Tarporley

Tarporley is a large village and civil parish in Cheshire, England. The civil parish also contains the village of Rhuddall Heath. Tarporley is bypassed by the A49 and A51 roads. At the 2011 census, the population was 2,614. Tarporley is near the site of a prehistoric settlement. Several prehistoric artefacts have been discovered within close proximity of the present-day village: a Neolithic stone axe, a flint scraper and a Bronze Age barbed and tanged arrow head. It is listed in the Domesday Book as Torpelei, which has been translated as meaning “a pear wood near a hill called Torr”. For this reason, Tarporley Church of England Primary School has a pear tree for its emblem. However, the exact origins and meaning are unclear. The name has also been suggested to mean "a peasant's wood/clearing", derived from the Old English words þorpere (someone who lives at a thorp; a peasant) and lēah (a wood, forest, glade or clearing) In 1066, the settlement was owned by Wulfgeat of Madeley and was worth one pound. Twenty years later, under the ownership of Gilbert the Hunter (Gilbert de Venables), Tarporley's value had halved, to ten shillings. This small agricultural settlement comprised eight households (four villagers, two smallholders and two slaves). The Domesday entry suggests that Tarporley was one of many townships still recovering from the devastation caused by the Normans' Harrying of the North in 1069–70. An electoral ward of the same name exists. This ward stretches north-east to the Budworths with a total population at the 2011 census of 4,398. At Domesday, Tarporley was a township and ancient parish in the Hundred of Rushton, but by the late 12th century it had become part of Eddisbury Hundred. From 1866, the village has had civil parish status and its parish council gives it some limited local government autonomy. The parish council comprises 12 locally elected members. Tarporley Urban District was created in 1894 and was abolished in 1936.