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Knutsford

Coordinates: 53°18′09″N 02°22′15″W / 53.30250°N 2.37083°W / 53.30250; -2.37083
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For the village in Prince Edward Island, Canada, see Knutsford, Prince Edward Island. For the neighbourhood of Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada, see Knutsford, Kamloops.

Knutsford
King Street
Knutsford is located in Cheshire
Knutsford
Knutsford
Location within Cheshire
Population13,191 (2011)
OS grid referenceSJ753782
Unitary authority
Ceremonial county
Region
CountryEngland
Sovereign stateUnited Kingdom
Post townKNUTSFORD
Postcode districtWA16
Dialling code01565
PoliceCheshire
FireCheshire
AmbulanceNorth West
UK Parliament
Websitewww.knutsford
towncouncil.gov.uk/
List of places
UK
England
Cheshire
53°18′09″N 02°22′15″W / 53.30250°N 2.37083°W / 53.30250; -2.37083

Knutsford (/ˈnʌtsfərd/) is a town in Cheshire, England, 14 miles (23 km) south-west of Manchester, 9 miles (14 km) north-west of Macclesfield and 12.5 miles (20km) south-east of Warrington.The population at the 2011 Census was 13,191.[1]

Near Cheshire's Golden Triangle, and on the Cheshire Plain between the Peak District to the east and the Welsh mountains to the west, Knutsford and its surrounding villages are affluent and sought-after residential areas, with properties rated as some of the most expensive outside of London. Knutsford is a dormitory town for people working in Manchester and Liverpool. Residents include Coronation Street actress Barbara Knox and footballers Peter Crouch, Sam Ricketts, Michael Jacobs and Phil Jagielka.

Knutsford's main town centre streets, Princess Street (also known locally as Top Street) and King Street lower down (also known as Bottom Street), form the hub of the town. At one end of the narrow King Street is an entrance to Tatton Park. The Tatton estate was home to the Egerton family, and has given its name to Tatton parliamentary constituency, which includes the neighbouring communities of Alderley Edge and Wilmslow. Former Parliamentary representatives include the BBC war correspondent Martin Bell, who stood as an Independent in 1997 to defeat the disgraced former Conservative Party MP, Neil Hamilton.

The current MP is Esther McVey. The previous MP for Tatton is George Osborne, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, who is now editor of the London Evening Standard.

History

See also: History of Cheshire

Knutsford, situated in Cheshire, England, was recorded in the William the Conqueror's Domesday Book of 1086 as Cunetesford ("Canute's ford").[2] King Canute (Knútr in Old Norse) was the king of England (1016–1035) and later king of Denmark, Norway and parts of Sweden as well. Local tradition says that King Canute blessed a wedding that was taking place and forded the River Lily, which was said to be dangerous then, though other reports say it was the Birkin Brook at or near Booth Mill.[3] The English Place-Name Society gives the name as being derived from the Old English for Knutr's ford or possibly hillock ford.[4]

Knutsford Gaol was built in 1817 and later extended in 1853. During the First World War it was used as a military prison. The gaol was demolished in 1934.[5]

Knutsford was the place in which General George S. Patton, shortly before the Normandy invasion, delivered a speech perceived to be critical of the Soviets, and to have "slap(ped) the face of every one of the United Nations except Great Britain", which nearly ended his career.[6]

After the Second World War, overspill housing estates were created in the town to accommodate families from Manchester. The Longridge overspill estate was built in Over Ward by Manchester City Council in the 1960s. At the end of the 20th century, all of the homes on the estate that had not already been sold to their occupants were transferred to Manchester Methodist Housing.

In 2005 Knutsford was named as the most expensive town to buy a house in Northern England, followed by nearby town Altrincham. There is an extremely large range of house prices in Knutsford, varying from approximately £175,000 to nearly £4,000,000 in late 2017. The average price is above £400,000.[7]

Governance

Knutsford has been under the unitary council of Cheshire East since April 2009.[8] Prior to that Knutsford was in the Borough of Macclesfield.

Knutsford Town Council was created after the abolition of the urban district council in the Local Government Reorganisation of 1974. The town comprises four wards: Nether, Norbury Booths, Bexton and Over. Each ward returns three councillors except for Over which, owing to its size and greater population, returns six. Each councillor serves a four-year term. The current Town Council term started in May 2019 with 12 Conservative councillors and 3 Independents. The council is elected whole every four years.[9]

The current Mayor of Knutsford and Chairman of the Town Council is Cllr Stewart Gardiner (Conservative).

Prior to Brexit in 2020, Knutsford was part of the North West region for the European Parliament.

Transport

Road

Knutsford motorway service station

Knutsford has excellent access to the motorway network, with junctions to the M6 (Junction 19) and M56 (Junction 7) motorways. However, this can also have disadvantages as the A50 which runs through Knutsford town centre follows a similar route to the M6 between Warrington and Stoke-on-Trent; this means that if the M6 is closed due to an accident or roadworks; then a large volume of traffic transfers to the A50 and causes major traffic jams in Knutsford.

Rail

Knutsford railway station is on the Mid-Cheshire Line that runs from Chester to Manchester (via Altrincham). The station was built in 1862 by the Cheshire Midland Railway (CMR). The CMR was absorbed into the Cheshire Lines Committee (CLC) in August 1867, this entity continuing to serve Knutsford until nationalisation on 1 January 1948. The rail service to Manchester was re-routed via a slower route when the Manchester Metrolink trams took over the CLC direct line between Altrincham and Manchester, with the heavy rail service being re-routed via Stockport to Manchester Piccadilly.

Currently there is an hourly service to Altrincham, Stockport and Manchester to the north and Northwich and Chester to the south-west, with extra trains to and from Stockport at peak times on weekdays. On Sundays there is a service every two hours to Chester and a service every two hours to Southport via Manchester, Bolton and Wigan. The number of weekday peak trains to Manchester was controversially cut back in December 2008 to allow Virgin Trains West Coast to run extra services between Manchester and London.

Knutsford was expected to get a half-hourly train services to Northwich and Manchester (Monday to Saturday) by December 2017, with an increase in the Sunday frequency to hourly but the promised additional services have failed to materialise. [10]

Bus

Since April 2018 bus service cutbacks has left Knutsford with just one regular bus route, which is an hourly Altrincham-Wilmslow-Knutsford service, with most continuing to either Macclesfield or Northwich, operating Monday to Saturdays only. There is also one bus per day to Warrington, Monday to Friday only. There is also a 'Flexilink' (a flexible dial-a-ride service) available to those who are disabled or over 80 between 09:30 and 14:30 Monday to Friday. [11]

In the past, it was common for one bus operator to run most or all of the bus routes in Knutsford. This was once Crosville Motor Services who ran buses across Cheshire and North Wales. Then later Star Line Travel took over services, who were based in Knutsford (at Stanley Road Industrial Estate) and Wythenshawe. Star Line Travel were taken over by North Western Road Car Company, who then later became part of Arriva Midlands. Star Line Travel's Knutsford depot had been closed which made running bus routes in Knutsford an unattractive proposition for Arriva, who ceased to serve the town in January 2009. Star Line Travel's coach division was split between Bullocks Coaches and Selwyns Travel.

Current bus operators in Knutsford are D&G Bus and Warrington's Own Buses.

Airport

Manchester Airport is located five miles from Knutsford in the civil parish of Ringway, Manchester. However, there is no direct bus or railway link to it.

Economy

Knutsford town centre has several restaurants and pubs, coffee shops, boutiques, antique shops and art galleries. Knutsford has a medium-sized supermarket, Booths, also an Aldi, a Little Waitrose, a Sainsbury's Local, and two Co-Op stores (one on Princess Street and one on Parkgate Lane).

Tesco used to have a small shop in the town centre, which closed many years ago. The retailer had hoped to open a larger store on the edge of the town on Mobberley Road, but councillors in Mobberley objected to the proposed development, thinking it might result in more cars travelling through their village.

In 2008, Aldi announced plans to open a superstore in Knutsford, but construction did not begin until September 2012.[12] The store officially opened in July 2013.

Barclays has a large campus site at Radbroke Hall on Toft Road just outside Knutsford,[13] employing approximately 3000 staff in IT and support functions. Before Barclays purchased the site, it was owned by The Nuclear Power Group.

Religion

St John the Baptist's Church

St John the Baptist church is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade II* listed building. It is an active Anglican parish church in the located in the Church of England Diocese of Chester built between 1741 and 1744. It is in the Conservative Evangelical tradition of the Church of England and it has passed resolutions to reject the ordination of women.

St Cross is an Anglican church recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade II* listed building, built between 1880 and 1887. Unlike St John's the church has has had two female vicars since the Church of England approved the ordination of women.

St Vincent de Paul is a Catholic church in the Diocese of Shrewsbury. The current church opened in 1983, replacing an older church on the same site dating from the 1920s that was demolished due to subsidence. The first St Vincent de Paul church is still standing and has since been converted in to The Little Theatre. The current church includes a plaque blessed by Pope John Paul II on his visit to Manchester in 1982.[14] The church was modified in 1999 to include an apse with a stained glass window, which had previously been installed at Cross and Passion Sisters convent chapel, Maryfield, Dublin. The church claims the window was designed by Harry Clarke[15], although other sources state the window is too modern to have been designed by Clarke himself but it can still be attributed to the Harry Clarke Studio.[16]

There is a Methodist church, a Unitarian church dating from 1689 where Elizabeth Gaskell is buried and a Gospel church, located in the old ticket office at Knutsford station.

Education

Knutsford has six primary schools (one of these is a Roman Catholic school and another is a private school). Knutsford also has a high school: Knutsford Academy, which also has a Sixth Form. Some secondary school pupils from the town travel to schools in Altrincham, Hartford, Holmes Chapel, Hale and Macclesfield. Some sixth formers from the town travel to colleges in Northwich and Timperley. Macclesfield College run some adult education courses in Knutsford and Age UK run computer courses for the over 50s at Knutsford Library (as well as other libraries in Cheshire).

Sport

Knutsford Cricket Club[17] was established in 1881 and plays its home games on Mereheath Lane in the Cheshire Cricket Alliance.[18]

Toft Cricket Club[19] is located at Booths Park, Chelford Road. The Cricket Club gets its name from a neighbouring civil parish of Toft where the original ground was located when the club was established in 1928. Toft play in the ECB Premier Division of the Cheshire County Cricket League [20] It won the National Village Championship trophy at Lords in 1989.

Knutsford Hockey Club[21] plays its home games at Knutsford Leisure Centre and are based at the Crosstown Bowling Club on Chelford Road. This 100-year-old club runs 3 men's teams, a ladies team, a mixed team and a badgers team. The Men's 1st XI play in Division 1 of The North West Hockey League [22]

Knutsford Football Club, formed in 1948, play at their Manchester Road ground. The club has two Saturday teams, the first team in the Cheshire League and the second or A team in the Altrincham and District League. Two Associated Veterans teams also play on Sundays in the Cheshire Veterans League. In 2015, a youth team has been fielded again after a break of 127 years.[23]

Every 10 years Knutsford hosts an international three-hour endurance race for Penny-farthing bicycles.[24]

Culture and community

A resident of the town sanding the street in celebration of May Day 1920. The custom continues to this day.

There are many events in and around the town each year including the May Day festivities, The RHS Flower show at Tatton Park and the Cheshire County Show in the parish of Tabley, near Knutsford.

The annual Knutsford Royal May Day festival is where hundreds of people parade through the streets, and the May Queen is crowned. During the May Day weekend there is also a funfair run on ‘The Heath’ (a large field near the centre of Knutsford) where the crowning of the May Queen also takes place) This is said to be one of the largest travelling funfairs in the UK.

Local folklore claims that Edward "Highwayman" Higgins had a tunnel running under The Heath, where he hid his booty.

The Knutsford Guardian, established in 1860, is the only weekly paid for paper dedicated to covering the town and its surrounding villages. The newspaper is teamed with the Northwich, Middlewich, and Winsford Guardian.

There is a May Day custom, still observed today, of "sanding the streets" in Knutsford. The streets are decorated with coloured sands in patterns and pictures.

Tradition has it that King Cnut, while fording the River Lily, threw sand from his shoes into the path of a wedding party, wishing the newly wed as many children as the grains of sand at their feet.[25] The custom can be traced to the late 1600s. Queen Victoria, in her journal of 1832 recorded: "we arrived at Knutsford, where we were most civilly received, the streets being sanded in shapes which is peculiar to this town".

Knutsford was the model for Elizabeth Gaskell's novel Cranford. She lived in the town for some time, on what is now known as Gaskell Avenue, and she is buried in the Unitarian Chapel graveyard. Many of the places and people described in her books can be identified as being based on places and people in the town. In 2007 the BBC adapted the novel and produced a popular TV series Cranford. Despite several references to Knutsford, including King Street and The Heath, the TV adaptation was actually filmed in Lacock, Wiltshire. Notably, in 1987 Legh Road in Knutsford, designed by Richard Harding Watt, doubled for Colonial Shanghai in the opening scenes from Steven Spielberg's film Empire of the Sun. A Gaskell protégé who died in Knutsford in 1859 was the once-popular novelist Selina Davenport, who abandoned writing despairingly in 1834 and kept a tiny Knutsford shop instead.[26]

Knutsford Amateur Drama Society was established in 1925 and moved to its premises in Queen Street, Knutsford shortly after the end of the Second World War. Now known by the name of the building it occupies, Knutsford Little Theatre continues to produce a selection of plays each year, including an annual pantomime.

Knutsford Heritage Centre is situated in a 17th-century timber-framed building just off King Street, which was a blacksmith's forge in the 19th century. It has a museum, garden, shop and gallery featuring various exhibitions, talks and events, and walking tours are also available. On permanent exhibition are the May Queen's dress shoes and crown from 1887.

Scenes from the George C. Scott film Patton were filmed in the centre of Knutsford, in front of the old Town Hall.[27] The building was designed by Alfred Waterhouse, and for much of the 20th century was home to Knutsford Boys' Club and latterly a furniture show room and post office. It is now home to the Lost & Found pub and cocktail bar.[28]

Notable people

17th and 18th century

Peter Leycester in 1665

19th century

Elizabeth Gaskell in 1832
  • Edmund Sharpe (1809 in Knutsford – 1877) an English architect, architectural historian, railway engineer and sanitary reformer [31]
  • Elizabeth Gaskell (1810–1865) an English novelist, biographer and short story writer, grew up in Knutsford
  • Evelyn Gleeson (1855 in Knutsford – 1944) an English embroidery, carpet and tapestry designer
  • Sir Henry Royce, 1st Baronet OBE (1863–1933) an English engineer, car designer and joint founder of the Rolls-Royce company. Lived in Knutsford 1898-1912
  • Brigadier-General Sir Ernest Makins KBE CB DSO (1869–1959) a British military officer, statesman and Conservative MP for Knutsford 1922-1945
  • Frank Boyd Merriman, 1st Baron Merriman GCVO OBE PC (1880 in Knutsford – 1962) a British Conservative politician and judge.
  • Sir Edward Peel KBE, DSO, MC (1884 in Knutsford – 1961) a British army officer, businessman, amateur sportsman and big-game fisherman. Lived mainly in Egypt

20th century

Edward Timpson in 2014

21st century

Sport

See also

References

Notes

  1. ^ "Town population 2011". Neighbourhood Statistics. Office for National Statistics. Archived from the original on 30 June 2016. Retrieved 13 March 2016.
  2. ^ Knutsford in the Domesday Book. Retrieved 21 October 2017.
  3. ^ "The Domesday Book Online – Cheshire A-K". www.domesdaybook.co.uk. Archived from the original on 5 August 2007. Retrieved 9 February 2009.. Dodgson 1970, pp. 73, 74
  4. ^ "Knutsford Nether and Overton". Key To English Place Names. English Place Name Society. Archived from the original on 28 September 2015. Retrieved 8 May 2012.
  5. ^ "History of Knutsford". Knutsford Town Council. Archived from the original on 31 July 2014. Retrieved 3 November 2017.
  6. ^ Lovelace, Alexander G. (Summer 2014), "The Image of a General: The Wartime Relationship between General George S. Patton Jr. and the American Media", Journalism History, vol. 40, pp. 108–120
  7. ^ "House prices in Knutsford". Zoopla. Archived from the original on 7 November 2017. Retrieved 3 November 2017.
  8. ^ The Cheshire (Structural Changes) Order 2008. 4 March 2008. Archived from the original on 17 May 2009.
  9. ^ "2015 Election Results « Knutsford Town Council". Archived from the original on 25 November 2015.
  10. ^ "Northern franchise 2015: invitation to tender - Publications - GOV.UK". Archived from the original on 1 April 2015.
  11. ^ https://www.cheshireeast.gov.uk/pdf/public-transport/flexilink-leaflet.pdf
  12. ^ Aldi buys store land in town centre (From Knutsford Guardian)[dead link‍]
  13. ^ http://archive.thisischeshire.co.uk/2003/12/23/158461.html[permanent dead link‍]
  14. ^ https://stvincentsknutsford.org/parish-history
  15. ^ https://stvincentsknutsford.org/harry-clarke-stained-glass-window
  16. ^ https://taking-stock.org.uk/building/knutsford-st-vincent-de-paul/
  17. ^ Knutsford Cricket Club Official website. Archived 10 March 2012 at the Wayback Machine Retrieval Date: 25 September 2007.
  18. ^ Meller Braggins Cricket League Official website. Archived 28 January 2016 at the Wayback Machine Retrieval Date: 25 September 2007.
  19. ^ "Toft Cricket Club". Toft Cricket Club Official Website. Retrieved 19 December 2016.
  20. ^ Cheshire County Cricket League Official website. Archived 28 October 2016 at the Wayback Machine Retrieval Date: 19 December 2016.
  21. ^ Knutsford Hockey Club official website. Archived 10 February 2017 at the Wayback Machine Retrieval Date: 19 December 2016.
  22. ^ The North West Hockey League. Archived 5 February 2016 at the Wayback Machine Retrieval Date: 25 September 2007.
  23. ^ "Knutsford Football Club". Archived from the original on 14 October 2016. Retrieved 1 December 2016.
  24. ^ "Penny farthing race takes place in Knutsford". BBC News. 5 September 2010. Archived from the original on 5 September 2010. Retrieved 6 September 2010.
  25. ^ "The folklore year – May". Archived from the original on 3 January 2008. Retrieved 9 December 2007.
  26. ^ Cruikshank, Jaclyn (2006). "Biography at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln". Archived from the original on 8 June 2011. Retrieved 30 September 2009.
  27. ^ "The Old Town Hall", Knutsford. Archived 1 June 2015 at the Wayback Machine Retrieval date: 25 September 2007
  28. ^ The Lost & Found, Knutsford Retrieval Date: 21 January 2021.
  29. ^ Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 44, Penny, Edward retrieved 16 July 2018
  30. ^ Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 40, Neild, James retrieved 16 July 2018
  31. ^ Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 51, Sharpe, Edmund retrieved 16 July 2018

Bibliography

  • Dodgson, J. McN. (1970). The place-names of Cheshire. Part two: The place-names of Bucklow Hundred and Northwich Hundred. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-07914-4.

Further reading

  • King, G. (1988). Knutsford: A Pictorial History. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 1-85058-122-3.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Knutsford.
Wikivoyage has a travel guide for Knutsford.
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