Peover Inferior
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Peover Inferior is a
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 ...
in the Borough of Cheshire East and the ceremonial county of Cheshire, England. The village is known for its picturesque surrounding countryside and surprisingly convenient location. The name Peover is pronounced 'Peever' and derives from the Anglo-Saxon 'Peeffer' meaning 'a bright river', this 'bright river' being the River Peover which runs through the parish. The village and its neighbour
Peover Superior Peover Superior is a civil parish in the unitary authority of Cheshire East and the ceremonial county of Cheshire, England. It is described by the Office for National Statistics as a village surrounded by inhabited countryside. The civil parish ...
lie on the river Peover, 'Inferior' here meaning downstream. The parish is situated on the B5081 roughly 25 km south south west of
Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...
between
Knutsford Knutsford () is a market town in the borough of Cheshire East, in Cheshire, England. Knutsford is south-west of Manchester, north-west of Macclesfield and 12.5 miles (20 km) south-east of Warrington. The population at the 2011 Census was ...
and
Holmes Chapel Holmes Chapel is a large village and civil parish in the unitary authority area of Cheshire East and the ceremonial county of Cheshire, England. Until 1974 the parish was known as Church Hulme. Holmes Chapel is about north of Crewe and south of ...
and within five miles of junction 19 on the M6. Together with Nether Peover, it forms part of the village of Lower Peover, Lower Peover being the parish council. Peover Inferior is in Cheshire East, however Nether Peover is in Cheshire West, this often causes complications for the Lower Peover parish council. According to the 2011 census, it had a population (including Bexton and Toft) of 220.


History

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 manus ...
of 1086 describes the area previously known as Nether Peover as 'a small vill, waste and woodland, held by William Fitznigel from Earl Hugh'. The parish developed around St Oswald's Church which lies on the parish boundary. A Chapel of Ease was built in 1269 by Richard Grosvenor of Hulme Hall, this was to save the long journey to worship at St Mary and All Saints Church in
Great Budworth Great Budworth is a village and civil parish in Cheshire, England, north of Northwich 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 es ...
which is roughly 6 miles north west of the parish therefore making it relatively inaccessible by foot for the people of Lower Peover. St Mary and All Saints Church was incidentally the Lower Peover Chapel of Ease's
mother church Mother church or matrice is a term depicting the Christian Church as a mother in her functions of nourishing and protecting the believer. It may also refer to the primary church of a Christian denomination or diocese, i.e. a cathedral or a metropo ...
. In 1464, Robert Grosvenor added a
chantry A chantry is an ecclesiastical term that may have either of two related meanings: # a chantry service, a Christian liturgy of prayers for the dead, which historically was an obiit, or # a chantry chapel, a building on private land, or an area i ...
chapel which was demolished in 1542 by order of Henry VIII. The Bog Oak chest housed in the Shakerley Chapel was used for many years to keep the
Parish Register A parish register in an ecclesiastical parish is a handwritten volume, normally kept in the parish church in which certain details of religious ceremonies marking major events such as baptisms (together with the dates and names of the parents), ma ...
, vicars' robes, chalices and church documents. Tradition has it that if a girl wished to be a farmer's wife she should be able to lift the chest lid with one arm. It is believed that this tale originated because it was said that a farmer's wife in those days needed to be strong enough to be able to lift the famous
Cheshire cheese Cheshire cheese is a dense and crumbly cheese produced in the English county of Cheshire, and four neighbouring counties, Denbighshire and Flintshire in Wales and Shropshire and Staffordshire in England. History Cheshire cheese is one of ...
s made in the area. In the 15th century the Shakerley family, who continued the Grosvenor tradition of support for the church, inherited Hulme Hall. The Shakerley family crest, a hare and wheatsheaf, can still be seen on several of the
box pew A box pew is a type of church pew that is encased in panelling and was prevalent in England and other Protestant countries from the 16th to early 19th centuries. History in England Before the rise of Protestantism, seating was not customary in ch ...
s today. The church just consisted of an oak-framed
nave The nave () is the central part of a church, stretching from the (normally western) main entrance or rear wall, to the transepts, or in a church without transepts, to the chancel. When a church contains side aisles, as in a basilica-type ...
,
chancel In church architecture, the chancel is the space around the altar, including the choir and the sanctuary (sometimes called the presbytery), at the liturgical east end of a traditional Christian church building. It may terminate in an apse. Ov ...
and two aisles with east chapels until 1582 when the tower was built under the reign of
Queen Elizabeth I Elizabeth I (7 September 153324 March 1603) was Queen of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death in 1603. Elizabeth was the last of the five House of Tudor monarchs and is sometimes referred to as the "Virgin Queen". El ...
. The latest modifications took place in 1851 by
Anthony Salvin Anthony Salvin (17 October 1799 – 17 December 1881) was an English architect. He gained a reputation as an expert on medieval buildings and applied this expertise to his new buildings and his restorations. He restored castles and country h ...
, an English architect, who altered the aisles and reroofed the nave and chancel. The Warren de Tabley Arms Public House was built in the mid thirteenth century, it still stands today as a 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 Irel ...
however it has acquired a new name: The Bells of Peover. This name did not originate from its proximity to the church, but from the Bell family, who once lived there in the 1890s. The Old School House, just outside the St Oswald's graveyard, was founded in 1710 by Richard Comberbach. Comberbach had been the curate of St Oswald's Church until his resignation in 1691. He acquired land off Sir James Leycester and built the original school building (which still stands today) with the aid of funds from his wife and farming. Comberbach, his wife and the curate of St Oswald's taught in the school until 1722 when they endowed £300 in the school trust. Profit from a further £100 investment was to be used for maintenance of the building and the purchasing of spelling books, Psalters,
New Testament The New Testament grc, Ἡ Καινὴ Διαθήκη, transl. ; la, Novum Testamentum. (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Chri ...
s and Bibles, any surplus was used in the encouragement of Latin or buying books for scholars. The original syllabus consisted of the teaching of English catechism. The St Oswald's curate continued to act as the headmaster with the aid of an assistant until the Education Act of 1870. Following this act, a new school was built next to the original site.


Industry and Employment

The earliest occupational data for Peover Inferior is from 1881. The stacked bar chart presents a simplified version of the 1881 occupational data, using the 24 'Orders' used in the published reports for 1881, plus an 'Unknown' category. Many of these categories combine 'Workers and Dealers' in different commodities, so it is impossible to distinguish workers in manufacturing and services. The graph shows that the most common occupation in Peover Inferior in 1881 was agriculture, this was probably due to the rural surroundings and abundance of
arable land Arable land (from the la, arabilis, "able to be ploughed") is any land capable of being ploughed and used to grow crops.''Oxford English Dictionary'', "arable, ''adj''. and ''n.''" Oxford University Press (Oxford), 2013. Alternatively, for th ...
. Additionally, many sectors that exist today may have been very small or ceased to exist all together in the late 19th century therefore there was less choice of occupation. In contrast to agriculture, the majority of people working in the
domestic service A domestic worker or domestic servant is a person who works within the scope of a residence. The term "domestic service" applies to the equivalent occupational category. In traditional English contexts, such a person was said to be "in service ...
or offices were women however this was the only sector with a significant proportion of female workers because the majority of them had unspecified or unknown occupations. According to the 2011 census, the sector with the highest level of employment in Peover Inferior is wholesale and retail trade and automotive repairs with 16.5% of the population followed closely behind by professional, scientific and technical activities with 14.9%. However, the pattern of these statistics is not just specific to Peover Inferior because these two sectors are among the largest in the
North West The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each sepa ...
and England. 73.7% of the parish's population are economically active and in employment, 12.3% are of the working age but unemployed, this leaves 14% of the population that have retired. The greatest number of residents are full-time employees with 33.5% of the total population followed closely behind by full-time self-employers with 26.2%. The only retail outlet in Peover Inferior is The Smithy on Smithy Green which is a small shop that sells bird feeders and small garden ornaments. The nearest village shop is in Lower Peover roughly a mile away.


Demography

The earliest census records of Peover Inferior date back to 1881 when the total population was 112, this figure fluctuated until 1931 then it began to consistently increase. The latest census in 2011 recorded a population of 220, this is the highest recorded population in Peover Inferior. The current population density is 0.3 people per hectare which is extremely low compared to the average of 5 people per hectare for the North West region. The 2011 census recorded that 51.4% of the population were male and 48.6% were female therefore suggesting that the gender distribution is relatively well balanced. Peover Inferior is a very monocultural area with 96.8% of the population being white; English/Welsh/Scottish/Northern Irish/British and 98.7% being born within the United Kingdom. The parish is also a predominantly Christian area probably due to Christianity being the most widely practised religion in the UK and the high percentage of white British people.


Age Structure

The age structure in Peover Inferior has remained relatively static in recent years despite the ageing British population. In 2001, the most common age ranges were 30–44 and 45–49 and this did not change in the 2011 census. It could be suggested that the parish population is actually becoming younger because in 2001 there were 33 children aged 0–14 and in 2011 there were 44 aged 0–14, however this can be contested because the overall population has grown since 2001.


Housing

Peover Inferior has expanded vastly in the past century; the number of houses has almost quadrupled since 1881 however it still remains a very small village with 97 houses. The occupancy rate is relatively high with only 4% of houses unoccupied in 2001 with roughly the same rates in the early 1900s. The most common house composition is a one-person household (aged under 65) at 21.3%, followed closely behind by houses composing of one family with no children (19.1%) then one family with dependent children (18.1%).


Geography

The parish boundary runs in an odd shape. The northern boundary runs along Ullard Hall Lane past Plumley Lane Farm, the eastern and western boundaries follow ancient field boundaries and footpaths which are now diverted or the hedges long removed and the southern part of the boundary goes around St Oswald's, through the Bells of Peover and the centre of the school. The parish covers 278 acres (1.13 km2). The bedrock in the area consists of
triassic The Triassic ( ) is a geologic period and system (stratigraphy), system which spans 50.6 million years from the end of the Permian Period 251.902 million years ago (Year#Abbreviations yr and ya, Mya), to the beginning of the Jurassic Period 201.36 ...
rock, mainly
sandstone Sandstone is a clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate grains. Sandstones comprise about 20–25% of all sedimentary rocks. Most sandstone is composed of quartz or feldspar (both silicates ...
and conglomerate. There are no superficial deposits despite the parish being situated on a river.


See also

*
Listed buildings in Peover Inferior Peover Inferior is a civil parish in Cheshire East, England. It contains five buildings that are recorded in the National Heritage List for England as designated listed buildings, all of which are at Grade II. This grade is the lowest of ...


References


External links

{{Cheshire Civil parishes in Cheshire