TARPORLEY

Grid Ref: SJ 553 625
18 June 2004, 7 April 2010 & 14 August 2013

 

lych gate   St. Helen's
Lych Gate   St. Helen's
North Arcade  
North arcade   Nave and chancel arch
Arms on school   School
Arms on the school   School by the church
Arms on School   Plaque on school
Arms on the school   Plaque on the school
Milestone   Swan Inn
A milestone for a coaching route   The Swan Inn, High Street (June 2004)
High Street   High Street
On High Street   Looking west on High Street


Arderne Hall
Arderne Hall

Tarporley is a charming village with a number of Georgian buildings. The village is close to "The Sandstone Trail" running southeast from Frodsham through Cheshire to Whitchurch in Shropshire.

The first record of a church in Tarporley is in a document of the Diocese of Lichfield in 1287. Priests are known from William de Fuleburn in 1298. St. Helen's, has undergone many modifications. The west end was rebuilt in 1785.  The north wall was remade in 1787 and a west end gallery was built. Further work was carried out in 1834, including two new windows in the south wall. The Arderne Chapel, the Utkinton Chapel, the tower and the nave were extensively modified in 1861, 1865, 1878 and 1879 respectively and further work was undertaken in the 20th century. The nave has four bays with 15th century arcades using octagonal piers on the north side and hexagonal ones on the south. The church has some 17th and 18th century monuments to members of the Crewe and Done families. When I called in April 2010 funds were being raised for repairs to the tower.

I am grateful to Edwina Milner for the picture of Arderne Hall taken from a postcard.  It was posted, with a Tarporley postmark, by her grandmother to her mother in Fyfe in 1914.  In the second edition of Ormerod's History of Cheshire, published in 1882, there is the comment "Within the last few years an extensive and handsome mansion called Arderne Hall has been erected at Eaton Bank. It is the residence of the Earl of Haddington, in whose family the estates of the Ardernes are now vested by the extinction in the male line of that ancient family as mentioned in the account of Alvanley on page 87".  There is a site by Matthew Beckett covering lost halls which mentions that Arderne Hall at Tarporley was demolished in 1958.

Sources:

Old Cheshire Churches, with a supplementary survey of the lesser old chapels of Cheshire, completely revised and enlarged, by Raymond Richards, published by E. J. Morten, Didsbury, 1973, first published in 1947.

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Cheshire Antiquities
© Craig Thornber, Cheshire, England, UK.  Main Site Address: https://www.thornber.net/

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