C is for Cottam family of Culcheth

 Culcheth – a funny name to say.  A lot of my maternal relatives lived  in that area. 

My mother’s father Joseph was a Cottam and his father James emigrated from England in about 1852, married and settled in Victoria, Australia, continuing the farmer’s life. 

James ancestral line of Joseph, John, Peter, John, were all born around Culcheth.  

The early Cottam men are listed as yeomen, which meant that they held and cultivated a small landed estate making them freeholders. 

The Cottam family had lived in the Culcheth area from the 1700s and maybe longer, as that is as far back as I can verify at this point of time.  The areas listed on their documents, vary from Croft, Risley, Tyldesley, St Elphin and Leigh.  

Map showing Warrington close to the Lancashire Cheshire border.

The ocean is to the left of Lancashire.

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Culcheth is a large village in Warrington, Cheshire England and six miles (10 km) north-east of the Warrington town centre.  

Wikipedia tells me the area was established around the time of the Norman conquest, as mentioned in the Domesday Book.   

In Saxon times it was situated in South Lancashire and named Calchuth or Celchyth. Some maps and deeds denoted it as Kilcheth, Kylchith or Kilshaw. 

The name is derived from British language, Cil and Coed at the edge of a wood, retreat in a wood or blackwood. Another claim is that it comes from ‘Cul’ meaning narrow. 

However, the four families of French descent settling in the area took local names 

In the 17th and 18th centuries, many of the inhabitants followed the occupation of linen weaving.

In 1911, ‘British History Online’ tells us that Culcheth consists of agricultural land.  Cotton is manufactured, and bricks and tiles are made.  There were about 2500 inhabitants then.

The surface of the country is flat, the highest elevation at Twiss Green being but 107ft. above sea level. In the north is agricultural country, fairly well timbered. In the south the land is but sparsely inhabited and consists of reclaimed moss-land; some patches still exist where peat is cut for fuel and moss litter.

The characteristic vegetation of the moss-land is still in evidence here and there, where birch and bracken and nodding cotton sedges flourish. Potatoes and corn, more particularly oats, thrive in a clayey soil, where the land has been cleared of the bulk of the peat. 

This large township, with an area of 5,369 acres, has long been divided into four quarters, though the boundaries are not always clearly defined, viz.: Culcheth proper in the north; Holcroft and Peasfurlong, the eastern and western parts of the centre; and Risley in the south. The eastern and northern boundaries are formed by the Glazebrook and its tributary the Carr Brook; another brook on the west divides Peasfurlong from Croft. The southern boundary appears to be drawn chiefly through moss-land.

Until 1974, Culcheth was in the Golborne Urban District in Lancashire but was then moved into the Borough of Warrington in Cheshire by local government reorganisation. 

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Open paddock in Croft

The Horseshoe Pub in Croft

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REFERENCE: 'Townships: Culcheth', in A History of the County of Lancaster: Volume 4, ed. William Farrer and J Brownbill (London, 1911), pp. 156-166. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/lancs/vol4/pp156-166 [accessed 8 April 2020].