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We have visualised a stranger coming to our rather scattered
village, seeing it as it is now, then reviewing the scene as we
roll back the curtain of time to show how it has emerged from
earliest ages.
There are many gaps in our knowledge, as there are vanished
landmarks in our village. We cannot show him a pretty little
village where time has stood still for hundreds of years, a
village green where maidens danced round the maypole, or where
wrong-doers sat in the stocks to the gaze of all the villagers,
or even an old parish church, or an existing Elizabethan manor.
But we have a village that seems to have grown, in spite of itself,
from scattered farms and cottages into a thriving community. We
can show our visitors the old paths walked by the Romans and the
Normans; fields tilled by the monks; where stood a pool from
which they fished, and where was once a water-mill from which they
ground their corn.
We can show him how a sturdy farming folk worked and lived,
and how changing times brought many new things to Upton which
affected its whole life.
As he leaves he will take with him the memory of a place where
the united feeling has been, and still is, very strong; where in
the past century, all joined, despite differences of birth,
religion and politics, to enrich the village life by the building
of a church, and , in this century, by the building of a village
hall.
We have sought to preserve our village in being and in spirit
lest it become engulfed in the everspreading embrace of urban
England.
FACTS
- Two miles north of Chester
- Acreage - 1,250 acres
- Population - 5,800 approx.
- Rateable Value - £34,546
- Height above sea-level - 100 - 120 feet
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