Cheadle History

CHEADLE, a parish and small town in the southern division of the hundred of Totmonslow, in the county of Stafford, 14 miles N.N.E. from Stafford. It is distant about 3½ miles from each of the four stations, Froghall and Oakamoor, on the Churnet Valley branch, and Blyth Bridge and Cresswell on the Potteries branch of the North Staffordshire railway.

This parish, called in Domesday Book Cedla, is situated in a hollow of the moorlands, between two small tributary streams of the Tean Brook, which flows into the Churnet. It contains the hamlets of Cheadle Mill, Brookhouses, and Huntley, and the chapelries of Freehay and Oakamoor.

The principal trade of the place consists in the working of copper and brass, and in the silk and tape manufactures. Many of the inhabitants are employed in the neighbouring collieries, and iron-mines. The town, which is irregularly laid out, contains two mills, a branch bank, and the Union poorhouse. It is a polling place for the county election, the head of a Poor-law Union, and of a County Court district.

In the vicinity are several large plantations, and from Cheadle Park there is a fine view. The manor formerly belonged to the Bassets, who had their seat here.

The living is a rectory in the diocese of Lichfield, value £438, in the patronage of Trinity College, Cambridge. The church, dedicated to St. Giles, is a stone structure of the later English style, built in 1837. It has several monumental figures, and a register of early date.

The old church, which stood near the same site as the present one, and was taken down in 1837, was a curious old structure, with massive wooden arches supporting the roof, and embellished with grotesque corbells.

There are two district churches at the places above mentioned, and a handsome Roman Catholic church, erected by the Earl of Shrewsbury in 1846, at the cost of £60,000, from designs by Pugin. It is in the pointed style of architecture, with a spire nearly 200 feet high, and contains a fine altar-piece.

The Independents, Wesleyans, New Connexion, and Primitive Methodists have chapels here. About 4 miles from the town are the ruins of Croxden Abbey, founded in 1176 for monks of the Cistercian order. There is a National school, and charities to the value of about £65 per annum. The wakes and races are held during the week following the 1st September.

[Description(s) from The National Gazetteer of Great Britain and Ireland (1868) - Transcribed by Colin Hinson ©2003]