The History of Prestbury
A.J.S.Cartmell
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Editorial There are several excellent publications about
Prestbury. They include “A Sketch of the Parish of Prestbury” by George
Yarnold Osborne, 1840, reissued 1998: “Prestbury and its Ancient Church” by
John Earles, 1928 and later editions: “Prestbury”, produced by Prestbury
Women’s Institute, 1963: “Prestbury Village Walk”, compiled by Mrs M. Sheard,
1989 and “Walks around Prestbury”, Prestbury Amenity Society: “Prestbury”,
township pack no: 11, Cheshire Libraries, Arts and Archives, 1991:
“Prestbury, Cheshire”, Prestbury Village Council, 1992: “The Millennium
Tapestry”, Prestbury, 2000 and “St. Peter’s Prestbury: a Personal Response”
by Gordon B. Hindle, 2001. The village also finds a place in publications
with a wider remit. On the evening of Tony Cartmell had been cooperating with the
Editor in preparing the 2000 version of his lecture, but died before he could
see it in print. The present work extends the history of Prestbury by a few
more years. It is presented as the lecture that Tony Cartmell might have
given, if he had survived. Any factual errors or failings in style are the
fault of the Editor. Like the 2000 version, this version of the
lecture is dedicated to the memory of Tony Cartmell. John Swallow, 2007 |
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In
his inaugural lecture at Cambridge 50 years ago, Prof. G M Trevelyan said “On
the shore where Time casts up its stray wreckage, we gather corks and broken
planks, whence much indeed may be argued and more guessed; but what the great
ship was that has gone down into the deep, that we shall never see.”What he
said then of his ship - and of course he was referring to the ship of the
English state - is as true today of our village. All I can do tonight is to
tell you about some of the corks and broken planks which have been picked up on
our Prestburghal shore and to try where I can, and where it seems reasonable,
to fit those corks and planks into a conjectured structure and story.
As
yet the finished article must be very sketchy, for a large part of the research
which is essential to build up the progressive background of any parish has yet
to be begun. The nineteenth century historians worked very hard; but for some
reason which I have never understood, they took scant interest in anything
other than manorial history. So they produced for us long genealogies of the
lords of the manor and quite a lot of hotch potch information of the churches
those lords supported; but they tell us nothing of the people, of how they
lived, of the successive events which affected their community. These are the
things which most interest us today, and as I said earlier there is much work
yet to be done to establish how much of that part of the story can be filled
in.
So,
I have made my excuses and must get down to the work. And the first thing to
do, however nebulously, is to set the primal background of the story. It is
fairly clear that man had little regard for this spot in the ages before
Christ. You may be a little surprised to have to understand that the eastern
part of
The
overall picture of this area which you must have in your mind's eye as a
background of all its history until at least the end of the medieval era -
shall we say until the sixteenth century - is this. From just this side of
Macclesfield right through to Wilmslow the Bollin flows through a broad flat
valley, and to this day the river rises and falls very fiercely and suddenly in
response to rainfall. So the whole of this valley bottom was marshland, rushes,
innumerable small channels of the river, and so innumerable little islands. On
an early map, between the village and the sewage works, I was still able to
count at least twelve separate channels of the river, particularly in the
playing field area. No wonder that that area was known as The Eyes, meaning the
islands and watermeadows; and as recently as in the 1848 Tithe Assessment there
are amongst the field names the Far-, Further-, Great-, Higher-, Little-,
Long-, Lower-, Middle-, Nearer-, Turney-, Eyes. And that in about 1268
some gentleman found it necessary to explain, in Latin of course, that he was
referring to “all those islands beside the Bollin facing Mottram.”
But
I diverge. In 1000 BC, round about which time the Celts arrived in this country
and superseded the most ancient Britons, and right up to less than 400 years
ago, the valley bottom constituted a very difficult barrier to man - unfit for
wheel or keel or heel. And wherever on each side of the valley the ground began
to rise high enough to drain naturally, the tree forest began - lightly to
begin with, say first and second stage forest growth, and then heavy dark
hardwood forest, home of animals particularly of the deer and pig families.
That there was second stage forest growth along the Heybridge Lane (Hebridge
Lane) ridge 1000 years ago comes down to us in the name, which has nothing to
do with hay or bridges, but is just a corrupted form of “high birches”. Then as
the ground got higher, particularly on the east side of the valley, the trees
gave way to rank grass and outcrop rock - still known as forest - up the
mountainside.
That
was the picture when the Celts arrived. But they were a people who preferred to
live on draughty hill tops, where they could see the enemy approaching. They
were certainly on Kerridge hill at one time, and just conceivably in Mottram;
but they would keep away from the valley bottom.
After
the Celts the Romans, or rather as well as the Celts the Romans, because by and
large they learned to live together. But again there was nothing on this
spot to interest the Romans much, and they made no attempt to open it up,
though they did pass this way. They were established in the salt wiches, and
ran the industry from a headquarters at Kinderton by Middlewich. They also
opened up the mineral springs at Buxton, which thus became a leave centre and
resort for the Roman army. And they certainly made a road between the two, the
exact line of which has yet to be established with any precision. Some say that
they came through our village; but I think it more likely that they just missed
it. Certain it is that they were seen in Birtles and in Rainowlow. And on a
reasonably straight line between the two there is one very significant place
still there today - Cold Arbour Farm which lies behind the
Within
a century of the Romans abandoning the country, the Angles and Saxons began to
arrive, and from this area the Celts moved over into the fastnesses of
The
cemetery was found in 1808 in an area described as Butley Sands, which is
roughly the fields between
In
about 1880, in the course of repair work, a part of the chancel wall in the
church was dismantled. And embedded in it was found the carved stone which now
stands in the churchyard. The carving seems likely to date from the tenth or
eleventh century and it can be said with reasonable certainty that the
fragments are part of a cross of an unusual Saxon design, of late Saxon,
probably Anglo-Scandinavian origin.
Lastly
the word Prestbury is Anglo-Saxon, and there is no reason not to believe that
it is descriptive of the spot in the Saxon era. The word will have been Preôsta
burh, and in regard to its meaning I would like to digress just for a moment.
It is usually translated “priests’ town”, but today that is most misleading.
Words change their meanings over the centuries, and this is particularly true
of “borough” and “town”. Both originally - say in the sixth century - meant an
enclosure, but with the important distinction that the burh was fortified
whereas the tun was not. Keeping that distinction right up to the middle-ages,
both words otherwise progressed gradually to mean a building within an enclosure,
then several buildings - enough to hold the family and retainers and all the
farm animals and so on - then a village, then a town or borough as we know them
today. In passing, tun in many places had another specialised meaning as an
outlying farmstead belonging to a manor; thus
From
our three facts we can then deduce that by the early seventh century there was
a Saxon settlement in Butley before the days of any substantial conversion to
Christianity, as shown by the cemetery. Later there was a Christian settlement,
as shown by the cross. And this settlement took the form of a building or
buildings with some specific form of fortification.
This
all fits well with the events in
We
can be certain that from 669 onwards Christian centres were established all
over
But
back to Prestbury. A study of Saxon crosses leads one to
believe that they were set up to mark the sites of monks’ cells, and this was
probably the case with ours. We cannot be sure that it was on the present
churchyard site, but it is a very reasonable supposition, as it would then have
attractive attributes. A dry knoll, close to the river, which would not be too
heavily wooded - maybe birches as at
The
land they chose would also have the attribute of being close to the Butley
settlement, and may be reasonably close to a settlement which may have been of
Celtic origin at Mottram. In fact I wonder whether at that time Butta was still
alive - the Saxon who formed a settlement in a leah or woodland clearing now
called Butta’s legh or Butley? Probably one or both of the lords of Butley and
Mottram felt some possessive link with the land chosen by the priests and
probably both considered that they had made a concession to the Church.
So
the pattern of religious life became established on this site, and the priests,
or monks began their life of walking out from their burh along paths through
the forest, radiating in all directions. By degrees they would find other
little settlements and establish a sphere of influence. The enormous parish of
Prestbury was certainly established well before the end of the Saxon era, and
the most likely reason for its size was the extremely wild and barren
countryside, and the consequent sparseness of a sufficient population to be
organised as a priest's shire or share, that is a parish.
The
indications are that there were two Saxon churches on the site, the first built
around the beginning of the tenth century. It would be timber framed, with
wattle and daub walls, and probably a reed thatch roof - very susceptible to
fire danger. Perhaps in 980 the marauding Danes burnt that one down when they
streamed down through Longdendale -
By
the eleventh century, a fair amount of information becomes available to us
about the Saxon administrative unit - the Hundred of Hamestan - a name which
tells its own tale again, meaning as it does the “stony settlement”. In the
The
parish had probably reached its greatest extent by the time of the Norman
Conquest, and of its 35 townships Bosley, Wincle, Sutton, Wildboarclough,
Macclesfield Forest, Rainow, Macclesfield, Upton, Tytherington, Hurdsfield,
Bollington, Pott Shrigley, Kettleshulme, Lyme Handley and Taxal were within the
forest; Prestbury, Butley, Newton, Adlington. Mottram, Fallibroome, Woodford,
Poynton, Worth, Henbury, Birtles, Alderley, Gawsworth, North Rode, Marton,
Siddington, Capesthorne, Chelford, Old Withington and
And
so we come to 1066 and the advent of William of Normandy, whose conquest of
It
was
But
at the time of the Domesday survey in 1086 there were two notable exceptions.
Mottram was still held by one Gamel who had held it under the Saxon regime. And
Butley was either still held by Wulfric or possibly in the course of being
handed over to Hugh's son Robert - there are two very similar entries appearing
to be Butley in the Domesday Book, and their exact significance is still in
doubt. Gamel and Wulfric must surely have been the Quislings of their day.
Of
the 35 townships of Prestbury, the vast majority of which will have been
manorial holdings at the time of the conquest, only thirteen appear in the
Domesday Book. So one could as well ask of any of them that question which has
so often been asked of Prestbury - why was it omitted? It may well be that some
were so devastated in 1070 that they had been entirely deserted for the time
being, and so could not be counted. But I do not think that that would be very
generally true. After all, those that are recorded had been hit pretty hard.
Macclesfield and Adlington had each been reduced from a value of £8 p.a. in
Edward the Confessor’s reign to £1 p.a. in 1086. And only in these two cases is
there any recorded population, between 10 and 20 at Adlington and between 1 and
10 at Macclesfield. In fact the total recorded population of Macclesfield
Hundred is only 60, compared with 405 in Wirral Hundred, 109 in Bucklow Hundred
and 149 in Northwich Hundred. And again, Chelford, Henbury, Capesthorne
and Marton are all recorded in the Domesday Book but stated to have been waste
both before and after the conquest.
One
must I think look for some other explanation, and the most likely is that
Prestbury did not merit an entry in itself. Churches generally are not
mentioned in the Domesday Book - only nine in the whole of
I
believe then that the Saxon church did not get destroyed, and that, although
there was considerable devastation in the district, towards the end of the eleventh
century the new
Meanwhile
it had no doubt continued as the centre of a large and influential parish,
gathering possessions round it. Yet when the fifth Norman Earl, Hugh of
Gyffylliog, presented the church and all its possessions etc to the Abbey of
St. Werburgh somewhere between 1175 and 1181, he still does not refer to it as a
manor. This gift resulted from Earl Hugh’s misdeeds. He had succeeded as a boy
in 1153 and behaved reasonably until 1170 when he was in his twenties and
looking for power. This was the year that Henry II’s authority was weakened by
the murder of Thomas a Becket; so Earl Hugh went off back to Avranches and
It
seems likely that immediately after the gift was made, the Abbey got down to
work to replace the timber-framed Saxon church by a building of stone, the
money coming from several of the now important Norman families in the great
parish whose names have since become familiar to us all, Davenport, Worth and
so on. One wonders rather whether it was the cash of piety or conscience, since
at that time the native Saxons were still a downtrodden, often enslaved element
of the manorial communities. The names we use today for our meats tell their
own tale of this age. The Saxon herdsmen used Saxon words for their living
animals, sheep, cows and pigs; but only the
Anyway
the Norman chapel was built in its original form, with
a rounded apse at the east end. It was probably started no later than, and
probably earlier than, the date of Earl Hugh’s gift; but maybe the final
touches, including the magnificent corbelling above the west door, were not
completed until the 1190’s. Thus one may accept the ingenious explanation of
the figures in the corbelling which Dr. Renaud devised, in which he identifies
one figure as King Richard I, so bringing the date within the years 1190 to
1199. It appears, however, that the chapel was soon found too small for so
large a parish, and the lords of the parish had to put their hands in their
pockets again in order to keep in with the powerful abbot. Now it is most usual
to find in the oldest churches round the country that the next stage is to build
on a larger nave and to convert the original church into the chancel of the
larger one. In our case there must have been money and power, and a desire to
impress, because they left the chapel as it was, and between 1220 and 1230
built our present chancel and nave as a single operation.
A
church in use is never a static building. Successive generations of vicars,
wardens, church councils and patrons all make their own changes, sometimes of
physical need, sometimes of taste, and this has been true of ours. Since
1220 every century has seen its changes. In about 1310 the South Aisle, and
probably a north aisle of character similar to it, were built. In about 1350
the Tytherington Chantry - now the
In
1740 a very much larger and apparently ugly north aisle was built at the
expense of the then Charles Legh “of eccentric memory, in wretched
taste”(Osborne). His memorial is in the Legh chapel at its east end. In
1880 came a major restoration in which the north aisle was changed again to its
present form, the organ was moved,, the gallery with outside stairs at the west
end was removed, and the present ringing chamber formed.
Then
during 1967-1977 we replaced the organ and re-cast the bells. In the early
nineteen eighties the church was again re-roofed, for a sum in excess of a
hundred thousand pounds. In 2001 the organ was replaced by a three-manual Allen
Renaissance Digital Organ. And so endlessly our church changes and will
continue to change.
The
Norman chapel, however, had obviously been allowed to decay from the moment
that the church was built, and in 1592 a drawing by Randle Holmes shows a
roofless ruin. It was not until 1747 that the chapel was substantially rebuilt
in its present form by the Merediths of Henbury, who were then permitted to use
it as a mortuary chapel. It was later brought into use as a Sunday school
and so continued until a century ago. There followed a further period of creeping
decay; but one of the first acts of Harold William Rogers, vicar 1950-1980, was
to instigate its restoration again in 1953. And in 1977, in memory of Mrs
Rogers, who died in 1976, some lovely little painted windows were installed.
So
much for a brief sketch of what has happened to the church buildings. Their
organisation and management are a different story. Prior to the fifteenth
century there is nothing to indicate that the Abbey of St Werburgh did not
administer the parish through its officials, gathering in the tithes and rents,
making provision for the resident priests from them, and passing the rest on to
the Abbey. In this work the bailiffs of the Abbeys were as tough as they come
and had little mercy for their indigent debtors. Abbeys did not always manage
their properties themselves, often letting it to others, known as fee farmers,
at a fixed rent, the fee farmer then making what he could out of the tithes and
rents. It is in this way that we first come across Legh of Adlington involved
in Prestbury. In 1448 for £100 p.a. the Church and tithes were leased to Robert
Legh jointly with Nicholas Briddon who was then the vicar. This lease was
renewed in 1461 and again in 1492, both times in the name of Legh alone, and
then in 1525 to George Legh and the then vicar Ralph Green.
We
have so far been dealing, of course, with a Catholic church; but the
dissolution of the monasteries closely followed the last lease. And in 1541 the
church, and its advowson and manor were granted by letters patent of Henry VIII
to the newly created Dean and Chapter of Chester. There follows a period of ebb
and flow as Protestantism was virtually outlawed again by Queen Mary and
finally reinstated by Queen Elizabeth.
Meanwhile
the less scrupulous had been taking their opportunities. In 1547 Sir Richard
Cotton obtained the manor and advowson from the Diocese, it is said by
extortion. He let it to the Grosvenor brothers in 1555, and in 1559 they even
presented the new vicar. But in 1579 Queen Elizabeth declared the Cotton title
illegal and then on 19th December 1579 by Letters Patent granted all the lands
etc. previously held by the Abbey to a consortium of Sir George Calvely, George
Cotton, Hugh Cholmondley, Thomas Legh, Henry Mainwaring, John Nuthall, and
Richard Hurleston and their heirs for ever at fixed annual rents. By a Deed of
a few days later she reserved £113.11.4 p.a. of those rents to the Chester
Diocese. In the following year, on
It
can be seen, therefore, how it comes about that Prestbury never has had a manor
house nor a family of lords of the manor. Some family in the early Middle Ages
evidently did adopt the name Prestbury, but they do not seem to have had any
continuity nor any connection with the village. We just find odd instances such
as a mention of a Henry de Prestbury who was granted fee of certain lands in
1340, and of William de Prestbury who was a sheriff in 1396.
The
black and white building opposite the church, now occupied by the NatWest Bank,
is said to have been built by Thomas Legh in about 1580, although it may have
had earlier foundations. This fits with black and white portions being added to
Adlington Hall in 1581. Formerly known as the Priest’s House, the building
probably served as a vicarage until 1708. Local tradition has it that the vicar
used to preach from the balcony in the days of the Commonwealth when the church
was closed to him.
The
house now called the Manor House was built on glebe land in 1708. This house
was normally used as the vicarage until a new one was built by Canon Broughton
in about 1890. This remained as the vicarage until 2005. In 2006 a house on the
Butley side of the river was acquired to become the present vicarage.
Prestbury Hall dating from the early years of the 15th
century is large enough to have been called a manor house. Until modernised, it
had been described as “quaint, picturesque and resembling a French chateau.”
(Osborne). In 1790 it was restored in the Georgian style. Richard Sutton was
born there in about 1460. He was a lawyer and became a privy councillor in
1498. He was knighted in 1522. Later, Prestbury Hall became a dower house to
Adlington Hall. For a number of years it was lived in by Dr James Hope, a very
well known heart specialist of the early nineteenth century and Professor of
Medicine at
On
the Butley side of the river there is continuous manorial history from Saxon
times, if not from Butta himself; and it seems likely that the manor house was
always in the area where Butley Hall stands today. Whatever the right
interpretation of the duplicate entries for Butley in the Domesday Book, it is
evident that the Saxon holder was soon ousted by Hugh Lupus’ son Robert. At the
time of the Domesday Book the Picot family of Say in
In
their latter-day the Pigotts were probably absentee landlords. And by the
mid-sixteenth century they had sold Butley Hall itself separately. It was then
occupied by Davenports of Henbury until at least 1626. There followed a John
Hobson of Over Alderley and other purchasers, one called Watts selling it to
the Downes family of Shrigley in about 1750. They remained there for one
generation and built the present stone front in the 1780’s. Legh then bought
the hall in 1790, and soon after it was granted for his life by Elizabeth
Rowlls Legh to her kinsman Rev. John Rowlls Browne, who was vicar of Prestbury
from 1800 to 1843. In consequence it has often been stated that during his
incumbency Butley Hall became the vicarage. I am not sure how true this is.
Certainly in 1840 Browne was living in the vicarage (now the Manor House) and
had let Butley Hall to a Mrs Antrobus. The hall was sold again in 1861 to
William Coare Brocklehurst, then head of the well-known family of the
Brocklehurst Whiston mill and MP for Macclesfield. Since his day it has changed
hands more than once before conversion into flats. The stable yard has been
demolished. It stood on the other side of
Within
the
There
was an interesting sequel to a dispute in the 1350’s between Robert de Foxwist
and his boss the Black Prince, as a result of which Robert was exiled for a
while. The Black Prince was one of the most active of all the Palatinate
Princes and spent a lot of time in his county and at this time he decided that
he did not wish his Macclesfield manor house on
Robert
built another house on his return. Early in the fifteenth century, however, the
family seems to have come to an end. The house went to another well-known
family, the Duncalfs, and remained in their hands until they fell on bad times
and had to sell out to Sir Urian Legh in 1609. There were still Duncalfs in the
parish until the 1840’s. A brass plate to one of them can still be seen on the
east wall of the nave of the church, close to the sanctus bell rope.
Willot Hall
was another small manor, within the hamlet of Foxwist, from the early
fourteenth century. The Wylot family at various times was connected with the
Newtons of Park House, Butley, and with the Mottersheads of Mottram. Both
Willot Hall, where the present house is seventeenth century, and Park House
came into the hands of Legh before the seventeenth century was over.
The
other main estate in Butley was of course Bonis Hall. We seem to know nothing
of it before the 16th century except its name, which is one which makes me
wonder. It clearly originates from the old German name Bonard; but how and when
did he get here, and what was he doing? Anyway, in the time of Henry VIII
it was purchased by Pigotts for a younger son. And this branch continued much
longer than the senior branch at Butley Hall. Eventually, however, one of them,
by name, George, married an heiress of Fairsnape near
Thus
before the end of the eighteenth century the Legh family had become owners of
practically all of Prestbury and Butley, as well as the original de Corona
estate of Adlington.
It
was, however, well into the nineteenth century before the Leghs obtained any
interest at all in Mottram, when in 1851 Charles Richard Banastre Legh married
Mary Jane Annabella, daughter of Rev. Henry Wright of Mottram and Offerton.
Over the ages the Mottram Manors had passed through the hands of Mottrams,
Mottersheads, Despencers, Calveleys, Booths of Dunham and Crookes of
Macclesfield, reaching the hands of Wrights of Offerton in 1738. Only in
the twentieth century was the principal estate broken up.
In
passing, it is of interest that the valuable non-ferrous metal vanadium was
discovered in the Mottram Heath copper mine by Professor Roscoe, a
distinguished professor of chemistry at
The
only other township of really local interest is
We know from the old field
names that Butley and Prestbury each had a brickworks. Butley’s was on
Prestbury had two smithies.
The most recently in use is now the Smithy Cottage at the foot of
In
contrast, some of us remember where the Prestbury and Butley mills are, or
were. The Prestbury mill was on the site now occupied by Abbey Mill
retirement housing. It began as a corn mill 700 years ago and it must be fairly
sure that it was actually started by the priests. Though Pigotts seemed to
think they had an interest in it in the thirteenth century, I rather doubt it.
And I must certainly take the WI booklet to task for the
suggestion that a lord of the manor built a mill for the benefit of his
tenants. He did no such thing. He did it for his own benefit and
compelled his tenants to use his very expensive monopoly service. The Abbey
would form no exception to that rule; in fact they were probably even harsher
on the tenants.
We
hear of a mill in Henry VIII’s day and again in 1644. The latter instance is
interesting. You will recall that Thomas Legh had obtained all the Butley
estate by 1629. But he was a fervent royalist and was imprisoned by Cromwell.
And so we find in 1644 that on a petition of Thomas Legh’s wife, the
parliamentarian committee for sequestrations ordered that she should have the
Miln [Mill] House( the farmhouse on the main road on the left just after you
pass under the railway bridge on the way to Adlington: it was the Legh dower
house then) with the grounds belonging to it, also the desmesne of Foxwist, and
the mill at Prestbury, for the maintenance of herself and her children.
The
Butley mill was at the end of Bollin Grove. Like the Prestbury mill, it was a
water mill. It was fed by a millstream which branched from the Bollin at Walter
Dawson’s corner (named after the ironmonger’s premises, now demolished, across
from the former Methodist Chapel) and followed the line of Bollin Grove. There
was a large mill pond between the end of the terrace of cottages in front of
the school and the mill, on the site of which the present Mill House stands.
All the houses between the cottages and the Tennis Club entrance are
built on it. At Walter Dawson’s corner the levels were such that the
millstream had to feed by a bucket wheel. For the length of this part of
Bollin Grove and past the Bridge Hotel the river bed can be seen to be paved.
The purpose of this was to reduce the turbulence and facilitate the filling of
the buckets.
A
point about the cottages themselves is interesting. They were built in 1825 by
the Revd. Watson, then a beneficent owner and operator of the mill. They
were designed to face west, so that the millstream would be running between the
backs of the houses and Bollin Grove. To this end a private road was laid
out on the school side of the cottages. At that stage it was evidently decided
that it would be better to make the cottages face Bollin Grove and give each a
little bridge over the millstream. And so it was done. But to this day
you can still see the road which was laid out behind the cottages and which in
150 years was never used. This road joins the Tennis Club entrance (which was
originally the mill entrance) between the houses and the squash club. It now
provides access to the rear of the cottages.
By
the end of the eighteenth century we find the mill marked on a map as Swanwick’s Cotton Factory. In 1809 a Deed refers
to it as Messieurs Reddish’s silk factory. And a silk factory it remained until
it closed towards the end of the nineteenth century. It was only in about 1964
that the last part of it was demolished.
I
am nearly forgetting to include a word on the Spittle House, which was my home
from 1962 to 1985. The oldest section is of so-called elbow-cruck construction,
nearly all of the frame and roof still being original. This dates it
somewhere between 1300 and 1450. But one wonders why the St. Werburgh monks
and lay brothers should have built a spittle house, that is a somewhat
primitive hospital, so far from their church and outside its "burh"
or protected area. I believe the clue may be the edict made by Edward III in
1346, that lepers were not to come near places of human habitation. There were
many lepers in this country then, and the disease was not understood, and
therefore feared. So the monks in their compassion, as other monasteries
did in some other places, may have built their spittle house where lepers might
reach it. This theory is, I believe, supported by the unusual layout. Farms
generally - and certainly all others in this district - have their buildings
situated by the public road. Here the buildings are situated right in the
middle of the 22 acres which go with them. And this land though completely
surrounded by land at some time owned by the Legh family - has never been in
Leghs hands. It looks very much like an isolation area.
Clearly
after the dissolution of the monasteries the house, and the land that went with
it known as Abbot’s Hay, got into private hands. We do know that in 1625 an
But
of how the villagers generally lived over the centuries, we still have a lot to
learn. For a time after the
Of
what happened at the time of the Black Death in 1349, and later when the plague
came this way in 1603 and 1646, I have so far found no evidence. In most
places, paradoxically, conditions improved after such epidemics, since labour
was made scarce and the poor labourer was enabled to make a better bargain.
By
the latter part of the eighteenth century the silk industry was well
established in Macclesfield, and was having its effect in Prestbury. Cottagers
were entering the industry, and by the beginning of the nineteenth century the
weavers’ cottages opposite Prestbury Hall and in
In
the middle of the nineteenth century, one house in
By 1871 there had been
movement to the town, and the village population was 110 less than in
1811. The families were rather smaller, averaging 4.3 people, but the
overcrowding in the houses was not much changed.
As
I said earlier, there is no evidence that Prestbury was a nucleated
village. And it may be for this reason that the village street is as it is.
Remember that the raison d’être of the village centre is unusual, it is to be
the centre and focal point of a parish some 10 miles across and 40 miles in
circumference. Imagine that the Poynton - Macclesfield
road does not exist -as until 1810, quite recently, it did not - and you
will then see that all roads radiate from Prestbury to the other 34 townships
of the parish.
I
read somewhere not long ago some author's query why Bonnie Prince
Charlie on his march
south came through Prestbury instead of going straight down the main road: the
query has an easy answer - there was no main road, and to get from almost
anywhere to anywhere in N.E. Cheshire before the nineteenth century it was
necessary to pass through Prestbury.
So
Prestbury had a different kind of nucleus - a parish nucleus whither everyone
had to come until well into the nineteenth century to get wed or buried from
almost all the huge parish. Recall too that until 1894 the ecclesiastical parish
was also what is now the civil parish and more: the churchwardens were largely
in control: the guardians of the poor and parish constable were all parish
appointed and parish financed. All meetings were held in the church, and
it was the centre for many purposes for ten miles all round. So the
village centre held the main commercial services alongside the church: the inns
- the Legh Arms from the seventeenth century, the Unicorn from the eighteenth
century, and others from time to time: the smithies, the mill, maybe the
tannery and so on. Two farmhouses were nearby, since no doubt they farmed
the land nearest to the centre. One is now the White House, the other Spirit of
the
All
the rest of the street is nineteenth century - brought in mainly to fulfil the
needs of the spread of industry and to provide community services. The great
mill owner wants an imposing house - so we get Swanwick House. More home
silk weaving is needed - so we get 1 to 4 The Village, and so it went on.
And
where will we go from here? Shall we successfully resist the movement of
developers to turn us into a suburban area? We must remain a village, however
much adapted. And this means that we must remain a rural centre - not
just a residential stronghold with the shutters up. We need to keep our
character and our atmosphere not just our dwellings, but our village commerce
and industry to serve the surrounding area. Let us hope we will be able to keep
it that way.
Produced for St. Peter's Church, Prestbury