Carden is a small village and civil parish in the unitary authority of Cheshire West and Chester and the ceremonial county of Cheshire, England. The village of Carden consists of Higher Carden and Lower Carden. The parish includes Carden Hall (or Carden Old Hall) and Lower Carden Hall Because the civil parish is small, it shares a parish council with a number of other small civil parishes, which, in the case of Carden are Aldersey, Barton, Clutton, Coddington, and Stretton under the name of Coddington and District Parish Council. ().
Etymology
Carden is derived from the Old English word Carrworðign that means 'enclosure at a rock'. The element worðign is relatively common in the region, while the only other local occurrence of carr is in the form Bedestonecarre recorded for Bidston Hill on the Wirral Peninsula in 1303. This type of name is difficult to date. It and could have formed at any time between the seventh century and when it was first recorded as Kauerthin in 1230.
Family name
Carden (formerly Cawarden) family name; according to Ormerod "at some point before the reign of Henry III (i.e., before 1216) a family assumed the local name Carden." About 1450 a daughter of William de Cawarden married John Leche of Chatsworth, Derbyshire, who thereby acquired Lower Carden Hall and its lands in Cheshire.
History
Celtic Carden
Artefacts have been found which date back to around 12,800 to 12,000 BC (Upper Palaeolithic period) and were made by the first people to return to Britain at the end of the last glaciation. Nearly 10,000 pieces of chert and flint have been recovered from a site near the village. These include tools (and a great deal of waste material) which conform to the Mesolithic "narrow blade" tradition, and can be dated c 6800–4300 BC. There is evidence of continual Celtic occupation and Bronze Age pottery, dating from about 2200–1800 BC, was found: pots from a Beaker period were found in 1998 and burnt human bone were found.
Medieval Carden
Carden is not recorded in Domesday Book, as it was probably treated as part of Tilston. In 1066, Tilston had been part of the possessions of Edwin, Earl of Mercia (1065–70), and was evidently already subdivided, as the Bishop claimed half a hide of the manor and, after the Norman conquest, another half hide was sublet to Ranulf Mainwaring. In 1066, the four hides of taxable arable land paid £6, making it one of the most prosperous Cheshire manors. Eight plough-teams could be accommodated on this land; one was in demesne. The recorded population consisted of four villeins, two bordars, four radmen, a reeve, a smith, a miller and two slaves who shared four plough-teams; the mill was worth eight shillings. The manor is described as being one league long and one wide (about 2.4 by 2.4 km); this is reasonable enough for the east–west measurement, but only acceptable for the north–south dimensions if the township of Horton Green is not included.
The origins of a separate manor of Carden are obscure. The descents of the manors through the Middle Ages are complicated by their division into six parts through the coheiresses Leuca, Margaret and Ellen Caurthyn. By 1419/20 Isabel, daughter and heiress of John Beston and widow of Sir Robert Aston held lands in Carden. Her interests in Carden derived from her paternal grandmother, Isabel, daughter of Cecily, heir of John Codinton, presumed descendant of Leuca and Robert Codinton. Two years later Isabel, now married to Sir John Caryngton, obtained more lands in Carden, Farndon, Cuddington, Clutton and elsewhere from Ralph de Beston.
Richard Caurthyn granted his brother William a quarter of Clutton in a charter attested by Robert Stutevile; this may have been the origin of the division of the manor. William's descendants continued to hold land in Carden throughout the Middle Ages, although the failure of one branch of the male line in the reign of Henry IV (1399–1413) brought the manors into new families. His daughter and coheir Eleanor was married to John Leche III, claimed by some to have been a younger brother of the Leche family of Chatsworth, and the manor of Nether Carden was vested in her.
The Leche family had held property in Carden as early as 1346/07, when Eva Warin released land to John Leche I and his wife Lucy, her sister. Their son, John Leche II, is said to have been surgeon to Edward III and given Castle Warin and other lands in County Kildare. Carden Hall descended through thirteen generations of John Leches (although not always father to son), until a William Leche held the manor at the start of the nineteenth century, after which it descended through another three John Leches.