blood of Norman, Saxon, and Welshman.

The Norman castles were of great strength, though not always built of stone. Many were built on the sites of British encampments or Saxon 'burhs', in which case the old wooden stockade was doubtless allowed to remain. The central fortress or keep, a square, or sometimes circular, building with walls of immense thickness, was surrounded by an inner ward or courtyard in which cattle and provisions could be gathered in case of attack, and where, on a raised mound in the centre, the baron held his court. Round this ward were grouped the domestic apartments, the stables, and the quarters of servants and retainers. Beyond these buildings was a second or outer ward, the whole being enclosed by walls with projecting towers at intervals. The castles of the plain were further protected, as at Aldford, by a deep ditch or moat crossed by a drawbridge leading to the principal entrance. The keep was the last place of refuge when the defenders were driven from the walls, and frequently contained a well of water. In the keep at Beeston Castle is a well over three hundred feet deep, to which water was perhaps at one time drawn from Beeston Brook or some other neighbouring stream.

On the summit of Halton Hill you may still see a portion of the outer wall of the castle built by Nigel, Baron of Halton and cousin of Earl Hugh. He was the chief of all the Cheshire barons, was constable of the city of Chester, and led the Cheshire army, when required, against the Welsh. Thirty-seven manors, among them those of Congleton, Great Barrow, Raby and Sale in the county of Cheshire, were included in his possessions. Other barons created by the Earl of Chester were William of Nantwich, Vernon of Shipbroke, Fitzhugh of Malpas, Venables of Kinderton, Hamon Massi of Dunham, Nicholas of Stockport, and Robert of Montalt or Mold. The last-named shows that the county of Flint was at that time part of the earldom. The name of the Norman baron was often added to that of the Saxon village where he dwelt, as in the case of Dunham Massey, Minshull Vernon.

The earl himself resided at Chester, where large additions were made to the stronghold of Ethelfleda, but probably his castle was built largely of timber, for no stone of it remains, and a hundred and fifty years later Henry the Third ordered the stockade with which the castle ward was enclosed to be removed and replaced by a wall of stone. On the eastern side of the castle was erected a great shire hall where the earl held his parliament, and an exchequer court where the dues and taxes were paid to him.

What these dues and taxes were we may learn from the Great Survey called Domesday Book, which was made by King William's orders, and completed about the year 1087. The chief object of the Survey was to find out what the country was worth, and how much the people could afford to pay in taxes. The book, which is carefully preserved at the British Museum, is the most valuable record we possess of the state of England under its first Norman king. Domesday Book was written in Latin, but translations have been made by scholars, and may be seen in many of our free libraries. In the 'Customs of Chester' we are told that the city paid in rent forty-five pounds and three bundles of marten skins, a third of which went to the earl and two-thirds to the king. The skins were imported from Ireland, and show that the Irish pirates of former days had given place to peaceful traders. The king also claimed two-thirds of the produce of the brine pits at Nantwich, Northwich, and Middlewich, the last-named being farmed 'for twenty-five shillings and two cartloads of salt'. The value of every manor, with the number of 'hides' of arable land, the extent of meadow land and of woodland, was faithfully recorded. 'There was not one single yard of land, nor even one ox, one cow, one swine that was left out.'

Some Saxon villages had little left to record after the Conqueror's visit, so that you may learn from Domesday something of the severity with which William's conquest had been accomplished. Prestbury and many other Saxon villages are not even mentioned. When Earl Hugh received the city of Chester it was worth only thirty pounds, 'for it had been greatly wasted; there were two hundred and five houses less there than there had been in the time of King Edward' (the Confessor).

From Domesday we can learn the names of the Saxon freemen who were allowed to keep their lands. Marton was held by the Saxon Godfric, probably in return for some service rendered to the invaders, or because he had at least not taken arms against them; Butley was divided between the Saxon Ulric and Robert, son of Hugh Lupus. The manor of Brereton was retained by the Breretons, whose descendants play a great part in the later history of Cheshire. But such cases are few and far between, and by far the greater part of the county passed into new hands.

The story of Mobberley may be taken as a good example of what happened in most cases to the old English landowners. The very name of the village brings to our eyes scenes of old English life as the Normans found it, for Motburlege, as the name is written in Domesday, is the open space (lege) by the fortified house (burh) where the assembly of the people was held (mote). 'The same Bigot' (thus Domesday runs)' holds Motburlege. Dot held it and was a freeman.... The value in King Edward's time was twelve shillings, now only five shillings.' Such is the simple story, repeated again and again in the great survey. Dot was a Saxon lord of sixteen villages, including Cholmondeley, Bickerton, Shocklach, Grappenhall, Peover, and Dodcot, to the last of which he gave his own name. Thus, even as Dot's own forefathers had driven out the Celtic tribesmen who pastured their flocks on the neighbouring commons, so now it was Dot's turn to be thrust from his ancestral home at Mobberley and seek a refuge perhaps among the very people whom he had displaced.

Bigot received more than one manor. Domesday tells us that he held Sandbach also. Over the entrance of Sandbach Town Hall you may see his statuette, placed there to remind you of the days when Cheshire lands passed from the hands of the English to their Norman conquerors.

CHAPTER XI
THE NORMAN ABBEYS AND CHURCHES OF CHESHIRE

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 prior of the Abbey of Bec, which was close to Avranches, the earl's own Norman home. Now if there was one thing on which the Normans justly prided themselves, it was the founding and building of churches, and the heart of Earl Hugh was set on building in his own city of Chester a monastery that should rival in splendour those of his native country. Perhaps, too, the Norman lords thought that by devoting a portion of their wealth to the service of God they could win salvation for their souls and atone for the shortcomings and misdeeds of their stormy lives. So the Cheshire earl sent for his former friend Anselm to come and aid him in his scheme, and the result of his visit was that in 1093 the clergy of S. Werburgh's were turned out of their homes, and the church itself pulled down, and in its place was erected a monastery of Benedictine monks who were brought over from Bee, Anselm's chaplain, Richard, being made the first abbot.

The monks were men who lived a life of prayer, fasting, and study apart from the world. None might ever leave the precincts of the monastery without permission. The Benedictines received their name from Saint Benedict, who lived in the sixth century, and drew up rules for the daily life and conduct of the monks of the Order. They all slept in the same dormitory, and all took their meals together in a common room called a refectory. In the refectory at Chester you may see a lector's pulpit from which portions of the Scriptures were read aloud to the monks as they sat at their meals. They gave all their private possessions to the monastery, and had to obey their superior in all matters. Every hour of the day and night had its allotted duties of work, study, or religious services. High up in the wall in one of the oldest parts of Chester Cathedral is a row of tiny arches, and behind them a narrow passage, along which the monks went from their sleeping-chamber to the early morning services in the abbey church.

To some of the monks was given the work of gardening, agriculture, and even building. The name of Caleyards at Chester still speaks to us of the kitchen-garden which the monks tended. Others made copies of illuminated 'missals' or books of Church services, or wrote histories and the annals of the abbey to which they were attached. The Chronicles of S. Werburgh were kept and added to yearly by the monks of Chester; though the original has been lost, a copy of it, made by a later scribe, has happily been preserved.

The most important part of the monastery was of course the church. The Norman churches were built of stone, and, as they took many years to build, very few of the founders lived to see the completion of their work. Probably only the foundations and portions of the walls of the church of Earl Hugh Lupus were finished during his lifetime. The work of the Norman builders may be recognized by the round-headed arches, doorways and windows which they copied from the Roman buildings. The Roman basilica or hall of justice, in which the earliest Christians were permitted to worship, was taken as a model for Christian churches. The capital of a Norman pillar in Frodsham Church proves that they had studied the architecture of the Romans, for it has the Ionic 'volute' or spiral scroll on each of its four faces. If you look for the round arches in the Cathedral of Chester you will be able to make out the portions which remain of the church built by Earl Hugh and by the abbots who completed his plans after his death.

You will see from the Norman church of S. John's at Chester that the churches were built in the form of a cross with four great semicircular arches to support a central tower. Similar arches on massive circular columns separate the nave from the two aisles. An examination of these columns reveals the fact that the building of the nave was commenced from both ends at once in order to make more rapid progress with the work, for the mouldings of the capitals of the outer columns is the same, but differ from those of the inner ones. Moreover, the masonry of the latter is more finely jointed than that of the earlier end columns. This shows that the Normans improved in the quality of their work as they went on. In the north transept of Chester Cathedral, which is part of the first Norman church, the stones in the lower parts have wider joints and are less carefully fitted than those above them.

The choir and aisles generally ended in a semicircular 'apse'. A semicircle of dark blue stones set in the floor of the north aisle in the Cathedral of Chester marks the apse of an aisle of Earl Hugh's church.

The village churches were of course not built on the same scale of grandeur as the churches of S. John and S. Werburgh. Nearly everywhere the Norman 'lords of the manor' rebuilt the rude and humble churches of wood and stone that had served the needs of the Saxons before them. But little remains in Cheshire of these Norman churches, save here and there a doorway or a window or a capital, that has escaped destruction or the ravages of time. The Norman architects and builders were few in number, and must have employed many Saxon workmen in the task of rebuilding. The latter, as you have already learned, were no mean masons and sculptors, and the carving of the mouldings and capitals of the doorways of the village churches was doubtless in many cases done by them. The 'chevron' or zigzag moulding, and the spirals carved on the face of capitals could easily be cut with an axe, for the Saxons were not yet acquainted with the use of the Norman chisel. At Shotwick and Shocklach you may see doorways, which, from the simplicity of their mouldings, are probably the work of Saxons, performed under the eye of their Norman masters.

Norman Arches, S. John's. Chester

Towards the end of the eleventh century the clever Norman masons, who loved to invent new patterns and vary their work, introduced other forms of ornamentation such as the 'billet' and 'lozenge' and 'scollop' in their mouldings, and adorned the capitals and even the pillars with rich carving. Carved pillars may be seen in the Norman arcade in the cloisters at Chester.

Cloisters, Chester: Portion of First Norman Abbey of S. Werburgh

The head of a Norman doorway is sometimes filled with a semicircular stone called a tympanum, usually covered with a carved picture of some scriptural subject. The tympanum over the door of the Norman chapel at Prestbury represents Christ seated in glory.

Norman Doorway with Tympanum, Prestbury

The Norman windows, like the doorways, were round-headed. The tiny window in the chancel at Woodchurch shows us that they were often mere slits on the outer face of the wall, widening considerably towards the inner face in order that the light entering through the narrow opening might be diffused as much as possible. Very few Norman windows have been allowed to remain in Cheshire, for nearly all have been replaced by larger ones of a different style at a later date when more light was needed.

Norman Window, Woodchurch, showing wide splay inside

The font is sometimes the sole remaining portion of the older Norman church in which it once stood. In the modern church of Wallasey is an ancient font, which by the arcade of semicircular arches carved upon it is evidently the work of the Norman builders, and belonged to the Norman church that formerly stood on the site of the present building. The font of similar pattern at Grappenhall was dug up during a restoration three feet below the floor of the present church, where it had lain for centuries, and there are Norman fonts at Eastham, Bebington, and Burton. In addition to those already spoken of, the churches of Bebington, Bruera, Frodsham, Church Lawton, and Barthomley contain portions of Norman work in some shape or form.

Norman Font at Wallasey

The Norman style of architecture is rarely copied nowadays in the building of churches, being considered too massive and sombre as well as costly. Boys who live in Wirral should, however, walk to the village of Thornton Heath, where they may see a new church built entirely in this style, with every detail copied faithfully from famous old Norman churches.

Other Norman barons were not slow to follow the example of their overlord the Earl of Chester. In 1150 Hamon de Massey, Baron of Dunham Massey, built a priory at Birkenhead for sixteen Benedictine monks. The tolls from a ferry across the Mersey were granted to them for their support, the charges being 'for a horseman two-pence, for a man on foot one farthing, a halfpenny for a footman on market days, and a penny when he had goods or produce with him'. The name of 'Monks Brow' still marks the landing-place of the ferry on the Cheshire side of the estuary. The monks were also freed from attendance at the 'Hundred' Court of the Wirral. The manors of Tranmere, Bebington, Saughall Massey, and Claughton were also given to the priory, and the priors sat in the council or parliament of the Earls of Chester. The ruined refectory is the only portion of the priory now remaining.

The Abbey of S. Werburgh received grants of land from Earl Hugh's barons as well as a large number of churches and manors from the earl himself. In the course of time one-fourth of the entire city of Chester became the property of the abbey. The abbot also had the right of taking the tolls at the annual fair held at Chester at the Feast of S. Werburgh. The fair lasted for three days, during which time even criminals might visit the city to make their purchases without danger of arrest.

Arms of the See of Chester