Warmingham

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Warmingham
Cheshire

Warmingham and the Bear's Paw
Location
Grid reference: SJ708611
Location: 53°8’60"N, 2°25’59"W
Data
Population: 244  (2011)
Post town: Sandbach
Postcode: CW11
Dialling code: 01270
Local Government
Council: Cheshire East
Parliamentary
constituency: 		Eddisbury

Warmingham is a village in Cheshire, on the River Wheelock three miles north of Crewe, three miles south of Middlewich and three miles west of Sandbach. The parish also includes the small settlement of Lane Ends,[1] with a total population of just under 250. Nearby villages include Minshull Vernon, Moston and Wimboldsley. The village is in the county's Northwich Hundred, and like many parishes hereabouts is in the Cheshire salt production area, whic industry has much affected the village.

The land is mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086, with a village being documented from the 13th century. The oldest surviving building dates from the late 16th century. In the 17th and 18th centuries the parish had a finery forge, which was among the earliest in the county. The area is agricultural, with dairy farming the predominant land use. The Northwich Halite Formation, a Triassic salt field, underlies the parish, and there is a long history of local salt production, with the Warmingham brine field remaining an important source of the mineral. Cavities in the salt-bearing stratum are used to store natural gas. Several flashes were created in the 20th century by subsidence after natural brine pumping in the area, some of which form part of a Site of Special Scientific Interest. The village maintains the tradition of holding a wake each May.

History

An Iron Age gold stater (a coin) dating from around the end of the 1st century BC was found in the parish. One face depicts a horse, with a wreath on the obverse.[2][3] An urn described as Roman, but possibly as early as the Bronze Age, was discovered in a burial mound near Forge Mill.[4] There is no other evidence of Roman inhabitation at Warmingham, although the remains of a Roman road from Middlewich to near Nantwich pass around 200 metres away from the parish's north-west corner.[5]

Warmingham is documented under Tetton in the Domesday Book of 1086.[5] The mediæval manor was granted to Randulphus.[6] There is believed to have been a mediæval church in the village, although only a cross base remains.[7] The earliest recorded rector was in 1298.[6] The land passed to the Mainwaring and Trussell families, and in the 16th century part was sold to Christopher Hatton. It then passed to Randolph Crewe, and remained in the Crewe family until 1918.[6] The village school was founded in 1839.[8][9]

Brine pump near Hill Top Farm

A prisoner-of-war camp was located at Donkinson's Oak, near the southern edge of the parish, during the Second World War,[6][10] and there was a heavy anti-aircraft battery near Bottoms Farm in 1940–41.[11] The village gained an electricity supply in the 1950s. The village post office and shop closed in the 1970s.[6]

Salt and other industries

The Warmingham area has a long history of salt extraction. Brine from the parish's flashes is thought to have been used to make salt in Middlewich, an important salt-producing centre during the Roman occupation.[5] Natural (uncontrolled) brine pumping at nearby Elworth, Ettiley Heath, Wheelock and elsewhere in the Sandbach area occurred from the 19th century, increasing sharply after the First World War, and was associated with subsidence in Warmingham and the adjacent parish of Moston from the 1890s.[12][13] The Sandbach Flashes – pools formed by subsidence from the underlying salt dissolving, accelerated by salt extraction[14] – first appeared in the early 1920s and were still expanding in the 1950s.[12][13] Natural brine pumping ceased in the area in the early 1970s, and British Salt started to extract brine by the controlled pumping method, which prevents subsidence, at a site near Hill Top Farm in the early 1980s.[12][15]

The village had a corn mill from around 1289.[5][6] A finery forge or smelting furnace was established on the River Wheelock north of the village in the mid-17th century, one of a handful in Cheshire at that date.[16][17][18] It was still in operation in around 1750, when its annual output of bar iron was recorded as 300 tons, more than any other Cheshire forge.[19] The former corn mill was adapted to grind coconut shells for manufacturing plastics, and aircraft parts were made there during the Second World War. By 1990, the building had been converted into craft workshops, and it had been demolished by 2006.[6][8]

River Wheelock

Geology and geography

Crabmill Flash

The Northwich Halite Formation, a Triassic salt field, underlies the civil parish, with a salt-bearing layer 560 feet to 780 feet thick lying around 600 feet to 820 feet below the surface. In the area of Hill Top and Hole House, sandy soil overlays red clay, with the base rock being Triassic sandstone–mudstone.[20]

The River Wheelock runs broadly north-west to south-east through the civil parish, with much of the parish lying in its valley. The ground is undulating with an average elevation of around 45 metres. Hoggins Brook, a tributary of the Wheelock, forms parts of the northern and western boundaries of the parish, and Fowle Brook runs north–south in the south-east corner. Crabmill Flash lies immediately north of the Wheelock; part of Elton Flashes lies in the east of the parish, and Bottoms Flash and part of Railway Flash lie in the south-east of the parish. These wetlands form part of the Sandbach Flashes, a Site of Special Scientific Interest and a popular site for birdwatching.[14][21] Numerous meres and ponds are scattered throughout the area, and there are several small areas of woodland in the north west of the parish, near The Old Hough. Warmingham Moss occupies the south-west of the parish.

St Leonard's Church

Church

The Church of England parish church, St Leonard's, stands in the centre of Warmingham village. The purple-brick church tower dates from 1715, and the body of the church was rebuilt in red sandstone in 1870, replacing an earlier timber-framed building; it is a Grade II* listed building.[22] The base of a mediæval stone cross, dating from around 1298, survives in the churchyard; it is listed at the lower grade of II, and is also a scheduled monument.[7][23]

About the village

Warmingham village was historically centred around Warmingham Bridge across the Wheelock, which falls within a conservation area that also includes St Leonard's Church, Church House, Hill Top Cottage, Mill House, Island House and the Bear's Paw Hotel, extending to cover earthworks east of the village centre. There are two separate sets of earthworks: one is at the site of the 13th-century watermill, and represents the dam, leat and mill pond; the other is a partially moated site associated with Sir John Trussel's manor house.[5][24]

The oldest surviving building in the civil parish, Church House, dates from the late 16th century and is listed at grade II*. It is partly red brick and partly half-timbered, with a typical Elizabethan façade combining close studding with decorative framing in a chevron pattern.[25][26] One former resident was John "Rebel" Kent, a supporter of Charles Edward Stuart ("Bonnie Prince Charlie") in the Jacobite uprising of 1745.[8]

The red-sandstone Warmingham Bridge dates from around 1750 and is listed at grade II.[27]

The 19th-century Bear's Paw is the only remaining public house in the parish.[6]

Outside the village are two grade-II-listed, early-17th-century farm buildings, Old Hough Farm House and Mill Lodge, which each combine brick with timber framing. Both are off Forge Mill Lane in the north of the parish.[28][29] Warmington Grange, off School Lane, is a grade-II-listed former rectory dating from the early 19th century, which served as a club and restaurant from the 1970s until 2005.[6][30]

Outside links

 ("Wikimedia Commons" has material
about Warmingham)

References

  1. ↑ Information on Warmingham  from GENUKI
  2. ↑ Ten archaeological objects reveal east Cheshire history, BBC, 2010, http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/stoke/hi/people_and_places/history/newsid_8834000/8834103.stm, retrieved 10 October 2016 
  3. ↑ "Gold Stater", Revealing Cheshire's Past (Cheshire East and Cheshire West and Chester councils), http://rcplive.cheshire.gov.uk/SingleResult.aspx?uid=MCH9022, retrieved 10 October 2016 
  4. ↑ "Possible Bronze Age burial mound", Revealing Cheshire's Past (Cheshire East and Cheshire West and Chester councils), http://rcplive.cheshire.gov.uk/SingleResult.aspx?uid=MCH5425, retrieved 10 October 2016 
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 Poole 2013, pp. 8–10
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7 6.8 Warmingham Village Plan 2006, pp. 6–8
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 National Heritage List 1017839: Stepped cross base in the churchyard of St Leonard's Church (Scheduled ancient monument entry)
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Cheshire Federation of Women's Institutes 1990, pp. 227–28
  9. ↑ Warmingham Village Plan 2006, p. 3
  10. ↑ Ellie Cullen (6 August 2013), "Local author uncovers wartime history of Crewe", Crewe Chronicle, http://www.crewechronicle.co.uk/news/local-news/local-author-uncovers-wartime-history-5605098, retrieved 8 October 2016 
  11. ↑ "Anti Aircraft Battery near Bottoms Farm", Revealing Cheshire's Past (Cheshire East and Cheshire West and Chester councils), http://rcplive.cheshire.gov.uk/SingleResult.aspx?uid=MCH9776, retrieved 10 October 2016 
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 Goodwin & Lythgoe 2000, pp. 6–7
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 K. L. Wallwork (1960), "Some Problems of Subsidence and Land Use in the Mid-Cheshire Industrial Area", The Geographical Journal 126: 191–99 
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 SSSI listing and designation for Sandbach Flashes
  15. ↑ Cessation of Natural (Wild Brine) Pumping, Cheshire Brine Subsidence Compensation Board, http://www.cheshirebrine.com/history/cessation-of-natural-wild-brine-pumping/, retrieved 10 October 2016 
  16. ↑ "Warmingham Iron Furnace", Revealing Cheshire's Past (Cheshire East and Cheshire West and Chester councils), http://rcplive.cheshire.gov.uk/SingleResult.aspx?uid=MCH5291, retrieved 10 October 2016 
  17. ↑ B. L. C. Johnson (1952), "The Foley Partnerships: The Iron Industry at the End of the Charcoal Era", The Economic History Review 4: 322–40 
  18. ↑ Hodson 1978, p. 143
  19. ↑ S. Herbert (1922), "List of Forges in England and Wales c. 1750", The Geographical Teacher 11: 389–90 
  20. ↑ Poole 2013, p. 7
  21. ↑ Goodwin & Lythgoe 2000, pp. 8–10
  22. ↑ National Heritage List 1136241: The Church of St Leonard (Grade II* listing)
  23. ↑ National Heritage List 1138698: Mediæval cross in grounds of St Leonard's Church (Grade II listing)
  24. ↑ "Site of Moated Manor House", Revealing Cheshire's Past (Cheshire East and Cheshire West and Chester councils), http://rcp.cheshire.gov.uk/SingleResult.aspx?uid=MCH5638, retrieved 10 October 2016 
  25. ↑ McKenna 1994, p. 19
  26. ↑ National Heritage List 1310880: Church House (Grade II* listing)
  27. ↑ National Heritage List 1310884: Warmingham Bridge (Grade II listing)
  28. ↑ National Heritage List 1138697: Old Hough Farm House (Grade II listing)
  29. ↑ National Heritage List 1159755: Mill Lodge (Grade II listing)
  30. ↑ National Heritage List 1159755: Warmingham Grange (Grade II listing)


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