History
Guilden Sutton was mentioned in the Domesday Book. Legend has it that the parish has always been “off the beaten track”, with Roman Roads running close by. Indeed there is a delightful story that Cromwell’s men were unable to find it when they sought to punish the Royalist settlement, and that missing Chester plate is buried under an unspecified oak tree. Actual historic finds have been few: a bronze coin of Licinius I (AD307-324) found behind the Bird in Hand, a mediaeval lead spindlewhorl, four 17th cent. swords found in a house cellar, and a cannon ball.
A church was probably built in the 12th or 13th cent. The earliest register of births, marriages and deaths dates back to 1595; the Achdeacon’s corrections Books, recording the proceedings of church courts, refer to “Edward Dutton and Margaret his wife” being absent from church in 1673 and the churchwardens’ accounts reveal that 10s 6d (52.5p) purchased a coffin for Joseph Joynson in 1744.
In the mid 18th cent, the parish consisted of 12 farm houses and eight cottages. Always an agricultural community, the parish had the services of a man to prevent cattle straying. The church was much damaged by a great storm in 1802 and was rebuilt. By 1810, the village was growing and had 24 houses and 120 people, increasing to 42 houses and 234 people 60 years later, including farmers, a blacksmith, a tile and brick maker, two boot and shoe makers, a painter and a bricklayer.
The Methodist Chapel was built in 1873, the original village school in 1891, and the present church hall in 1916.
By the 1930s, the village had grown to 404 people with electricity having arrived in 1925. Piped water did not extend to the main part of the village until 1945, and gas not until 1968. In 1951, part of a neighbouring area was transferred to Guilden Sutton, adding a further 209 inhabitants. Further new housing was added on a modest scale during the next 15 years, but plans were then drawn up for a large scale expansion which, now completed, has taken the village to its present size.
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“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“History is the present. That’s why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth.”
—E.L. (Edgar Lawrence)
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—Erma Brombeck (20th century)