Category:Development

• "HOOLE, a township, in the parish of Plemonstall, union of Great Boughton, Lower division of the hundred of Broxton, S. division of the county of Chester, 2½ miles (N. E.) from Chester; containing 294 inhabitants. It comprises 745 acres, of a sandy soil. The tithes have been commuted for £80 payable to the rector, and £22 to the Marquess of Westminster. Various plots of land here, belonging to the Rev. Mr. Hamilton, of Hoole Lodge, and others, have been laid out for building purposes, such as the erection of villas, &c., by Mr. Rampling, architect, of Liverpool; and some of the plots have been sold at the rate of 5s. the square yard, or £1210 per acre; while, before the introduction of railways, the price was not more than about £150 an acre." (Samuel Lewis, 1848)

Cheshire County Council Pack 106, produced by Cheshire Archives and Local Studies, gives the population of Hoole in 1841, the year of the first national census of population, as 294. Bagshaw’s Directory, nine years later in 1850, describes Hoole, and its “gentile houses”, as “47 Houses and 294 inhabitants” within a boundary which “contains 743 acres of sandy soil”. However, between 1841 and 1861, on the same acreage, the population rose from 294 to 1,596, and, by 1881 there were just over 3000 people living in Hoole.

Hoole developed rapidly from the small nucleus around Faulkner Street in 1841. Census information helped Hoole History and Heritage Society to begin to plot the development of the street plan of Hoole as it emerged in each decade. The arrival of the railways and the building of Chester General Station resulted in an influx of population, leading to the building of terraced houses in nearby Hoole. The railway also made the manufacture and transporting of new building materials possible, allowing for development. By 1899, many residents of Hoole travelled to Liverpool and to Manchester each day for work and for business. In the same year, the Sanitary (Public Health) Report for Hoole records the fact that houses were being built at the rate of 300 per year, by which time Hoole had become an Urban District Council.