Great Budworth is a village and

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authorit ...

Cheshire Cheshire ( ) is a ceremonial and historic county in North West England, bordered by Wales to the west, Merseyside and Greater Manchester to the north, Derbyshire to the east, and Staffordshire and Shropshire to the south. Cheshire's county tow ...

, England, north of

Northwich {{Infobox UK place , static_image_name = Northwich - Town Bridge.jpg , static_image_caption = Town Bridge, the River Weaver and the spire of Holy Trinity Church , official_name = Northwich , country ...

off the A559 road, east of Comberbach, northwest of Higher Marston and southeast of Budworth Heath. Until 1948, Great Budworth was part of the Arley Hall estate. At the 2011 census, the population was 339.

Etymology

According to Sir

Peter Leycester Sir Peter Leycester, 1st Baronet (also known as Sir Peter Leicester) (3 March 1614 – 11 October 1678) was an English antiquarian and historian. He was involved in the English Civil War on the royalist side and was subsequently made a baronet. ...

, the name Great Budworth comes from the

Old Saxon Old Saxon, also known as Old Low German, was a Germanic language and the earliest recorded form of Low German (spoken nowadays in Northern Germany, the northeastern Netherlands, southern Denmark, the Americas and parts of Eastern Europe). I ...

words ''bode'' ("dwelling") and ''wurth'' ("a place by water").

Geography

Great Budworth is approached from the main Warrington to Northwich road about from Northwich, along a ridge overlooking two meres, Budworth to the west and Pickmere to the east. It was situated in the hundred of Bucklow and

deanery A deanery (or decanate) is an ecclesiastical entity in the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Anglican Communion, the Evangelical Church in Germany, and the Church of Norway. A deanery is either the jurisdiction or reside ...

Frodsham Frodsham is a market town, civil parish, and electoral ward in the unitary authority of Cheshire West and Chester and the ceremonial county of Cheshire, England. Its population was 8,982 in 2001, increasing to 9,077 at the 2011 Census. It is s ...

. At in length and in width, it was considered to be the second largest parish in Cheshire, after Prestbury. The parish contained nineteen townships: Budworth, Anderton, Appleton-cum-Hull, Aston-juxta-Budworth, Barnton, Barterton, or Bartington, Cogfoall, Comberbach, Dutton, Little-Leigh, Marbury, Marston, Pickmere, Stretton, Nether-Tabley, Over-Witley, Nether Witley, and Wincham.

History

The early history of Great Budworth is documented in the

Domesday Book Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manusc ...

, which mentions a priest at Great Budworth.Open Domesday Online: (Great) Budworth
accessed February 2019. In 1130, St Mary and All Saints Church was given to the Augustinian canon of Norton Priory by William FitzNigel,

Constable A constable is a person holding a particular office, most commonly in criminal law enforcement. The office of constable can vary significantly in different jurisdictions. A constable is commonly the rank of an officer within the police. Other peop ...

of Chester and Baron of Halton. The lord of the manor during the reign of Henry III was Geoffrey de Dutton. He donated to Norton Priory a third of his land to endow masses for his soul. After the dissolution of the monasteries,

King Henry VIII Henry VIII (28 June 149128 January 1547) was King of England from 22 April 1509 until his death in 1547. Henry is best known for his six marriages, and for his efforts to have his first marriage (to Catherine of Aragon) annulled. His disa ...

granted the estate to John Grimsditch. It was afterwards divided into several parcels. There may have been a school in Great Budworth as early as 1563, but certainly one existed by 1578. For centuries, the village was owned by the head of Arley Hall who would collect rent from the villagers.

Rowland Egerton-Warburton Rowland Eyles Egerton-Warburton (14 September 1804 – 6 December 1891) was an English landowner and poet from the Egerton family in Cheshire. He was a devout Anglican in the high church tradition and a local benefactor. He paid for the rest ...

of Arley Hall paid for restorations and improvements to the church in the 1850s. Egerton-Warburton also undertook a "campaign to render it (the village)

picturesque Picturesque is an aesthetic ideal introduced into English cultural debate in 1782 by William Gilpin in ''Observations on the River Wye, and Several Parts of South Wales, etc. Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty; made in the Summer of the Year ...

in Victorian eyes". To this end he commissioned architects including William Nesfield and John Douglas to work on buildings in the village. Douglas remodelled the George and Dragon inn in 1875, and restored some of the cottages. A running pump was the only source of drinking water for the whole community until 1934 when a piped supply was first connected. Until 1948, Great Budworth was part of the Arley Hall estate.

Notable landmarks

The Grade I listed St Mary and All Saints Church is in the village. Arley Hall, a

historic house A historic house generally meets several criteria before being listed by an official body as "historic." Generally the building is at least a certain age, depending on the rules for the individual list. A second factor is that the building be in ...

, is nearby. Also of note in the area are the George and Dragon and Cock o' Budworth

public house A pub (short for public house) is a kind of drinking establishment which is licensed to serve alcoholic drinks for consumption on the premises. The term ''public house'' first appeared in the United Kingdom in late 17th century, and wa ...

s, 54–57 High Street, Dene Cottages, Goldmine House and Belmont Hall.

St Mary and All Saints' Church

St Mary and All Saints' Church is recorded in the

National Heritage List for England The National Heritage List for England (NHLE) is England's official database of protected heritage assets. It includes details of all English listed buildings, scheduled monuments, register of historic parks and gardens, protected shipwrecks, a ...

as a designated Grade I

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern I ...

. It is an active

Anglican Anglicanism is a Western Christian tradition that has developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the context of the Protestant Reformation in Europe. It is one of t ...

parish church A parish church (or parochial church) in Christianity is the church which acts as the religious centre of a parish. In many parts of the world, especially in rural areas, the parish church may play a significant role in community activities, ...

in the diocese of Chester, the archdeaconry of Chester and the deanery of Great Budworth. Clifton-Taylor includes it in his list of best English parish churches. Richards describes it as "one of the finest examples of ecclesiastical architecture remaining in Cheshire". The architectural historian

Nikolaus Pevsner Sir Nikolaus Bernhard Leon Pevsner (30 January 1902 – 18 August 1983) was a German-British art historian and architectural historian best known for his monumental 46-volume series of county-by-county guides, '' The Buildings of England'' ...

considered it to be "one of the most satisfactory

Perpendicular In elementary geometry, two geometric objects are perpendicular if they intersect at a right angle (90 degrees or π/2 radians). The condition of perpendicularity may be represented graphically using the '' perpendicular symbol'', ⟂. It c ...

churches in Cheshire". In the north chapel is a memorial to Sir Peter Leicester, the 17th-century historian, and in the Warburton Chapel is the

alabaster Alabaster is a mineral or rock that is soft, often used for carving, and is processed for plaster powder. Archaeologists and the stone processing industry use the word differently from geologists. The former use it in a wider sense that include ...

effigy An effigy is an often life-size sculptural representation of a specific person, or a prototypical figure. The term is mostly used for the makeshift dummies used for symbolic punishment in political protests and for the figures burned in certai ...

of Sir John Warburton who died in 1575. In the north chapel is an organ designed by

Samuel Renn Samuel Renn (10 June 1786 – 11 January 1845) was an English organ builder who ran a business in Stockport, and later he traded in Manchester. The surviving instruments are mainly in churches, although a house organ is also known. Renn was bor ...

, installed in 1839.

Houses

Goldmine House and its attached cottage (Rose Cottage), designated as a Grade II listed building, were built in 1870 for

of Arley Hall and were designed by the

Chester Chester is a cathedral city and the county town of Cheshire, England. It is located on the River Dee, close to the English–Welsh border. With a population of 79,645 in 2011,"2011 Census results: People and Population Profile: Chester Loca ...

architect John Douglas. Built with brown brick with some timber framing, and clay tile roofs the house faces west. It is a double storied building with two gabled

bays A bay is a recessed, coastal body of water that directly connects to a larger main body of water, such as an ocean, a lake, or another bay. A large bay is usually called a gulf, sea, sound, or bight. A cove is a small, circular bay with a na ...

. The cottage is simple in form with a dormer and blue brick diapering. Dene Cottages, a Grade II listed pair of cottages, were built in 1867–68, again for Rowland Egerton-Warburton and by Douglas. The lower storeys are constructed in brown brick. The upper storeys are

timber-framed Timber framing (german: Holzfachwerk) and "post-and-beam" construction are traditional methods of building with heavy timbers, creating structures using squared-off and carefully fitted and joined timbers with joints secured by large woode ...

with

plaster Plaster is a building material used for the protective or decorative coating of walls and ceilings and for moulding and casting decorative elements. In English, "plaster" usually means a material used for the interiors of buildings, while "re ...

panels. The roof is in clay tiles. The plaster panels are pargetted with floral motifs. Belmont Hall in this parish was built by J. H. Smith-Barry Esq., who deposited in it his valuable collection of pictures and statues, afterwards removed to Marbury. Smith-Barry sold it to Henry Clarke. Built in 1755 and designed by James Gibbs, it is a Grade I listed building. As of 2020 it is occupied by Cransley School.

George and Dragon pub

The George and Dragon pub, another Grade II listed building, was initially built as a simple three-

bay A bay is a recessed, coastal body of water that directly connects to a larger main body of water, such as an ocean, a lake, or another bay. A large bay is usually called a gulf, sea, sound, or bight. A cove is a small, circular bay with a na ...

Georgian inn. In 1875, John Douglas was commissioned to restore it by Egerton-Warburton. He added tall rubbed chimneys,

mullion A mullion is a vertical element that forms a division between units of a window or screen, or is used decoratively. It is also often used as a division between double doors. When dividing adjacent window units its primary purpose is a rigid sup ...

ed windows and a steep pyramidal

turret Turret may refer to: * Turret (architecture), a small tower that projects above the wall of a building * Gun turret, a mechanism of a projectile-firing weapon * Objective turret, an indexable holder of multiple lenses in an optical microscope * M ...

.Hubbard, pp. 92–93 The double-storied inn has

built in brick with a

roughcast Roughcast or pebbledash is a coarse plaster surface used on outside walls that consists of lime and sometimes cement mixed with sand, small gravel and often pebbles or shells. The materials are mixed into a slurry and are then thrown at th ...

rendering on the upper storey. It has clay tiled covered hipped roofs. Its other architectural features comprise a projecting two-storey porch with oak post-and-rail fence inscribed with a number of sayings on either side, lateral bay with four-light mullioned window in the lower storey and a three-light mullioned window in the upper storey, a tall rubbed brick chimneystack, and the inn sign located diagonally from the right corner. The inn continues to function as a public house and restaurant. In 2015 the pub was used as a location in the video game '' Contradiction'' by developer Baggy Cat.

54–57 High Street

54–57 High Street is a row of four Grade II listed dwellings in the High Street, built in the early 18th century. They were refaced and partly rebuilt for Rowland Egerton-Warburton of Arley Hall by John Douglas in 1870 or 1875.Hubbard, p. 242 The two outer buildings are houses and the two central buildings are cottages. They are built in brown brick with clay tile roofs, and have two storeys plus attics. Each building has a

gable A gable is the generally triangular portion of a wall between the edges of intersecting roof pitches. The shape of the gable and how it is detailed depends on the structural system used, which reflects climate, material availability, and aest ...

, those on the outer buildings larger than those on the inner, all decorated with brick and plaster.

Flora and fauna

In the

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...

, Budworth Mere was used as a fish hatchery. Stocked with bream and pike, its reeds shelter breeding reed warblers and

great crested grebe The great crested grebe (''Podiceps cristatus'') is a member of the grebe family of water birds noted for its elaborate mating display. Taxonomy The great crested grebe was formally described by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1758 in t ...

s. Other avifauna includes

mallard The mallard () or wild duck (''Anas platyrhynchos'') is a dabbling duck that breeds throughout the temperate and subtropical Americas, Eurasia, and North Africa, and has been introduced to New Zealand, Australia, Peru, Brazil, Uruguay, Argen ...

s and

coot Coots are medium-sized water birds that are members of the rail family, Rallidae. They constitute the genus ''Fulica'', the name being the Latin term for "coot". Coots have predominantly black plumage, and—unlike many rails—they are usually ...

Culture

The Soul Cakers Play is a seasonal

folk play Folk plays such as Hoodening, Guising, Mummers Play and Soul Caking are generally verse sketches performed in countryside pubs in European countries, private houses or the open air, at set times of the year such as the Winter or Summer solstices ...

performed in the village every November which brings together the whole community. It features

Saint George Saint George ( Greek: Γεώργιος (Geórgios), Latin: Georgius, Arabic: القديس جرجس; died 23 April 303), also George of Lydda, was a Christian who is venerated as a saint in Christianity. According to tradition he was a soldie ...

, the Black Knight and a Hobby Horse. In Great Budworth, the "soul cake" may be a glass of beer or other sustenance; into it comes the devil, or Beelzebub, now "Belshy Bob". The village is a popular location for films and television including '' Cluedo'', and more recently a

NatWest National Westminster Bank, commonly known as NatWest, is a major retail and commercial bank in the United Kingdom based in London, England. It was established in 1968 by the merger of National Provincial Bank and Westminster Bank. In 2000, i ...

advert and the 2019 BBC drama '' War of the Worlds''.

References

Citations Bibliography * * * * *

External links

{{authority control Villages in Cheshire Civil parishes in Cheshire