Cheshire

For other places with the same name, see Cheshire (disambiguation).

Cheshire is a county in north west England. It shares borders with Merseyside and Greater Manchester in the north, Derbyshire in the east, Shropshire and Staffordshire in the south, and the Welsh county of Clwyd to the west.

Cities, towns and villages

Cities

• 1 Chester – the county town situated on the River Dee, with a rich Roman history, famously beautiful architecture and good shopping along the historic Cheshire rows. Chester Races at The Roodee, the oldest racecourse still in use in England.

Towns

• 2 Congleton
• 3 Crewe
• 4 Ellesmere Port
• 5 Knutsford with Tatton Park a historic estate with Tudor hall, neo-classical mansion, lavish gardens, a deer park and playground.
• 6 Middlewich
• 7 Macclesfield
• 8 Nantwich scenic town in the middle of Cheshire and home to the infamous "hack green" nuclear bunker turned museum
• 9 Neston
• 10 Northwich See the Anderton Boat Lift and Delamere Forest Park
• 11 Runcorn
• 12 Sandbach
• 13 Warrington
• 14 Widnes
• 15 Wilmslow

Villages

• 16 Alderley Edge
• 17 Central South Wirral
• 18 Disley is in Cheshire, but see Stockport for its prime attraction Lyme Park, a grand mansion and gardens.
• 19 Holmes Chapel, just north is Jodrell Bank, home of the Lovell Radio Telescope
• 20 Lymm
• 21 Tattenhall
• 22 Wybunbury

Understand

Prior to boundary changes in 1974 and the creation of areas like Greater Manchester and Merseyside, Cheshire included everything south of the Mersey such as Sale, Hyde, Stockport, all of Wirral, and continued up to the Welsh border near Chester. The boundary changes led to some gains and some losses, Widnes and Warrington were added to Cheshire.

Talk

The Cheshire accent is not a strong regional accent and is often associated with Received Pronunciation (RP), but several regional accents and dialects like Scouse are common in Cheshire, due to the proximity to cities like Liverpool and Manchester.

Get in

By train

Crewe, Wilmslow and Warrington Bank Quay are on the West Coast Mainline, which gives them good connections to London, Birmingham, Glasgow, Edinburgh and a variety of other destinations. Chester has more infrequent services to and from London and the Midlands, and regular services to and from North Wales, Manchester and Liverpool served by Merseyrail. These last two are largely commuter lines, so do not expect major luxury, though they pass through enjoyable country scenery. Neston station in Cheshire also serves the Borderlands Line to mid-Wirral.

By plane

• 1 Manchester Airport (MAN ^IATA) is located just north of Cheshire and serves a large number of international and domestic destinations.
• Liverpool John Lennon (LPL ^IATA) is similarly close, and has mainly budget airline connections to European destinations. It will not be possible to get to most places in Cheshire direct from here, rather you must go to the main train stations in that city and use that.

See

Handforth Hall

Cheshire is famous for its countryside and largely unspoilt landscapes.

• Chester is unmissable for its ancient city walls, amphitheatres and Mediaeval / Tudor buildings.
• Lyme Park is a grand mansion at the edge of Stockport.

Do

• Cricket: Cheshire CCC play in the National Counties Cricket Championship, the tier formerly known as "Minor Counties" below the first class competitions. They don't have a permanent ground but play at half-a-dozen venues around the county.
• The Cheshire Ring is a circuit of six canals through rural Cheshire, the edge of the Peak District, and Greater Manchester. It's 97 miles (156 km) with 92 locks and takes a week to get around, so you can hire a narrowboat at several locations, putter round the circuit, then return the boat at your starting point. It needs to be a narrowboat because many sections are along narrow canals, where boats may not exceed 7 foot beam. Check navigation status with the Canal & River Trust. Going clockwise from Ducie Street Junction, just north of Manchester Piccadilly station, the route is:

- Ashton Canal through Ancoats, Clayton, Droylsden, Audenshaw and Ashton-under-Lyne

- Peak Forest Canal through Dukinfield, Hyde, Woodley, Bredbury, Romiley and Marple

- Macclesfield Canal through High Lane, Higher Poynton, Bollington, Macclesfield, Bosley and Congleton

- Trent and Mersey Canal through Kidsgrove, Church Lawton, Rode Heath, Wheelock, Middlewich, Northwich and Anderton

- Bridgewater Canal through Preston Brook (near Runcorn), Lymm and Sale

- Rochdale Canal back into Manchester.

• 1 Sandstone Trail, ☏ +44 1606 288543, greenspace@cheshirewestandchester.gov.uk. A 34 mile walk along the Mid Cheshire Ridge and through the Cheshire Plain (updated Mar 2018)

Eat

Cheshire cheese is a dense and semi-hard cheese, which is defined by its moist, crumbly texture and mild, salty taste. First mentioned in 1580 by Thomas Muffet in his book, Health's Improvement, Cheshire cheese is one of the oldest recorded named cheeses in British history. Cheshire cheese is the UK's largest-selling crumbly cheese, with sales of around 6,000 tonnes per year.

Go next

North to Manchester, east into Derbyshire over the Pennines, West into Wales.