Dodleston is a village and

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authorit ...

in the unitary authority of Cheshire West and Chester and the ceremonial county of Cheshire, England. The village is situated to the south west of Chester, very close to the

England–Wales border The England–Wales border ( cy, Y ffin rhwng Cymru a Lloegr; shortened: Ffin Cymru a Lloegr), sometimes referred to as the Wales–England border or the Anglo-Welsh border, runs for from the Dee estuary, in the north, to the Severn estuary i ...

. The civil parish includes

Balderton Balderton is a village and civil parish in Nottinghamshire, England, which had a population of 9,757 at the 2011 Census. Balderton is one of the largest villages in Nottinghamshire, although it may be more properly considered a suburb of Newa ...

, Gorstella,

Lower Kinnerton Lower Kinnerton is a village and former civil parish, now in the parish of Dodleston, in the unitary authority of Cheshire West and Chester and the ceremonial county of Cheshire, England, close to the England–Wales border. The neighbouring vi ...

and Rough Hill. It is one of the three old Cheshire parishes which are situated on the

Flintshire , settlement_type = County , image_skyline = , image_alt = , image_caption = , image_flag = , image_shield = Arms of Flint ...

side of the River Dee. Dodleston has a village shop with post office, village hall, village green, a

C of E The Church of England (C of E) is the established Christian church in England and the mother church of the international Anglican Communion. It traces its history to the Christian church recorded as existing in the Roman province of Britain ...

primary school, the Grade II listed St Mary's Church and the Grade II listed 'Red Lion' pub. It also contains some good examples of buildings by the 19th-century architect John Douglas. At the 2001 census, the population of Dodleston was 777, reducing to 715 at the 2011 census.

History

The name Dodleston likely derives from the

Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th c ...

personal noun ''Dod(d)el'' and the word ''tūn'', meaning "an enclosure, farmstead or settlement". In 1086, Dodleston was recorded in the

Domesday Book Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manus ...

as a relatively large settlement within the hundred of Ati's Cross and in the county of Cheshire. Dodleston was a

township A township is a kind of human settlement or administrative subdivision, with its meaning varying in different countries. Although the term is occasionally associated with an urban area, that tends to be an exception to the rule. In Australia, C ...

in Broxton Hundred. The population was recorded over time as 185 in 1801, 258 in 1851, 307 in 1901, 267 in 1951 and significantly increasing to 777 by 2001. The village was also the birthplace of

Sir Thomas Egerton Thomas Egerton, 1st Viscount Brackley, (1540 – 15 March 1617), known as 1st Baron Ellesmere from 1603 to 1616, was an English nobleman, judge and statesman from the Egerton family who served as Lord Keeper and Lord Chancellor for twenty-on ...

(1540–1617), who rose to importance during the latter years of

Elizabeth I Elizabeth I (7 September 153324 March 1603) was List of English monarchs, Queen of England and List of Irish monarchs, Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death in 1603. Elizabeth was the last of the five House of Tudor monarchs and is ...

and the early reign of

James I James I may refer to: People *James I of Aragon (1208–1276) *James I of Sicily or James II of Aragon (1267–1327) *James I, Count of La Marche (1319–1362), Count of Ponthieu *James I, Count of Urgell (1321–1347) *James I of Cyprus (1334–13 ...

. Because of his high status he could have been buried in either Westminster Abbey or St Paul's Cathedral in London, but chose St Mary's Church, Dodleston, as his final resting place.

Association with Mallory

In the early 1980s the old order of life in a small country village was considerably affected by the development of a new housing estate, which became known as Boydell Park. Within Boydell Park and branching off Penfold Way is Mallory Walk, which is a cul de sac with footpath access to other areas of Dodleston. Dodleston Penfold Way Aerial Photo - geograph

Dodleston Penfold Way Aerial Photo - geograph

Mallory Walk is named after Canon Herbert Leigh-Mallory, who was Rector of St Mary's Church between the years 1927 to 1940, having previously been incumbent at St John's Church in

Birkenhead Birkenhead (; cy, Penbedw) is a town in the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral, Merseyside, England; historically, it was part of Cheshire until 1974. The town is on the Wirral Peninsula, along the south bank of the River Mersey, opposite Liver ...

. His son

George Mallory George Herbert Leigh Mallory (18 June 1886 – 8 or 9 June 1924) was an English mountaineer who took part in the first three British expeditions to Mount Everest in the early 1920s. Born in Cheshire, Mallory became a student at Winchest ...

was the English mountaineer who took part in the first three British expeditions to conquer

Mount Everest Mount Everest (; Tibetic languages, Tibetan: ''Chomolungma'' ; ) is List of highest mountains on Earth, Earth's highest mountain above sea level, located in the Mahalangur Himal sub-range of the Himalayas. The China–Nepal border ru ...

in the early 1920s.

Governance

Dodleston is within the City of Chester parliamentary constituency. An electoral ward in the name of Dodleston and Huntington existed at the time of the 2011 census, which covered both of the parishes plus their surrounding areas. The total population was recorded as 3,958. As of , Dodleston is within the Christleton and Huntington Ward of the unitary authority of Cheshire West and Chester. The village has its own ten-member elected parish council.

Dodleston messages story

Dodleston is the setting for the "Dodleston Messages", a series of messages from the sixteenth century allegedly received in 1984 by author Ken Webster through a

BBC Micro The British Broadcasting Corporation Microcomputer System, or BBC Micro, is a series of microcomputers and associated peripherals designed and built by Acorn Computers in the 1980s for the BBC Computer Literacy Project. Designed with an emphas ...

computer supposedly haunted by ghosts. The story was published in 1985 in the British tabloid newspaper, the '' Daily Mail''.Verily, I'm a computer spook, '' Daily Mail'', 29 December 1985.

References

External links