The first map of Cheshire was produced by Yorkshire surveyor Christopher Saxton in 1577. This beautiful document is described by the county’s local-history association as “reasonably accurate” when it comes to the general outline of the county and the location of towns and villages, but “a little less so” when it comes to rivers, hills and woodland. You can see the results at sites.google.com/site/ clhaonlinemaps/home/1577-saxton. One area still clearly visible is Delamere Forest, which today remains a shady oasis on the Cheshire Plain.
The highlights at Chester include parish and nonconformist records
The map is almost exactly contemporaneous with physician(a much later edition is on the Internet Archive at ), which contains one of the earliest printed references to the county’s distinctive crumbly cheese. We know that the Cheshire cheese trade had begun by the year 1650, when a coast-hugging shipment from Chester was recorded arriving in London’s port books. And by the middle of the 18th century it had become one of the most popular cheeses available in the UK. In 1758 the Royal Navy ordered all ships to be stocked with Cheshire cheese, and by 1823 about 10,000 tonnes were being produced every year.
