Wednesday 21 July 2021

Township of Bickerton England


The Bickerton Name
 This is a Yorkshire and Cheshire locational surname of great antiquity. It derives mainly from Yorkshire, although from the earliest times the Cheshire village situated near Malpas, has certainly provided a minority of name holders. The village name is of Olde English pre 8th century origins, and translates from the original 'bycare tun' as the place of the beekeepers. It seems that at least one Yorkshire 'Bickerton' village has gone missing. This was believed to have been near the town of Otley, and it maybe that as a result most Yorkshire name holders are paradoxically from this 'lost' site. Villages were cleared in late medieval times for a variety of reasons including civil war, plague, and changes in agricultural practice. When this happened the villagers left taking as their surnames that of their former village. The 1086 Domesday Book gives several spellings including Bicretone (Malpas), and Bicretone (Wetherby), the 'lost' Otley 'Bickerton' is recorded pre Domesday Book in 1030 as 'Biceratun'. Early recordings of the surname include Thomas de Bigerton of Yorkshire in 1273, and Johannes de Bykerton in the 1379 Poll Tax Rolls, also of Yorkshire. John Bycharton is recorded in the West Riding Rolls of 1533, whilst Edmund Bickerton is recorded in the 1617 Will lists of Cheshire. In 1592 Thomas Bickerton of Cheshire is recorded on the register of students at Oxford University. The coat of arms is ancient, and predates the formation of the College of Arms. Granted in 1330 to the Bicketons of Cheshire the blazon is silver, a black chevron charged with three black pheons. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Johannes de Bikerton, which was dated circa 1270, the lists of the Freemen of the city of York, during the reign of King Henry 111, known as 'The Frenchman', 1216 - 1272. Surnames became necessary when governments introduced personal taxation. In England this was known as Poll Tax. Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to "develop" often leading to astonishing variants of the original spelling.

Bickerton Holy Trinity Church 


History of Bickerton Church
The church was built as a chapel of ease to St Oswald's Church, Malpas in 1839 and was designed by the Lancaster architect Edmund Sharpe. It became a separate parish church in 1869. A chancel was added in 1875 and a baptistry in 1911. 
Holy Trinity Church, Bickerton stands to the north of the village of Bickerton, Cheshire, England. The church has been designated by English Heritage as a Grade II listed building. It is an active Anglican parish church in the diocese of Chester, the archdeaconry of Chester, and the deanery of Malpas. Its benefice is combined with those of St Wenefrede's Church, Bickley, St John's Church, Burwardsley and All Saints Church, Harthill.
  Queen's Coronation  Church Flower Display

The Bickerton Flower Festival was a great success and over the course of four days raised a considerable amount of money towards the upkeep of Holy Trinity. The whole Festival was blessed by great weather and this encouraged people out in great numbers to visit the Church and also the open garden of Mike and Penny Voisey, Bank House, on Goldford Lane.
On the Sunday morning there was a short service to give thanks for the hard work of the whole team organizing the event, and also to give prayer and thanks for the lifelong service and dedication shown by Her Majesty The Queen since her Coronation 60 years ago. The Curate said in his sermon that the flower festival fundraising was going to help secure Holy Trinity’s continuing, and distinctive, Christian presence in the Bickerton community.




Bickerton Hall Farm


Bickerton Farm Land



 

Bickerton Hill Conservation Land


Wild Ponies, Bickerton Hill



Bickerton Village Hall

Bickerton Village Hall was built during the 1890s and formally opened in June 1899 by Mrs. George Barbour of Bolesworth Castle. Its purpose was to be a place of recreation and education for the inhabitants of the villages of Bickerton, Broxton, Duckington, Larkton, Bulkeley, Egerton and Harthill. It was called the Bickerton Institute and served a purpose similar to that of the Mechanics Institutes in industrial areas. The name of the road opposite the village hall, Reading Room Lane, perfectly illustrates one of the primary functions of the Institute, catering as it did primarily for local farm laborer's and railway workers.

Bickerton Copper Mine

It is thought that copper has been mined at Bickerton and Gallantry Bank since the Bronze Age and by the Romans, but the earliest documented reference to mining in the area is in a report written by J D Brandshagen in 1697 for Sir Philip Egerton.  The sandstone outcrop at Peckforton forms part of the same geology as that of Alderley Edge, where there is also evidence of copper mining.
The seams of copper were worked intermittently until the 1860s though there was an optimistic survey carried out in 1906 in a bid to raise capital for a more extensive mining venture.
Today, there is very little evidence of the copper mining industry at Bickerton and Peckforton. It is possible to squirm into an abandoned adit in the hillside above the Bickerton Poacher pub, but the five main shafts to the deeper copper seam have long since been sealed. The remains of the chimney for the boiler serving the pumping engine above the main Engine Shaft can be seen from the A534 road.
The Engine Shaft was the deepest, at 156 feet, No. 1 shaft was around 60 feet deep, No. 2 shaft was 35 feet deep, No. 3 shaft was around 110-120 feet deep, shaft No. 4 was somewhere between 117 and 135 deep while shaft no. 5 was 65-70 feet deep. As the the ore zone was inclined at an angle of approximately 80 degrees to the vertical, various levels and stopes needed to be worked from the shafts to access the ore. Shafts No. 4 and 5 were the oldest, and were worked until the beginning of the 19th century. Only Shaft 3 continued working after the mid 1800s. The pit between shafts 4 and 5 was later used as a well.
It is assumed that the mine shafts at Bickerton were relatively dry as the pumping engine over the Engine Shaft was a modest affair. Over the years, advice had been sought from Cornish mining engineers and so it is highly likely that the mining practices at Bickerton would have been heavily influenced by those carried out in Cornwall.

Bickerton Hill Copper Mine Chimney



Bickerton Copper Mine Map



Old Pumping Station


Maiden Castle, Cheshire
The remains of an Iron Age promontory hill fort, Maiden Castle, are located on the southernmost summit of the southerly hill at an elevation of 212 meters.  Maiden Castle dates from around 600 BC and is the most southerly of the seven hill forts in Cheshire.  The double line of earth ramparts are still visible, forming a semicircle that encloses an area of 1.3 acres (5,300 m2) adjacent to the cliff edge.  The enclosure has a single entrance at the east side with inurned defensive banks. Archaeological investigations have shown that both ramparts are strengthened by dry stone walling; the inner rampart also has timber strapping.  The fort was destroyed by fire in around 400 BC,  although the area was probably used as a settlement until the Roman invasion of Britain in the 1st century AD.
The site is well preserved despite quarrying of the area during the 17th to early 20th centuries, as well as military training exercises during the 20th century.  The remaining earthworks have been designated a Scheduled Monument, and the site is owned by the National Trust.  Since 2009, the trust has been removing trees, scrub and bracken from the site, as the roots damage the earthworks.  Animal burrows are another threat, and footpath erosion from visitors is also a problem, as the Sandstone Trail cuts across the earthworks.  There is another Maiden Castle which is an Iron Age hill fort 2.5 kilometer's (1.6 mi) south west of Dorchester, in the English county of Dorset.
Anglo-Saxon and Norman
The name “Bickerton” is Anglo-Saxon in origin, and relates to bees.  A township was recorded in the Domesday survey, which was found “waste”, or devastated, at the time of the survey, in common with many nearby townships.  This is usually considered to be a consequence of William I’s suppression in 1069–70 of uprisings in north-west Mercia.  The township included half a league (about ¾ mile) of woodland, perhaps located on the hills. 

The Bickerton Dropping Stone Well


The Bickerton Dropping stone Well, immediately north of the Raw Head summit, bears a plaque dated 1861. A photograph of 1910 shows the well in use by locals.

The minerals

 The minerals present in the ore were malachite and principally azurite, though there were also traces of chrysocolla, melaconite, bornite and covellite. These were deposited in an almost vertical fissure of white sandstone, similar to that found at Alderley Edge, Clive, Pim Hill, Whixall and Eardiston.
There were two veins of copper-bearing rock in the mine at Bickerton which varied in width from eight inches to five feet, with an average of 2½ feet. There was also thought to be cobalt, lead and silver deposits in the seams. In 1802 a sample of ore from Bickerton was sent to the Mineralogical Society for analysis which pronounced there was 9% copper in the sample in the form of copper sulphide and copper carbonate. However, another analysis in 1806 found the ore varied in quality from 0% to 2½%, whereas another in 1862 found there was between 19¼% and 25% of copper and 18 ounces of silver per ton of ore.


Sand Stone South Bickerton 

Bickerton Caves


 
Mad Allen’s Hole

Mad Allen’s Hole, a cave on the southerly Bickerton Hill, is believed by some to be the location of “Allenscomb’s Cave” in which John Harris, “the English Hermit,” lived for 46 years in the 18th century. According to a pamphlet of 1809, Harris was a man of property from Handley, who embraced a hermit’s life when his parents refused him permission to marry the woman of his choice. He first inhabited a cave in nearby Carden Park, moving to Allenscomb’s Cave in the 1760s.  Recent research has, however, cast doubt on the identification of Mad Allen’s Hole with Allenscomb’s Cave. Unlike the cave in Carden Park, no material dating to the 18th century has been discovered at Bickerton, and the name “Mad Allen’s Hole” originated in the late 19th century, when the cave was occupied by an eccentric known as Mad Allen.  In the early 19th century, the Bloody Bones caves on the northerly hill were occupied by brigands, who terrorized the surrounding countryside, stealing cheese from local farms and plundering graves, as well as selling sand for cleaning. Seven were captured and executed in around 1834. Dropping stone Well
The Dropping stone Well, immediately north of the Raw Head summit, bears a plaque dated 1861. A 

Map of Bickerton Hill

http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/alderley-edge-and-cheshire-countryside/features/the-history-of-bickerton-hill



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