Heaton is a small 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. Civil parishes can trace their origin to the ancient system of parishes, w ...

Staffordshire Staffordshire (; postal abbreviation ''Staffs''.) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the West Midlands (region), West Midlands of England. It borders Cheshire to the north-west, Derbyshire and Leicestershire to the east, ...

, England. It is about north of

Leek A leek is a vegetable, a cultivar of ''Allium ampeloprasum'', the broadleaf wild leek (synonym (taxonomy), syn. ''Allium porrum''). The edible part of the plant is a bundle of Leaf sheath, leaf sheaths that is sometimes erroneously called a "s ...

and about south of

Macclesfield Macclesfield () is a market town and civil parish in the unitary authority of Cheshire East, Cheshire, England. It is sited on the River Bollin and the edge of the Cheshire Plain, with Macclesfield Forest to its east; the town lies south of Ma ...

. The village of Heaton is situated near the centre of the civil parish. The

River Dane The River Dane is a tributary of the River Weaver that originates in the Peak District area of England. The name of the river (earlier ''Daven'') is probably from the Old Welsh ''dafn'', meaning a "drop or trickle", implying a slow-moving river. ...

is the northern boundary with

Cheshire Cheshire ( ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in North West England. It is bordered by Merseyside to the north-west, Greater Manchester to the north-east, Derbyshire to the east, Staffordshire to the south-east, and Shrop ...

; the civil parishes of Rushton and Leekfrith are to the west and east. A hill named

Gun A gun is a device that Propulsion, propels a projectile using pressure or explosive force. The projectiles are typically solid, but can also be pressurized liquid (e.g. in water guns or water cannon, cannons), or gas (e.g. light-gas gun). So ...

is at the eastern boundary, and in the north-east is Swythamley Hall. The ground is of

boulder clay Boulder clay is an unsorted agglomeration of clastic sediment that is unstratified and structureless and contains gravel of various sizes, shapes, and compositions distributed at random in a fine-grained matrix. The fine-grained matrix consists o ...

, and the underlying rock is

millstone grit Millstone Grit is any of a number of coarse-grained sandstones of Carboniferous age which occur in the British Isles. The name derives from its use in earlier times as a source of millstones for use principally in watermills. Geologists refer to ...

. The soil is

loam Loam (in geology and soil science) is soil composed mostly of sand (particle size > ), silt (particle size > ), and a smaller amount of clay (particle size < ). By weight, its mineral composition is about 40–40–20% concentration of sand–si ...

and clay. The land is used mostly as

pasture Pasture (from the Latin ''pastus'', past participle of ''pascere'', "to feed") is land used for grazing. Types of pasture Pasture lands in the narrow sense are enclosed tracts of farmland, grazed by domesticated livestock, such as horses, c ...

History

Medieval

The

Old English Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...

name Heaton means a high settlement.

Ranulf de Blondeville, 6th Earl of Chester Ranulf de Blondeville, 6th Earl of Chester and 1st Earl of Lincoln (1170 – 26 October 1232), known in some references as the 4th Earl of Chester (in the second lineage of the title after the original family line was broken after the 2nd Earl) ...

, who had established

Dieulacres Abbey Dieulacres Abbey was a Cistercian monastery established by Ranulf de Blondeville, 6th Earl of Chester, Ranulf, Earl of Chester at Poulton, Cheshire, Poulton in Cheshire. It moved to the present site at Abbey Green, Staffordshire Moorlands, Abbey ...

near Leek, granted Leek manor to the abbey in 1232 and this probably included Heaton. By 1291 there were

monastic grange Monastic granges were outlying landholdings held by Monastery, monasteries independent of the Manorialism, manorial system. The first granges were owned by the Cistercians, and other orders followed. Wealthy monastic houses had many granges, mo ...

s in Heaton at Fairboroughs and Swythamley; the abbey also owned other land in Heaton. After the dissolution of the monasteries in the early 16th century, these estates were sold.Heaton
www.rushtonspncer.info, accessed 15 May 2015. A medieval route between Leek and Macclesfield passed through the eastern side of the Heaton area over Gun and crossed the River Dane at Danebridge. The bridge here was known in medieval times as ''Scliderford'' (slippery ford).Dane Bridge
Historical Gazetteer of England's Place-Names, accessed 14 May 2015.

Enclosures

South and east of the village was formerly

common land Common land is collective land (sometimes only open to those whose nation governs the land) in which all persons have certain common rights, such as to allow their livestock to graze upon it, to collect wood, or to cut turf for fuel. A person ...

. It was enclosed by

inclosure act The inclosure acts created legal property rights to land previously held in common in England and Wales, particularly open fields and common land. Between 1604 and 1914 over 5,200 individual acts enclosing public land were passed, affecting 28,0 ...

s in the 17th century, and later in the 1820s when a new road was laid out which bypassed the village.

Chapelry

There is no church; since at least the 18th century the area has been served by St Lawrence's Church, Rushton Spencer. Until 1865 Heaton was part of the Rushton

chapelry A chapelry was a subdivision of an ecclesiastical parish in England and parts of Lowland Scotland up to the mid 19th century. Status A chapelry had a similar status to a Township (England), township, but was so named as it had a chapel of ease ...

, dependent on Leek parish church; in that year the chapelry became a parish.A P Baggs, M F Cleverdon, D A Johnston and N J Tringham, 'Leek: Heaton', in ''A History of the County of Stafford: Volume 7, Leek and the Moorlands'', ed. C R J Currie and M W Greenslade (London, 1996), pp. 186-191
British History Online, accessed 18 May 2015.White's Trade Directory 1834
www.rushtonspencer.info, accessed 18 May 2015.A P Baggs, M F Cleverdon, D A Johnston and N J Tringham, 'Leek: Rushton Spencer', in ''A History of the County of Stafford: Volume 7, Leek and the Moorlands'', ed. C R J Currie and M W Greenslade (London, 1996), pp. 223-229
British History Online, accessed 18 May 2015.

References

{{authority control Villages in Staffordshire Staffordshire Moorlands Civil parishes in Staffordshire

History

Medieval

Enclosures

Chapelry

See also

References