Threapwood is a small 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. It is close to the villages of

Shocklach Shocklach is a village in the civil parish of Shocklach Oviatt and District, in the Cheshire West and Chester district, in the county of Cheshire, England. Shocklach village is in the southwestern corner of Cheshire, approximately from the bo ...

, Worthenbury and Malpas.

Etymology, history

Threapwood developed on an area of

common land Common land is land owned by a person or collectively by a number of persons, over which other persons have certain common rights, such as to allow their livestock to graze upon it, to collect wood, or to cut turf for fuel. A person who has a ...

, historically a tract of woodland lying between Cheshire and

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

, which was traditionally reputed to have fallen outside of county, parish and township boundaries: it was therefore outside the jurisdiction of any Justice of the Peace and paid no land tax or parish rates. This status was reflected in its name, with ''threap'' being a common

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 ...

place name element referring to disputed boundary areas.Winchester, W. ''Discovering Parish Boundaries'', Shire, 2000, p.42 This vague administrative status was to lead to Threapwood gaining a reputation as a home to "abandoned characters of every description, and especially of women of loose or blemished morals".GENUKI : Flintshire, Threapwood, St. John
/ref> It was also a refuge for military deserters.See Pickering, D. ''Statutes at Large from the 26th to the 30th year of King George III'', Cambridge: Charles Bathurst, 1766, p.329 Various attempts were made to bring Threapwood within the normal administrative structure; by the

Militia Acts of 1792 Two Militia Acts were enacted by the 2nd United States Congress in 1792 that provided for the organization of militias and empowered the President of the United States to take command of the state militias in times of imminent invasion or insur ...

it was decreed to be in Worthenbury - though for the purposes of the militia only - and the Mutiny Act 1797 placed it in the parish of Malpas.Cathrall, W. ''The History of North Wales: Comprising a Topographical Description of the Several Counties of Anglesey, Caernarvon, Denbigh, Flint, Merioneth, and Montgomery'', v2, 1828, p.233 Until Victorian times the village continued to be regarded as partly in Cheshire, and partly in Flintshire. But in 1896, under the "County of Chester (Threapwood) Order", the county boundary (and therefore the boundary between England and Wales), which passed through the village, was adjusted slightly in favour of Cheshire.

Buildings

Churches

* St John (C of E). Founded 1817 as a chapel to Malpas (formerly extra-parochial), becoming the parish church for Threapwood in 1968. * United Reformed Church (Independent/Congregational). Built 1850.

Other

*War Memorial *A derelict brick tower

windmill A windmill is a structure that converts wind power into rotational energy using vanes called sails or blades, specifically to mill grain (gristmills), but the term is also extended to windpumps, wind turbines, and other applications, in some ...

to the southeast of the villagePevsner, Nikolaus and Hubbard, Edward (1971). ''The Buildings of England: Cheshire''. Penguin Books. still contains much of the internal mechanism, though in a ruinous state of repair.

Sources

Vision of Britain websiteThreapwood History Group

External links