Hoole Bridge Building Supplies

Hoole Bridge Building Supplies are magic. I can phone them, order all sorts of building stuff, including secondhand bricks to match existing walls, and they will appear with it on the back of a truck, or inside a van. Best of all, they know the local area well, and even send the right-sized vehicle to fit down narrow back alleys. Really good service.

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Island in the Dee

Down by the Old Dee Bridge there is an island in the river. Obviously man-made, no-one seems to know why or when it was put there. Nowadays its' only use is as a turnaround point for the Raft Race, or as an occasional duck or heron resting place.

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Snugburys

Snugburys is on the road out to Nantwich, and is another of the local farms that have had to diversify in order to remain solvent. In their case it is into ice cream, which comes in a myriad of flavours, and is made from the milk and cream from their own herd of cows. Oh, and they also have some extremely cute piglets trotting about, just waiting to eat those leftover cones.

See our Chester self-catering serviced apartment at Black Diamond Park

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St Giles Cemetery, Boughton

Here stood the leper hospital and chapel of St Giles. Founded early in the 12th century and endowed by successive Norman earls of Chester they remained in constant use until 1643. When defensive measures during the siege of Chester necessitated the demolition of buildings outside the city walls the cemetery remained to mark the site, and in time the little village of Spital Boughton clustered around it. In 1644 the royalist defenders suffered great loss of life in a gallant sortie in Boughton and many of the fallen were buried here. It was also used for victims of the plagues which ravaged the city in the 16th and 17th centuries. Being extra-parochial the site was granted to the corporation by Charles II in 1685 as a burial ground and, though for a period in the charge of St Johns parish, it remains in their hands.  The last burial took place in 1854.

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Church/Population Movement

There has been a tendency, slightly reversed in recent times, for the population to move out of city centres and into suburbs, and the churches have moved along with them. Hence, originally, there was St Mary's in Castro (in the Castle), which moved outside the defensive walls of the Castle, but still within the protective city walls, to St Mary's-on-the-Hill. This, too became redundant in its' turn, when the church moved to Handbridge and became St Mary's-without-the-Walls, on-the-hill being reduced in status to a chapel-of-ease,or secondary church.

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September

September, far from being autumnal, has begun in a burst of warm weather. Plants and trees seem uncertain as to what is going on, and I saw a magnolia tree with a fair number of blooms on it the other day.

See our Chester self-catering serviced apartment at Black Diamond Park

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Walk Mill II

The original Walk Mill was demolished, and has been rebuilt by the current owners on the same footprint. They used many of the original items, including the floor tiles, sack hoist, and damsel (the spindle which strikes the shoe to distribute grain into eye of stones, and can been seen in the photo below right). Other artefacts have been found close to the mill site dating back to 973 A.D.

See our Chester self-catering serviced apartment at Black Diamond Park

Voir notre appartement meublé avec cuisine situé à Black Diamond Park