Category:Streets

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.

In 1898 the city pressed unsuccessfully to incorporate the whole of Hoole urban district and parts of the civil parishes of Great Boughton, Newton, Saltney, and Sealand, the last two in Flintshire would have been a "conquest" of parts of Wales. When the county borough boundary was eventually extended in 1936, Hoole remained independent and was indeed enlarged. Newton civil parish was abolished and divided between Chester (153 acres on the west) and Hoole (288 acres on the east). The boundary with Hoole was nudged north from the area of the station to a line which could be recognized on the ground (along Lightfoot Street), adding to Chester 47 acres which covered railway company property and the Chester Union workhouse. As a result the area of the county borough was increased to 4,140 acres Hoole urban district, besides incorporating part of Newton, took 99 acres from the south end of Hoole Village civil parish, 11 a. from Guilden Sutton, and 5 acres from Great Boughton, so that its south-east boundary followed the Chester-Warrington railway line. Taking into account the loss to Chester, the urban district increased from 334 acres to 672 acres In 1954 the Chester (Extension) Order dissolved Hoole urban district and incorporated most of it in Chester, omitting the rural 156 acres in the east, which were added to Hoole Village civil parish, and 18 acres at the hamlet of Piper's Ash, transferred to Guilden Sutton.

Other Maps of Hoole

There are many map tools available on the Internet. Some maps which have been found useful are listed below:

• National Library of Scotland: a huge range of OS maps, views from above and LIDAR;
• Tithe Maps: from circa 1840;
• CW&C's Maps: includes layers for planning etc;
• Vision of Britain: various maps;
• Old 25-inch map: from the NLS;
• Bings "Birds Eye" maps: spy on your neighbours from several directions;
• 1954 National Grid Map: made at a time of considerable transition;
• "Floodmap": useful if you want to trace a contour, set the sea to flood at that level;
• DEFRA's "Magic Map": good for geology and soil types, habitats etc
• Sandbach Info: lists a lot of map resources where you can often (but not always) scroll to Hoole! Contains some rather odd resources (there is one recorded "ancient tree" in Hoole) - hours of harmless amusement;
• RAIN RADAR FROM HAWARDEN:
• Soviet Era Maps: for military use;