Places: Dodleston
Place Type
Parish
County
Cheshire
Parish
Dodleston
Deanery
Chester
Causes
EDC 5/13/5 – Richard Grosvenor contra Humphrey Bold
DODLESTON
This parish is situated about 5 miles south west of Chester, straddling the border with Wales. It comprised three townships, Dodleston, Higher and Lower Kinnerton. Higher Kinnerton was in the county of Flintshire in Wales.
The church had been granted to St Werburgh’s Abbey in Chester probably during the reign of King John and passed to the dean and chapter of the cathedral following the surrender of the abbey in 1540.
Although the lower part of the church tower survives from the early sixteenth century, most of the church was rebuilt in sandstone in 1870 to designs by John Douglas, who also added some height to the existing tower and probably designed the lychgate.
A motte and bailey castle, adjacent to the churchyard on the Welsh side of the River Dee, was probably built shortly after the Norman Conquest, forming part of a defensive network along the border to protect against Welsh incursion. A manor house was later built on the site. It was probably this hall which was the headquarters of the parliamentarian troops during the siege of Chester in 1644 to 1646 and the parish registers recorded several burials of soldiers including ‘a soulldier, from his horse fell and brake his necke’ (Ormerod, vol. ii, p. 851). A rectory succeeded the manor house on this site.
Another manor house, Dodleston Hall, was built in the middle of a moated site to the north of the motte and bailey. The hall was owned by Richard Grosvenor and was bought by Thomas Egerton, a Cheshire man, related by marriage to the Grosvenor family, who was Lord Keeper and Lord Chancellor for more than two decades until his death in 1617. Despite his work in London, he sometimes lived at the hall. This was a timber framed building which was demolished about 1788, and a farmhouse was built on the site. Sir Thomas Egerton died in London but chose to be buried in the parish church of Dodleston.
The parish remains largely agricultural, being both arable and pasture.
Sources:
George Ormerod, The History of the County Palatine and City of Chester (second edition, revised and enlarged by T. Helsby, London, 1882), vol. ii, pp. 844-852
Raymond Richards, Old Cheshire Churches (Revised and enlarged edition, Didsbury, 1973), pp. 145-148
Rachel Swallow, ‘Palimpsest of Border Power: the Archaeological Survey of Dodleston Castle, Cheshire’, Cheshire History, (54), (2014-2015), pp. 18-44
‘Doddington – Donisthorpe’, in A Topographical Dictionary of England, ed. Samuel Lewis( London, 1848), British History Online https://www.british-history.ac.uk/topographical-dict/england/pp63-69 [accessed 22 January 2025]
Historic England
Dodleston motte and bailey castle (1012419)
https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1012419 National Heritage List for England
Church of St Mary, Church Road (1129915)
https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1129915 National Heritage List for England
Dodleston Hall moated site (1011786)
https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1011786 National Heritage List for England