Saturday 11th October marked the final community event of the Thelwall 1100 Festival. All there is to do now is prepare the final accounts and report for the National Lottery Heritage Fund and the wind-up meeting of the Thelwall 1100 Festival organisation (planned for a date in December).
Everything seemed to come together on the various projects in time for the grant deadline of 30 October. Our celebrations clearly demonstrated we’d successfully delivered Thelwall’s wish list of events and legacies. A wonderful sunny afternoon saw us welcoming over 150 visitors to the displays in the Parish Hall and the model railway in Scout HQ. Some 15 visitors enjoyed the tour of Greenfield – the historic home of the Stantons, repurposed for young people with special educational needs.
Thelwall Morris led the procession to the commemorative stone unveiling with Councillor John McQuillian, our Rose Queen Emilia Passey and Jane Kemp, Rosy Brierley and Thelwall Guides doing the honours. Afterwards we cut the amazing celebration cake made by Geraldine Foden of Thelwall Bakehouse and Thelwall History Group. As Mike Moss’s super pictures show, it was a happy community occasion. You’ll be able to relive the events of 2023 and 2025 when we upload images onto the Thelwall 1100 page of the Thelwall Community website. You’ll then be able to see how we put the time capsule together and how the plinth was constructed to contain it under the commemorative stone in the Parish Hall grounds.
The stone marks the start of the Heritage Signage Trail. The printed leaflets, with a fun map drawn by Graham Edgar, are now available in our pubs, Thelwall Post Office, Inches and the church. Two blue plaques are awaiting installation – at The Pickering Arms and Thelwall Ferry. In the Parish Hall, we displayed copies of the information boards on Thelwall Hall and Thelwall Railway Station that should be in place in Elizabeth Park and on the TPT by end of November.
And what of the future? Please have your say in the Local Neighbourhood Plan referendum later this year and do sign up with South Trafford Archaeology for the Thelwall Community Dig in 2026 – hoping we might find traces of Edward the Elder’s ‘’cyty’.
Thank you Thelwall for getting behind this whole project – it was worth it!
‘110 Interesting Things about Thelwall’ gets a great review!
Saturday 11 October also saw the launch of ‘Cheshire History, Number 65, 2025’ at the Cheshire History Day. In the Book Reviews section, Jenny Jones’ publication got really positive feedback from the editor, Professor Graeme White:
“….the author should be proud of her achievement in producing this book. It is clearly the outcome not only of a lot of good work – allied to careful selection of the questions to include – but also of genuine affection for Thelwall’s past, especially that which can still be discerned in the landscape today. As one of the opening pages says: ‘History is all around you’. This book testifies to that.”
Well done and thank you Jenny for leaving us all with such a great legacy.