Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cheshire/Archive 1

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First things to do

I've made a start at writing the main project page. It would be good if it could be fleshed out a bit more by others, as I don't want this to be a one-man show. As I see it, there are already a number of people working on entries for various towns and villages in Cheshire, as well as work on various other Cheshire-related things. If these people could list what they are working on here, then we can decide how to list them on the main page.

We want, I suggest, as many articles as possible to get to Featured article status. People might therefore also consider listing what needs to be done to achieve that aim for an article they are particularly involved in, or, at least, listing what is needed get a review of the article nearing what they think might be that status. If they can then say what help, if any, they may require to reach that status, then we should be able to see how the work in this project could pan out.

Other work, not specifically about writing complete articles, might also be of interest to people. For example, (a) converting all old-style InfoBoxes to new style ones; or (b) making sure that all towns in Cheshire have a wikipedia entry, if only a stub and an InfoBox; or (c) any others that might occur to you. These can also be listed. It might help if we listed them as separate sections here. I'll start us off, but if you have any comments or suggestions about this suggestion, then please feel free to make them.  DDStretch  (talk) 03:28, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Converting all old-style InfoBoxes to new ones

I'm in the process of looking at all Cheshire towns and villages that have entries, and converting any old InfoBoxes into new ones (the ones which have Latitude and Longitude). You can an example of a new one in Haslington if you haven't seen one yet. For articles that do not have any InfoBoxes yet, but which could do, I'm creating them with as complete information as I can.

I'd welcome anyone helping by doing the same thing as I am - that way, we can finish the job more quickly. If you create an article about a town or village within Cheshire, please consider adding an InfoBox to that entry, even if you can't complete it yourself. You can ask for help here to see if people would be able to find the missing information for you. Any comments or suggestions about this?  DDStretch  (talk) 03:28, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Creating stubs for all towns and villages in Cheshire

I think this would be a good idea. There are already some sources that list the towns and villages of Cheshire, and so it would mostly be a job of going through those lists and making sure an article is present for them. If you can find no information about any settlement, then why not post a request here, and see if anyone else can assist you? As for what to put in such entries, I suggest going to WikiProject UK geography and abiding by the recommendations thay give there. Any comments or suggestions?  DDStretch  (talk) 03:28, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Is List of Places in Cheshire the definitive list we are going to use for Cheshire? If so, I am pretty sure it is incomplete - what other Wikipedia sources are there? Pixie2000 10:51, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

I am also sure it is incomplete. For example, only recently, I added Oakhanger to the list. It may be small, but it is a village in between Alsager and Haslington or Crewe Green (which I added just now, when I discovered that it, too, was missing) and it has geological areas of interest named after it (Oakhanger Moss) which will need an article at some stage, too. It might be an idea to try to make sure that the list becomes complete at the same time as adding stubs for all villages. What do you think?  DDStretch  (talk) 12:05, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

I have the following book, which can help to some extent, but I suspect any source will be incomplate, and so with a bit of work we could make List of Places in Cheshire as definitive a work as can be found easily on the web.

Scholes, R. (2000) Towns and villages of Britain: Cheshire. Sigma Press: Wilmslow, Cheshire. ISBN 1-85058-637-3.

It has occurred to me that we may need to make some decisions about what counts as a place. I suspect, though I haven't yet checked, WikiProject UK geography may have something of use about this potential issue.  DDStretch  (talk) 14:04, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

When we add stubs for or find entries for towns and villages in Cheshire, I suggest we routinely make sure that the templates given on the main project page are present. The first one goes on the talk page for the entry, and the second on the entry page itself.  DDStretch  (talk) 14:09, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

List of Civil Parishes in Cheshire seems a much more definitive list of places than List of Places in Cheshire. Pixie2000 18:16, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

I've used the list of civil parishes on here myself in the past. It is what I was hinting at when I talked about having to make some decisions. But even this list is not a complete list of all the villages in Cheshire, since some villages are distinct and yet in the same civil parish as another village, on my understanding. However, may be I am using village slightly incorrectly here: Perhaps a distinction that should be made here is between a village and a hamlet, though the distinction is not clear, and it does seem to mix up the civil definition of a parish with the ecclesiastical one (mentioning the existence of a church, for example.) The question then is, should we try to impose any consistency here, and if so, what should it be? The WikiProject UK geography does not have much to say about this. But perhaps we could go and ask there for a broader view?  DDStretch  (talk) 18:46, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Ok, having now thought more about this, a way to resolve this potential problem is to just use the civil parish as the usual smallest unit that is described. In the wikipedia articles, this means that the principal villages or hamlets of this parish will be the main settlements described, possibly in separate sub-sections if required. If necessary, because of notability, a separate article could be written for different settlements within a parish, but normally not. Sorry if this is what everyone else already knew, but it was worth making it clear, I think. As for getting or attempting to check for a definitive list of the civil parishes, I think a careful examinaton of the various district council websites could allow one check. However, in some cases, this may be done only indirectly by looking at lists of officers, because some parishes are too small to have a parish council, and merely have either a parish meeting, or nothing at all, and so this won't be sufficient. I recently did see somewhere a set of PDF files giving a map with all the parishes shown on them for each district of Cheshire, but I did not keep a record of where I found them, and cannot now locate them. Can anyone help?  DDStretch  (talk) 14:12, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Parishes are also shown on the OS Explorer series of maps as well, though I don't have one handy so I couldn't tell you if they are named but the boundaries are definatly shown. As a side note are towns included as parishes or are they defined as a separate kind of entity.  YDAM TALK 16:22, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Cheshire County Council website has this page that may be of use. Here is another page off their web site that could be a good source. No maps here though! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Pixie2000 (talk • contribs) 20:34, 1 January 2007 (UTC).

Thanks for the links. Pity the maps aren't there. Your first link is a good source for all of the parishes, but, as I discovered when I first saw that page, it doesn't say in which district the parishes are, and the second link only gives parishes that either have attained some quality standard or have a website. I've had a good root around that website and the wensites of the districts, but, unless I've missed following some links, I can't see the maps anywwhere now. Either they are somewhere else, or I'm imagining things.  DDStretch  (talk) 02:46, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

(reply to User:Ydam) I'm also not sure about the naming of the parishes on OS maps, since at the moment, I dont have one handy. About your side note, I have information that I've just assimilated after some extensive reading, but it is a bit lengthy. I can give this answer, though:

Where there is a town council, it is entirely equivalent to a parish council. But some towns do not have parishes. The phrases are not parished or are unparished are both ways used by writers on wikipedia to describe this. The unparished towns (and other unparished areas) have wards that elect councillors to the district council in which they are found.

Wards can also be present in civil parishes for the purpose of electing a parish council. However, in these cases, the wards for electing a parish council need not be the same as the wards that are used to elect a district council. According to Wards of the United Kingdom, for the purposes of electing a dictrict council:

"A ward can be coterminious with a civil parish or consist of groups of civil parishes. Larger civil parishes can be divided into two or more wards.

"Parish and community wards also exist, which are subdivisions of parishes or communities, and used for elections to parish and community councils. They need not bear any relation to district wards."

So we need to be careful about which kind of ward we are talking about.

Going back to the presence or absence of parishes, in the case of the Districts of Cheshire, Crewe and Nantwich is partly parished, with Crewe remaining unparished. Similarly, in the Borough of Macclesfield, the towns of Macclesfield and Wilmslow are unparished. However, Vale Royal is completely parished, meaning that its towns all have "Town councils" that are, but for the name, equivalent to "Parish councils".

Morwen got partway through what she described as an "insane project" to create entries for all (civil) parishes in England. She mentions it here. In that section she gives links to a number of lists. Of these the parish summary list is probably the most relevant for this purpose being discussed. Assuming this list is complete and accurate, we can see the following:

City of Chester (which she gives just as "Chester") has 118 parishes; is "partly unparished"; and that the main settlement (Chester itself) is unparished.

Congleton (borough) has 23 parishes; and is "entirely parished".

Crewe and Nantwich has 69 parishes; is "partly unparished"; and that the town of Crewe is "unparished".

Ellesmere Port and Neston has 1 parish and is "partly unparished".

Halton (a unitary authority within the ceremonial county of Cheshire) has 4 parishes and is partly unparished.

Macclesfield (borough) has 51 parishes; is "partly unparished"; and has Macclesfield and Wilmslow as unparished towns.

Vale Royal has 45 parishes; and is "entirely parished".

Warrington (a unitary authority within the ceremonial county of Cheshire) has 18 parishes; is partly unparished; and has the town of Warrington itself "unparished". (Note that there is no distinction at the moment between the entry for the town and the entry for the unitary authority, unlike entries for Halton.)

I hope all that is intelligible.  DDStretch  (talk) 02:37, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Phew! that certainly answers my question, who'd of thought it could be so complex. I assume that all the unparished areas are part of urban conurbations? I'm just thinking about how we should go about sorting out the List of places in Cheshire. should we leave it as an alphabetical list or should we divide it up in to types of area eg: towns, parishes and broughs. should civil parishes be included at all or should we simply point people to a seperate List of civil parishes in Cheshire  YDAM TALK 21:58, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

It appears that most of the unparished areas are of urban conurbations, but I'm not sure about the situation in Ellesmere Port and Neston. May be some are not there. I don't really know much (at the moment) about that area. For suggestions about what to compile, I suggest a table based on the List of civil parishes in Cheshire, containing information about each civil parish and its constituent settlements. For unparished areas, perhaps these can be looked at, as they may all be urban areas (see some of the lengthy post to the section "Composite parishes" for a bit more information.) My "gut" feeling is to use the civil parishes as the basis for compiling these lists, as it fits in with a hierarchical structure we are trying to wade through and will help us not confuse the people accessing the entries about Cheshire. This hierarchical structure goes County - District (Borough) - Civil Parish - Settlement for parished areas. For unparished areas, it goes County - District (Borough) - unparished wards that can be joined together to make various settlements. We can be fairly clear about the County and District (Borough) bits of this, and we know that some settlements are in the same civil parish, and so it seems to me that the civil parish bit of the hierarchy precedes the settlement bits. Hence my gut feeling of using the list of civil parishes as the basis of a compilation of places in Cheshire. If we use various bits of the Cheshire county council and the various District (Borough) websites, as well as other sources, we may be able to get quite good quality information. However, this may be a large undertaking.  DDStretch  (talk) 03:52, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Thats a good idea it would really give a good idea on how the county is made up. One further thing I've been thinking about though. What about towns that span multiple parishes. Say Northwich in Vale Royal which I assume will cover several parishes. This will upset the hierarchy a bit. Should we instead list the town first and then the parishes that go up to make that town in cases like these, maybe we should have an extra level for urban conurbations like these and leave it blank for the rural parishes. What do others think  YDAM TALK 14:30, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

In the case of Northwich, I've checked the map I now have off the county council website (the PDF file can be downloaded here), Northwich is just one parish. Remember we are talkimg about civil parishes here, and ecclesiastical parishes may differ. The parishes that share part of their boundaries with Northwich are (going clockwise from roughly north): Anderton with Marbury, Wincham, Lostock Gralam, Rudheath, Davenham, Hartford. Weaverham, and Barnton. If Northwich is now understood to spill over into some of those areas, I would just mention that fact in the entry for Northwich, with similar small mentions in the parishes it spills over into. In fact, I suggest we try always to mention neighbouring parishes in a parish's entry. I'm beginning to re-draw the Districts with the parishes marked out, so that we can add small maps to the entries to help people know the location of the parishes/settlements a bit more. That is, if people think that would be helpful.  DDStretch  (talk) 15:58, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

As an afterthought, any spill-over areas would simply be treated just as another settlement in the parish it spilt-over into, but with the obvious point being made about it being essentially part of the settlement in the adjoining parish. So, the long (and possibly tedious) message I posted in the subsection about Composite parishes would then apply. I imagine, the case of "Winterley" I mentioned there would be similar, though it would be a minor settelemt in each parish, and so a decision would have to be made as to which parish it was primarily included in. (We've got a lot of indentations for our messages here now!)  DDStretch  (talk) 16:10, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for that information. Lookaing at the CCC maps it would appear that the problem I was concerned about doesn't exist. All towns seem to exist in one parish rather than several. That certainly simplifies things a bit.  YDAM TALK 16:42, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Maps

Back to the maps - National Statistics website has some maps if you type in a postcode - these were the ones that I remember seeing. There is also some stuff on the Boundary Commission website. Pixie2000 22:35, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

There is also [1] - but perhaps you already know? Pixie2000 22:38, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks - all of the information you give is useful. I think I have what I was looking for, though. Click on the district you want and you will get a summary map of the different parishes. I think these should be re-drawn (to avoid copyright) and put on the entries for the relevant districts. I may work on that myself.  DDStretch  (talk) 03:52, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Composite Parishes

One thing to remember is that some parishes are composite ones and include more than one village. A good example is Odd Rode which is made up of Scholar Green, half of Mow Cop (the other half is in Staffordshire) and Rode Heath. -- Phildav76 23:11, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Speaking of Mow Cop; that article currently states that it is in Staffordshire. Should that be corrected, the majority of the town is in Cheshire.  YDAM TALK 23:16, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

I've also noticed that the civil parish of Haslington also includes Oakhanger, Winterley, and part (it seems) of Wheelock Heath. I don't think we can be entirely consistent in our treatment here, because sometimes the different villages within a parish may merit an entry of their own, and some of the constituent villages may be more important or notable than the one the parish is named after. May be the first step is to compile a list, where possible, or the civil parishes together with the names, for each parish, of all its constituent villages? In this respect, we need to note the vague distinction that can sometimes exists between a village and a hamlet.

Perhaps a further useful way forward would be this? For "non notable" settlements within a parish named after a village, there would be a section pointing out the internal "structure" of the parish. The "non-notable settlements" would be put in this entry as sections in their own right. Some re-direction pages can then be added for these "non-notable settlements". For parishes that are not given the name of a settlement (there may be some), unless any of its settlements are notable, then all should be placed in sections within that parish's entry, with appropriate redirections added.

So, in the case of Haslington I mentioned above (I was born there and have done a lot on that entry, which is why I use that as an example), it would have a new section talking about its civil parish status, and mentioning the other settlements that are part of the psrish (Oakhanger, Winterley, and Wheelock Heath, for example). These would have sections to themselves in the Haslington entry, if appropriate, as none of them are particularly notable. Finally, redirection pages would be created, for these settlements so that if someone types in, for eample, "Winterley" to search for it, then an automatic redirection takes them to the section within the Haslington entry that deals with Winterley.

Now, there are bound to be problems with what I have suggested, and so I expect to be argued against here, which is good. This is because I'm not totally sure what I've suggested is a good idea. For example, what are we to do with already existing entries that are of non-notable settlements of a particular parish? I would suggest that we could consider merging these into the parish entries, if appropriate, but that may cause greater problems, as well as involving administrator intervention which may not be consistent for all the cases we argue for. Additionally, some users who may have spent some time creating those entries might feel some irritation about the merging. What about any future problems that might arise through boundary changes? Which solution would minimise the amount of re-editing we might have to do, yet make the entries for Cheshire as clear as possible in highlighting the complex structures that make up our administrative entities? May be we should try to preserve the status quo, and yet make sure that we try out my suggestion on any new entries we create? That's why I said at the top of this lengthy comment, that we may not be able to be entirely consistent in what we do. However, if the settlements keep an entry to themselves, then they really should have a link pointing back to the entry which contains the most detailed information about the parish it is in, with a summary given, I suggest. So, in the case of Oakhanger, if its entry stays, it should definitely mention it is a hamlet within the Haslington parish, and give its position within that parish as well as a link back to the Haslington entry.

Finally, concerning the situation of Mow Cop, I think the first step is just to add a fairly prominent (i.e., near the top) few sentences pointing out that the village straddles the Staffordshire and Cheshire border, with evidence (as I think this may be contended by some). Why some would argue with it, I'm not sure, since what you say can be clearly seen if one looks at an Ordnance Survey map. May be a reference to the map is the evidence that is required? Then, I would suggest that the article should have both Staffordshire and Cheshire stubs added where appropriate, and a "declaration of interest" by the Cheshire WikiProject, by adding the template on the project page to its talk page (which needs to be created.) Perhaps a note on the talk page justifying the action then needs to be written.

Oh dear! I seem to have written a long dense essay again! My apologies.  DDStretch  (talk) 03:26, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I have compared the GENUKI list of cheshire places with ours and I am working on a differences list - it is work in progress on User:Pixie2000/Cheshire. It would seem a number of the differences (that is places not in wikipedia but is on GENUKI) are due to "non-notable places" as described above, so perhaps we could add them to our list but under their appropriate "major place"? Feel free to alter / comment on User:Pixie2000/Cheshire!! Pixie2000 14:24, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I'm checking the parish lists alongside the maps I've now got. User:Salinae is also making another check. For some of the places you've got in your list, I think some of them could just be places that historically used to be in Cheshire, but now are parts of other authorities (like Greater Manchester). What do you suggest we do about those? I think we should put them in but say what happened to them. That way, we can use this list if we need to when writing about the History of Cheshire.  DDStretch  (talk) 16:37, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Agreed, some are now not in Cheshire - the list is from Cheshire in 1974 - some places are now in Greater Manchester (e.g. Gatley), but still think of themselves as Cheshire!! I think we need a list of places, but add to it as a sub-list places that historically used to be in Cheshire. Pixie2000 17:30, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Another 'source' is List_of_United_Kingdom_locations - do we want to do anything about these places named as in cheshire? Pixie2000 21:47, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Composite Parishes and how to write about and classify them

Right, how are we going to move forward on this one people? My 'struggle' is with the civil parish of Anderton with Marbury. It is in the category of Category:Villages in Cheshire, although Anderton with Marbury is a civil parish containing two villages - Anderton and Marbury. There is no separate entry for Anderton or Marbury. Anderton with Marbury does mention as a sub-heading Anderton. I guess I agree with the discussion above - either create short stub articles for individual settlements or redirection pages for them to the main civil parish entry. I guess my main issue is the 'mis-categorisation' of civil parishes as villages - do we need a new category to cope with this? Pixie2000 08:52, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

In summary, I suggest you remove the villages category from the existing article, and make stubs for the two villages: [[Anderton, Cheshire|Anderton]] for one and [[Marbury, Vale Royal|Marbury]] for the other, because of disambiguation issues. I also suggest that we move to create a new category: "Civil Parishes of Cheshire".

Now for an extended response:

I think we do need to "be bold" as wikipedia advises us to be, and grasp the nettle with this issue now. The problem is that we are now trying to make transparent the administrative structure of the county, when it wasn't clearly thought out beforehand, because lots of disparate editors just dived in and did a lot of good work in writing stuff rather than discussing writing stuff. This "diving in to write" was probably necessary as it is only now we are beginning to see what might need to be done to improve the clarity with which entire administrative structure can be understood. I think the error you've discovered should certainly be corrected on the list of settlements in Cheshire if it is there, and the category of village should be removed from it. We need to create a new category, something like [[Category:Civil Parishes in Cheshire]], but we may need to go through some kind of proposal process in order to ensure that it doesn't get quickly deleted.

It seems to me that there may be two kinds of errors at work here: (a) civil parishes that are said to be settlements, and (b) settlements that are said to be also civil parishes. The first kind of error is more easy to decide upon, I would suggest. The second kind of error can be tricky to differentiate from an appropriate situation when there is a civil parish which contains only one settlement and no other notable things outside that settlement in the same civil parish (as I suspect is the case with, for example, Northwich.)

In the case you've discovered, I think it can be corrected as you suggest, with stubs being created for the two settlements that make up the civil parish. The reason for this is that I worry that one cannot add a category, like Villages in Cheshire and direct it to just include the names of certain sections in an article: it has to be the article name itself. This means that civil parishes will get misclassified as villages if we include its settlements as sections within the article and then add the category for the villages to the article. So, I think we have to have distinct articles for civil parishes and for settlements where more than one settlement is in a civil parish. However, in the case of Northwich and others, so long as information about it as a parish is included in its article. It could have categories added for "Towns of Cheshire" and "Civil Parishes of Cheshire" and not be erroneous at all.

If we are to have a series of articles that deal with civil parishes that are separate from their settlements, then we need to think of how we are going to write about them, and what to include. We also need to get an idea about the scale of this issue, I suggest. So, see the section called "Tables of Settlements by Civil Parishes", later. I asked here whether they have a view about having an infobox for civil parishes, in the same way that there are infoboxes for counties, districts, and settlements. The project itself seems to be almost moribund at times, and so, now we are in a position to have a clearer view, we can probably act on our own to some extent. However, I did get some information there about possible InfoBoxes for civil parishes. I suggest we just try to set in place an InfoBox for a generic Cheshire civil parish, based on the one given for Cornish parishes (see it used here.) I suggest it should conform very closely to the InfoBoxes for Settlements in terms of style, because of cases similar to Northwich.

I also suggest we seriously consider adding something like (civil parish) after the names of new and current articles about civil parishes in Cheshire, so as to make a separation between the parish and the settlement information. Unfortunately, some articles about civil parishes alone have already been created, and they would require an admin person to rename them; and in the case of the oddity parish of Chester Castle, it has "(parish)" added after its name at the moment, which wouldn't allow any discrimination between civil parishes and eclesiastical parishes if we needed to make that distinction at some point (I can see we may).

It is very late, and some of what I've written may well be rubbish as I'm tired.  DDStretch  (talk) 02:38, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

I've now created categories for civil parishes - see later section on this page and section 6 on the main project page.  DDStretch  (talk) 23:43, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Omissions on the list of Civil parishes

I've noticed that there are some omissions in List of Civil Parishes in Cheshire, for example Lower Peover doesn't appear, although it does appear on the Cheshire County Council web site. So one good first task would be update List of Civil Parishes in Cheshire. I'll add in any that I can spot. Salinae 23:34, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

I'll try to do the same.  DDStretch  (talk) 03:26, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I am not sure what is the correct name of that parish. Macclesfield BC's website has it as Peover Inferior and not Lower Peover. [2]. -- Phildav76 15:59, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

The county council map (PDF file can be got here) gives two parishes adjacent to each other: Peover Superior and Peover Inferior. the [Macclesfield (Borough) list of Parish Clerks] also talks about Peover Superior and Peover Inferior, but not Lower Peover. So I suggest that giving Lower Peover as a civil parish is a mistake. Lower Peover is a settlement, but I'm not sure which parish it is in yet. I'll get an OS explorer map of the area tomorrow and see what they say.  DDStretch  (talk) 16:28, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Ok. What I've done now is to check the entries in List of Civil Parishes in Cheshire for Congleton, Crewe and Nantwich, Ellesmere Post and Neston, Vale Royal, and Macclesfield. I am taking the County Council maps as being the definitive source for the parishes. I only found two errors, both in Macclesfield. The first one, we know about. So I have removed Lower Peover from the list, replacing it with Peover Inferior. For the second one, the wikipedia entry gives "Lyme Handley" as the name, whereas the Council site states just "Lyme". I've changed this entry on wikipedia and disambiguated it where necessary (including putting a link on the disambiguation entry). I now just have the most numerous district to check: that of the City of Chester.  DDStretch  (talk) 22:19, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I've changed back Lyme to Lyme Handley, since the County Council map and the Borough of Macclesfield's list of parish clerks disagree over its name. I'll try to find out more.  DDStretch  (talk) 22:31, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

City of Chester - potential problems I've now checked the county council map against the List of Civil Parishes in Cheshire for the City of Chester. One point is that the map misses out an "oddity" of a civil parish: Chester castle which the list includes. I think it will be represented on any map of the district by a dot! Now, onto the main point, which is a bit troublesome, and needs to be sorted out more. Apart from minor name differences (the map generally has shortened names of the longer names given in the list), the map given by the county council agrees with the list. However, neither appears to agree with the official website of City of Chester. It appears that some amalgamation of parish councils has taken place, given the number of councils listed on the official website of City of Chester which have "and District" after their name, or which run together names of separate parish councils as given in the county council map and the List of Civil Parishes in Cheshire. One is directed to a website known as the Chester Portal, but when one gets there, the list towards the end of that page ("Parish Council Details") states that "This section contains information on all the Parish Councils in the Chester District. Just select the Parish you want details of and you will find information on how to contact the Council via the Parish Clerk.", and yet it does not. There are omissions, which can be seen by the fact that if one selects a particular parish from the list, one goes to a page which supplies the contact details for the parish selected, but which also contains a thumbnail map of the district and the shape of the parish and its position within the district. There are distressing blank bits in this map, within which we have no idea what is going on. For example, Malpas is omitted from this "complete list", and its position is in the middle of one of those blank bits. I think a phone call or a visit to the District council buildings is in order here. If the number of parishes has been reduced by amalgamation, it will help us produce a map containing regions which are not too small (an advanatge), but it will increase by a large amount the number of composite parishes (a potential problem - see the relevant section on this talk page.)  DDStretch  (talk) 00:40, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

These websites will be useful Election maps Neighbourhood Statistics. Both show boundaries of parishes and the statistics site gives populations too. -- Phildav76

Possible topic

One possible topic would be the canal systems of Cheshire. A rough outline could be cribbed together from existing pages History of the British canal system, Trent and Mersey Canal, Shropshire Union Canal, Macclesfield Canal, Ellesmere Canal, Llangollen Canal, Chester Canal, Manchester Ship Canal, River Weaver, Rochdale Canal, Ashton Canal, Peak Forest Canal, Bridgewater Canal, Cheshire Ring etc. Salinae 23:34, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

I think this would be a really good topic to do. Are you interested in doing some work on it? Would anyone else be interested in assisting?  DDStretch  (talk) 02:31, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Don't forget the Anderton Boat Lift  YDAM TALK 14:33, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I put our template on its talk page a few days ago.  DDStretch  (talk) 15:40, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I've started an article Canals in Cheshire, please feel free to add to it Salinae 23:40, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Hundreds

Perhaps we also need to consider Hundreds of Cheshire as a topic area? The History of Cheshire page lists there as being, in the end, seven: Bucklow, Eddisbury, Macclesfield, Nantwich, Northwich, and Wirral.

However, not all of these have specific Hundred pages - thoughts anyone? Pixie2000 17:34, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I have on order a fairly detailed book about the History of Cheshire as one source of expanding the History of Cheshire article. My idea was that, as part of the history section, we might consider doing a timeline kind of thing, giving dates at which hundreds were added to or taken from Cheshire. If we could additionally give outline maps alongside this, showing "before" and "after" outlines of Cheshire after each addition/subtraction, it would give people a good idea of how the shape of the county changed and evolved into what we have today. If they are all to be given entries, perhaps we need to create a category for them as well as adding (Hundred) after their name, as some seem to already have. But I'm not sure of the machanics of creating categories in a way which ensures some (overly-)zealous admin bots won't just delete them.  DDStretch  (talk) 19:38, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree with your idea of the timeline although I have not seen it done anywhere before on Wikipedia - is there an example we can base it on? I also like your "map through time" idea - for example the Wirral (see Hundred of Wirral) used to be part of Cheshire. Is there specific tools that have been used to produce the existing map images on Wikipedia? Pixie2000 20:42, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

The timeline idea just came to me, though I wasn't thinking of anything grand or graphical, really. An example that would be well within the formatting capabilities of Wikipedia would be this one which Ive just found, of the second world war. it could even be just a table, with links to maps given in one or two columns of the table (thus combining this with the "map through time" idea.) For this "map through time" idea, I thought of it just as a set of related thumbnails to each event on the "time line" which gave Cheshire before the event and after the event. I had this idea that removals from Cheshire could be given one colour (say red) on the before thumbnail, and additions to Cheshire could be given another colour (say green) on the after map. The good thing about doing it like this is that we can keep some dates a bit vague if we need to, and just put in extra rows on the table to fill out some of the events if we know the dates more accurately. I thought myself or someone else could draw up maps that illustrate the changes, and upload them here to be used.  DDStretch  (talk) 21:52, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

As regards examples of timelines, There are plenty of WW2 related ones eg Timeline of World War II not to mention the ones listed in that articles see also section that give good examples of what other wikipedia timelines look like. If we could get historical maps to go along side it that would look awesome.  YDAM TALK 22:21, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Agreed - anything specific you need done with this timeline idea, or are we better completing the list of stub places first? Pixie2000 22:57, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I think the stub places should probably be the first things done. The Timeline stuff can come along after we have some more actual historical dates at which things happened.  DDStretch  (talk) 00:10, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Kettleshulme

I think my edits to kettleshulme deserve a mention. I started that article and have been adding to it for a long time. JFBurton 08:29, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Tables of Settlements by Civil Parishes

I've created a new page, which is a child-page of this one. You can see it here. I've done this to make more clear information we have about civil parishes and settlements, allowing us to see how the two lists relate to each other.

Can I ask whether as many people as are able to could spend some time filling in the blanks in this table? I've given some brief guidelines at the top of the page, and you can also see how existing entries have been done to assist you as well.

I think we need such a set of tables so that we can begin to sort out more the potentially looming confusion that could arise between civil parishes and settlements. If we are to make the administrative structure of Cheshire more transparent, we do need to address this issue, and knowing which settlements fall into which civil parishes will help us identify holes in the coverage we currently have. It will alsoprovide an update to show progress we are making on offering a comprehensive coverage of civil parishes and settlements in Cheshire. At the moment, the names for the civil parishes have not been given any special addition to indicate that they are civil parishes, but this may change in the future, depending on what we decide to do. I hope we can find time to complete this task, and I will certainly be working on it over the next few weeks, as it may take time to complete.  DDStretch  (talk) 02:52, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

New Categories

I've now created new categories for civil parishes for each district, almost, in Cheshire. I've yet to do Ellesmere Port and Neston (since it has only one parish, I think it is not necessary), and I've yet to sort out the definitive list of parishes in City of Chester (see earlier sections for problems). If what I've suggested so far about all this is largely acceptable, I think we can now formulate some guidelines about what categories and templates to include in articles about (a) civil parishes, (b) settlements, and (c) settlements that are the sole settlements of the civil parishes in which they are located.  DDStretch  (talk) 23:56, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

See also my comments in Templates above Salinae 12:37, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

"New articles"

I note that on the Project page there is a heading for new articles (to which I have made one addition). How about significant additions to previous stubs and short articles. I have recently extended Round Tower Lodge, also Robert Spear Hudson (which may or may not be revelant - see "How far do we go?" above). Should this/these be added to "New articles"; if not, do we need a new heading? Peter I. Vardy 17:38, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Ok - I've added a new heading. It is probably a good idea, as some people may object to an old article being substantially reworked being described as "new".  DDStretch  (talk) 00:53, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Im going to start creating articles for Higher Hurdsfield, Mottram St Andrew, Macclesfield Forest, Pott Shrigley, Lyme and other places in the area that I know well, if you dont mind? JFBurton 12:49, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Please go ahead and do so. It might be an idea to have clearly fixed in your mind whether you want the articles to be about the civil parishes that are given those names (though Lyme is sometimes known as Lyme Handley, I understand, and the civil parish name for Macclefield Forest is actually Macclesfield Forest and Wildboarclough). If you want to write about the civil parishes (you probably should do this if there is more than one settlement within the civil parish) then I suggest you add "(civil parish)" after the name to help prevent confusion. This would then allow articles to be written about the civil parish separately from articles about the settlement that gives this civil parish its name and the other settlements within the civil parish. If you want to write just about the settlements given those names, then fine. Keeping these things separate is a good idea, because then we can have very accurate and informative categories for settlements and for civil parishes in Cheshire. If you at all uncertain about any of this, please feel free to ask, and good luck and happy writing.  DDStretch  (talk) 13:36, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Ahh, Ok, now I know what all that Civil Parish stuff is about. Thanks. JFBurton 16:32, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

I've added a few templates to your new article about Lyme Handley. (I've also added a redirection so people can get to it either by typing in Lyme, Macclesfield or the more complete name for the parish of Lyme Handley). I also added a category that will be useful. If you can see what I've done, it should be fairly easy to edit those into any others you create. And well done.  DDStretch  (talk) 18:23, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

You may like to add a link to Lyme Park, which has an article to itself, in the article for Lyme, Macclesfield. Incidentally, there are a few places that could be candidates for articles given in this list of Historic Houses in England (though the link goes directly to the ones in Cheshire.)  DDStretch  (talk) 10:34, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Did you know...?

Members of the project might like to know that I have just received this message:

On January 24, 2007, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Round Tower Lodge, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

so it was worth having a go! Peter I. Vardy 16:09, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

What is that all about? JFBurton 16:30, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Congratulations! What it means is that the article concerned was selected for the "front page" or "maqin page" section called, unsurprisingly, "Did you know?" I think it is a good acheivement, and well done, Peter.  DDStretch  (talk) 18:03, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Good Job! JFBurton 19:09, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Well done indeed Peter - I would love to take all the credit though, for creating the one-and-a-half line stub article that you then turned into the current piece! He He!! Pixie2000 21:02, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

PS: Spot my jealousy? Pixie2000 21:09, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Mine Too. JFBurton 08:27, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Mottram St. Andrew & Pott Shrigley

I have started the Mottram St. Andrew and Pott Shrigley pages now. Im hoping to bring them up to the same standards as Kettleshulme in the near future. JFBurton 19:09, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Category:Footpaths in Cheshire

I have put some of the Cheshire footpaths I can find into this new category as a pre-cursor to this "topic" area that is down to be done. I was thinking that, for a main article, we may well need something of the style of Recreational_walks_in_East_Sussex, but anyone else got an opinion?

I also have a mind to show the footpaths, or at least the main ones, on a map. Pixie2000 21:55, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Pixie2000 21:55, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

That sounds a nice little set of articles. The map idea is a good one. Some of the websites for parishes or boroughs contain tourist information about scenic and/or recreational footpaths, and so one source of information for footpaths outside the "big ones" might be there. From the tables of Long-distance footpaths in the UK, the one I can see apart from those already mentioned is:

• Bishop Bennet Way, 55 kilometres Beeston to Wirswall (Cheshire, Staffordshire)

The list also suggests:

• Bullock Smithy Hike, a 90 kilometre challange walk, a circular walk to be completed in 24 hours (actual challange is held on the first weekend in September), starts and finishes at Hazel Grove, Cheshire and takes in Lyme Park, Chinley, Edale, Castleton and many other points.

I don't think Hazel Grove is still in Cheshire, however.  DDStretch  (talk) 11:04, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

I live near there and it isnt in Cheshire. Its in Greater Manchester. JFBurton 12:43, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I also checked and found that it is Greater Manchester. In fact, the article on here says Hazel Grove is in Greater Manchester, and so I've edited the entry in the footpaths list to make it accurate.

The Mid-Cheshire Footpath Society and this part of the County Council webite both give a lot of useful information about additional footpaths in Cheshire.  DDStretch  (talk) 13:04, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

I have created the article here and added a couple of links from the other pages. It is a start! Pixie2000 22:20, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Done it again!

To my amazement I received this message today:

On January 24, 2007, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Robert Spear Hudson (businessman), which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

So a Cheshire article in the WikiProject Cheshire hits the main page again. It's all because of the encouragement given by  DDStretch  (talk). Thanks for the suggestion. It's well worth a go! (And there's one more in the pipeline which I think is the best - so it probably won't feature.) Peter I. Vardy 09:13, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Congratulations again! And thanks for the comment, but the work has really been all yours. I've been held up a bit by "real life" recently, so haven't done as much as I wanted on the project. But, I have some new information that will help the project, I think. I will be writing about it soon.  DDStretch  (talk) 10:37, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Getting it once I was jealous of; getting it twice and I don't know what emotion to show - well done though!! Pixie2000 22:27, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

List of Topics Article

I noted that the Cornwall project / portal has a List_of_topics_related_to_Cornwall article. It seems a good style of article to act as a "content page" into 'our' pages rather than just randomly coming across them. Perhaps we should have one too? Pixie2000 22:27, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

That's because it is a portal. I, too, think we need to have a portal, but we will need to work towards getting a represnetative set of articles that could be pieced together to make one. May be we are at that stage now? What do people think?  DDStretch  (talk) 23:48, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

There are "bits and pieces" about Cheshire all over the place but they do not seem to be held together in any way. I think a portal could be a "good thing" - at least it would be somewhere to place all the articles and stubs we have identified with our template. Initially it would be a bit incomplete but if we all add items as we come across them it should end up as a fairly comprehensive point of reference for the county. Peter I. Vardy 17:09, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

See section 24 about a Cheshire portal I have now started up.  DDStretch  (talk) 16:32, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

District Categories

Sorry I haven't pitched in more yet. Thought I would get started on creating categories for each individual district (as an example see Category:Kent, Category:Staffordshire and so on. Will try and start these at the weekend. Regan123 23:44, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Errr... I've already done some of them, I think. they are:

• Category:Civil Parishes in City of Chester, Cheshire
• Category:Civil Parishes in Congleton, Cheshire
• Category:Civil Parishes in Crewe and Nantwich, Cheshire
• Category:Civil Parishes in Macclesfield, Cheshire
• Category:Civil Parishes in Vale Royal, Cheshire.

(see main project page in the Categories section). There may be more of them needed, however.  DDStretch  (talk) 23:46, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm thinking of Category:Chester for the district of Chesterm Category:Crewe and Nantwich for Crewe and Nantwich and so on. Category:Ashford, Kent is a good idea of how they work. The civil parishes then get added as a sub cat as well. The idea is that every article relating to a particular area is then included as well as cats like, Category:People from Crewe. Regan123 00:24, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

That sounds good. As a suggestion, I think the category for Chester should be something like Category:Borough of City of Chester to distinguish it from the actual main settlement within it Chester itself). The reason for the "Borough of" addition is to allow one to distinguish between the town of Macclesfield and the Borough of Macclesfield. I personally think it would be good to make the names consistent, as I've done with the names of the Templates. So "Borough of Vale Royal", etc. It doesn't matter so much here that the names may not be those commonly used, I think. I may be in the minority, and so will accept what view prevails, however.  DDStretch  (talk) 00:43, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

I am tempted to stick with the short form as that matches the other counties, but will not start until I get an idea for other editor's opinions. Generally towns/cities unless they are big (eg. Manchester) aren't given their own sub cat otherwise you end up with a lot of low population categories. Also this a precursor to completing the implementation of the england people message template. Anyway I will work to what everyone else wants. My keyboard is at your command! Regan123 00:59, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Would it be possible to point us to this English people message template, so we can see what would be facilitated by using the short form. If its a good idea, I'd certainly reconsider my preference. User:Salinae did suggest and make some moves towards each town having a category of its own (see section 9, above), so may be that needs to be looked at with respect to what has already been done. Perhaps we need to develop some explicit guidelines about this?  DDStretch  (talk) 02:29, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

The England people message can be seen at work in Category:People from Ellesmere Port and so on. Basically it sets up a structured and unified list of People from Categories. More info is at Template talk:England people message. --Regan123 10:11, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

My two peneth in here - I suggest we do have categories aligned with the main boroughs - Vale Royal etc., but perhaps do not go down to categories at the level of towns / settlements etc. We do have some categories at the town level (e.g. Category:Northwich) but it includes some items outside the actual town boundary but are associated with the town, or simply just geographically close to it. It would be simpler, and perhaps less controversial to lump all these things into a Vale Royal category and then we do not get local arguments about, say, which settlement's category should have the Lion salt works included. Pixie2000 07:25, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

I think if a settlement is large enough (and I would suggest Leeds, Manchester etc are big enough) then it should have its own category. If a city is very historic (e.g.. Chester) it could easily have its own category as there will be plenty of related articles. As the Cheshire articles grow, then we could further sub divide into topics within the districts/boroughs and then further subdivide into towns if the categories remain too big. The borough/council does provide a nice easily defined boundary as opposed to towns (where does Northwich end and son on - see Wigan and the related Talk for enough edits to last a lifetime). Personally I would delete the town categories and put them into districts now - nothing prevents us reintroducing the towns if necessary later. Again, though, this are just my thoughts based on what has been done elsewhere - I'm more than happy to go with the flow! Regan123 10:11, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

About the names of the categories: If the suggestion you have made, User:Regan123, about changing the way in which the local authority is named goes ahead, then I see that it really would be strongly advantageous to have the short names, as otherwise their reference in the English people Template would become too unwieldy. If your suggestion doesn't go through, I'm less sure, but can see why the short form is still preferable.  DDStretch  (talk) 11:22, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

OK. The change has been made to the England people template, so if no one objects I will start on this by the 3rd Feb. Apologies for the delay, but I am in the middle of Sorting Sussex out into cats and don't want to leave a half done job behind! Cheers, --Regan123 13:43, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Project Page

I've edited the project page a bit. What do people think of it? I've tried to make the progress towards Featured Status a bit more explicit. And, because of that, at some stage we may be advised to start a system of reviewing and assessing articles for quality (see Template:WikiProject Wales for an example of what the template on the talk page could change into).  DDStretch  (talk) 23:52, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

The project page is beginning to look good, but I see that WikiProject Wales has breached some technical conditions - perhaps they are trying to be too clever! Pixie2000 21:39, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I've now added a bit more, about how I see articles progressing to get Good Article status. I'll try to get the Featured Article stuff sorted out soon, and then, perhaps we all need to think about and discuss the ways in which the project can assist its articles gain Good Article status, as well as Featured Article status. I'm thinking of such things are in-house peer review and assessments. We need to remain alert for vandalism as well now.  DDStretch  (talk) 00:00, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Some Civil Parish Problems, Recently Discovered

The Issue

If we ignore for the moment the case of Warrington, Halton, and Ellesmere Port and Neston, then I discovered a slight complication when I checked and tried to sort out some issues to do with the civil parishes within the different boroughs. It initially began with City of Chester, which has numerous extremely small civil parishes, it appears. Then I discovered the same problem with parishes within the Boroughs of Congleton, Macclesfield, and Crewe and Nantwich. I am satisfied I know the situation for Congleton and Crewe and Nantwich now, after a series of emails and phone calls to their respective council offices, but I have a view from Macclesfield that doesn't fit in with other information from, say, Ordnance Survey, the Office for National Statistics, and Cheshire County Council (so it is still being worked on by myself, and, now the inconsistency has been drawn to their attention, by some people within Macclesfield Council). As yet, I have heard nothing from City of Chester council, which is a shame, since the problem there has some features unique to it, and so I cannot make any informed guess as to what is going on there yet.

Basically, the problem is that, from the point of view of parish councils, some civil parishes do not effectively exist independently anymore. They have not merged, and yet they share a parish council with one and sometimes a few more adjacent civil parishes. This is not the same as the situation where a civil parish has "parish wards" which have a certain number of parish councillors allocated to them.

Examples

For example, Haslington civil parish has three parish wards: Haslington Village, Oakhanger, and Winterley. These correspond to the three largest settlements within that civil parish. However, they are officially still parish wards. So, the two civil parishes of "Newbold Astbury" and "Moreton cum Alcumlow" in Borough of Congleton have a joint parish council, which is called the "Newbold Astbury-cum-Moreton Parish Council". Similarly, the two civil parishes also in Congleton borough, of "Hulme Walfield" and "Somerford Booths" have a joint parish council named "Hulme Walfield and Somerford Booths". I was told by a representative from Congleton that these are all still distinct parishes and not parish wards, and that they have had these joint parish councils for a "large number of years". There are numerous examples of this in the Borough of Crewe and Nantwich. For example, "Doddington and District Parish Council" covers the parishes of Blakenhall, Bridgemere, Checkley cum Wrinehill, Doddington, Lea, and Hunsterston (6 in all). Furthermore, "Minshull Vernon and District" covers Leighton, Minshull Vernon, and Woolstanwood. This last example illustrates that these parishes are not the same as parish wards, since Leighton has two parish wards: "Leighton Urban" and "Leighton Rural". Getting on for half the civil parishes in this borough hold joint parish council meetings with one or more other civil parishes. Crewe and Nantwich sent me part of their handbook which described all the parishes including who if any they were joined with, together with the joint parish council names. Incidentally, they had made two minor errors in mistaking the parish wards of two civil parishes as being separate civil parishes. They were happy to be able to clarify and correct these when I questioned them about the problems.

The case of Macclesfield is more uncertain, as the person I spoke to at first told me that the civil parishes I enquired about were just parish wards: On their account, "Tabley Parish" consists of two parish wards: Tabley Inferior and Tabley Superior; similarly, "Plumley with Toft and Bexton", they said, had three wards: Plumley, Toft, and Bexton; and "Ollerton with Marthall", they said, had two. However, I pointed out that the most recent Ordnance Survey Maps, and the Office for National Statistics. in their maps and in their published tables of census information, all had them down as separate parishes and, furthermore, they didn't treat parish wards in the same way. So, on the basis of Congleton and Crewe and Nantwich, I said that I suspected that they were still parishes. This will be looked into more, as the council employee who should know the actual state of affairs is away on leave at the moment. I don't think they can have been abolished or merged, since this requires action by the Secretary of State and, possibly, the Electoral Commission, and I can find no evidence that this has been sought or an order has been issueed to abolish them.

The case of City of Chester

The situation of the City of Chester is that even more small civil parishes have joint parish council meetings with adjacent parishes; and some exteremely small civil parishes (in the south of the borough) have joint parish meetings with adjacent civil parishes. However, some parishes appear neither to elect parish councils nor to hold parish meetings. Nevertheless, they still appear on the Ordnance Survey maps, and the Office for National Statistics with census data for population, etc. Unfortunately for us, some neither have parish councils nor hold parish meetings, and, although they appear on the most recent Ordnance survey maps, etc, they do not appear to exist according the to Office for National Statistics, but they do, according to the Boundary Commission's latest, (2002), review. If you look at the 1:25000 Ordnance Survey maps, they seem to exist and have buildings on them consistent with people living there, and so this needs to be sorted out. If a civil parish exists, but the population is so small as to make a council or meeting unfeasible, then the borough council has to take over the duties normally held by a parish council or meeting (you can read about this in various places, such as NALG.

The Particular Problem

The particular problem in all this is what do we use as the basis for articles about civil parishes? On the one hand, we should perhaps take the existing civil parishes as the basis, and by some combination of mentioning it in those articles and linking, show how they relate to other civil parishes by holding joint parish council meetings. On the other hand, may be we should pay more attention to the hierarchy we are trying to make clear to people, and write articles based around the parish councils, with sections in there for the separate civil parishes that have joined together.

My own favoured solution is to take the second option. This would mean a more clear separation becomes necessary between civil parishes and settlements, but it would make the hierarchical structure of local government more clear, prepare the way if these joint parish councils are going to be merged in some way after a review that I know is currently underway about local government in Cheshire, and it would make certain other administrative jobs for us potentially easier (thumbnail maps, for example). Luckily, Vale Royal has not suffered from this problem and so User:Pixie2000 has not had to delay the work already done there, nor have to redo any work already done. So, shall I just go ahead and implement my own favoured solution?

Incidentally, I suspect this issue may not be restricted to Cheshire, but I don't know if anyone writing about local government in other counties is aware of it. The whole depth of the issue of civil parishes and the logical distinction between them and settlements does not seem to have been realised, except perhaps to some extent in the Cornwall project. I somehow feel the twists I have written about here and in other sections here could do with being better known on wikipedia, but where?  DDStretch  (talk) 02:04, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Tytherington High School

Started the Tytherington High School page today. JFBurton 22:07, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for adding those templates. JFBurton 19:29, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Cheshire Portal

I've just started a Cheshire Portal. You can see the skeleton here. You can type Portal:Cheshire in the Find Box to go to it. If we can start to fill in bits and pieces of it, I think we should begin to have a centralised source of all things related to Cheshire quite quickly. I've listed it in the Portal Directory, where I've put myself down as the creator, and the project as the Maintainer. I hope that is all right with people. I've also put entries in the Community Bulletin Board which announces the two projects and invites new people to contribute to them.

To expand the entries in the Portal, I suggest people might like to look at Wikipedia:Portal/Instructions, where I have arrived at step 7 of section 1. I have, however, changed the default colours round a bit, but perhaps people have a view about whether these should be changed, and I've also started to edit a few of the boxes. If you are able to contribute, let's try to get this filled out a bit more. I suggest that only the highest rated articles get mentioned in the portal, which means we may have to tackle the issue of peer review and assessment soon.  DDStretch  (talk) 16:55, 27 January 2007 (UTC)#

Portal looks great - I have added to a couple more of the "portlets" (what do you call them?) Looks like it is a great shop window into what we are doing here. Pixie2000 21:09, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks to all the people who have contributed to this. I also think it is beginning to look good. There are two "boxes" that still need some content, and I'm not sure what to do about them. Does anyone have any suggestions about what the "selected article" could be? perhaps one on Salt Mining, or something else? Also there is a box dealing with "Cheshire news", but I'm not sure how to easily get any content for that. Can anyone suggest anything here? If not, we could always get rid of that box, but it might make the two columns of boxes even more unbalanced. The box was automatically added when I followed the automated steps for creating a basic portal, so there's nothing sacred about it, and we could have a different one. If so, any suggestions? Once we have all the boxes filled, we can move its status from that of it being set up, to that of it being finished and able to "go live".

I've also been adding a link to the Cheshire portal to various templates, which I hope is all right by people, though if there is a better way of doing it, please substitute mine with the better way.  DDStretch  (talk) 19:07, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

I've now added a bit more to the contents of the boxes in the portal. All the contents can be changed so as to give a lot of varied content on a (semi-)regular basis. I decided that the Middlewich article might go in first as an example article. I also added a few more quotes I found about Chester, though more would be good. Additionally, I made a new box in which we can place the most recent articles that have been written. That way, we are showing what we are achieving, as well as balancing out more the two columns of boxes. Remember, if there are better choices for any of this, put them in! I finished it like this now so we could move the portal from the category of "Still under construction" to the full-blown online version - which means it can get listed in various publically accessible ways, rather than just by editors on here. I hope it looks all right.  DDStretch  (talk) 00:22, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

See my comments under Templates discussion above - a suggestion over adding Cheshire Portal links to the templates. Pixie2000 (talk) 10:53, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

I've been reading around about portals, and it seems we need to take care that we regularly maintain the portal, updating and rotating articles as required. Some projects have an extremely elaborate way of doing this, which I think may be too off-putting and complicated perhaps for us. However, we do need to discuss this, and I suggest we have two possible places where we could hold the discussion. First, we could hold it on the portal discussion page. Second, we could make a sub-page of this project discussion page, using that for our portal discussions. This might allow for a more "in house" discussion. Any comments?  DDStretch  (talk) 00:08, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Three out of three

It's getting embarrassing...I thought I might get one...but three!

On 27 January, 2007, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Thomas Brassey, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

Congratulations  DDStretch  (talk) on setting up the portal. I just wonder if the Thomas Brassey article is worth getting assessed and working up. He was a Cestrian who achieved amazing things but is virtually unknown and unacknowledged - and his activities covered not just Great Britain but many parts of the world. What do people think? Incidentally, how did the info about him get on the portal before I told anyone else? Peter I. Vardy 17:26, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Congratulations. Really good work! I think it might be well worth getting it assessed. Even if it doesn't now achieve Good Article or Featured Article status, it will give good pointers as to what to concentrate upon in its working up. It will also help us all see more clearly at what level "the bar" is set for us to get other articles there.

As for how I saw it before you announced it - it was simple - I was looking for the two you had had in DYK? previously, and went to the main page, where I saw the third one and immediately added it with the other two!  DDStretch  (talk) 17:32, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

The Thomas Brassey article achieved a B rating (see the comments). Well done on the portal; it's coming along nicely. Peter I. Vardy 22:35, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Redirects that are misleading - the case of Woodhey, Cheshire

I discovered a redirect about Woodhey which went from Woodhey, Cheshire. The actual article at fiest claimed it was a town in Cheshire, but it is now a suburb of Bebington (which took a bit of tracking down). I removed all the incorrect information from the entry, and thought that the redirect required some attention. There is now no settlement in Cheshire called Woodhey, though there is a Woodhey Hall, and an extremely small hamlet nearby it (no more than about 3 houses) called Woodhey Green, about 8km west of Nantwich. Multimap doesn't find either, but streetmap does, though you can obviously find them both on multimap. I decided the the redirect could be considered for deletion, because as it stands it is simply quite misleading, and so I proposed it here. When I proposed it, I hadn't found the two small places I've just mentioned. It appears that two separate people argue that it should be retained, one on the grounds that it used to be in Cheshire, and the other also mentions that there are other wrong redirects on wikipedia, and so its incorrect status is not particularly a bad point. If it is retained, I am considering changing the redirect to point to an entry about Faddiley civil parish (within City of Chester borough) which I will make sure mentions Woodhey Green and Woodhey House. I'd welcome comments about (a) my proposed deletion request for the redirect, and (b) what I am considering doing if the deletion request fails. I do think the redirect needs somes erious attention, as Woodhey itself is just a suburb of Bebington now. Firthermore, what do we do if we discover other rediects that are now similarly incorrect? Thanks.  DDStretch  (talk) 11:20, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Hi. On this one I would leave the redirect only because it was once in Cheshire. It helps people writing historical articles, especially biographies. Alternatively we could turn it into a disambigation page for the three possible items you mentioned above. Regan123 11:59, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

The disambiguation page is a good idea, as it would allow us to point out the change in the county that Woodhey in Wirral underwent, along with pointing to the other two places.  DDStretch  (talk) 12:03, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Regan123 - keep the redirect - people may legitimately search for Woodhey, Cheshire - there will be many historical documents referring to this I'm sure. Richard B 13:22, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Ok, if you think the link should be kept, I strongly receommend you make your views known at the relevant place where it being discussed as being up for deletion: here. As you can see, I'm weakening now, in favour of making it an disambiguation page. I'll officially record my changed views in a while.  DDStretch  (talk) 13:29, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

The results for this were to keep the redirection. I tend to think we should change it into a disambiguation page on the grounds that it would be ultimately extremely misleading to have pages like "Altrincham, Cheshire", "Stockport, Cheshire", "Birkenhhead, Cheshire", or "Bebington, Cheshire" on wikipedia, even though all these places are much bigger and more notable than the "Woodhey, Cheshire" that is being pointed to (indeed, "Woodhey, Cheshire" is but a suburb of Bebington). I'm not sure how many of people who commented and argued for it being kept had any real knowledge of the local geography and the relative notability of Woodhey in comparison to other places on The Wirral now not in Cheshire, but which do not have similar redirects, though some probably did. A disambiguation page seems to make much more sense, given that there could legitimately be two entries (or one combined entry) for Woodhey Green and Woodhey hall that are still in Cheshire. However, I wonder whether a change to the redirect page after a RfD would be viewed as subverting things a bit. What do people think?  DDStretch  (talk) 09:24, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

To be honest, I'm not sure what the problem is in having an Altrincham, Cheshire redirect in place. It is an undenyable fact that Altrincham was in Cheshire prior to the 1974 reorganisation. There is countless documentation referring to Altrincham in Cheshire (most from pre'74 but I know many people who still quote their address as Altrincham, Cheshire and a google search for "Altrincham, Cheshire" received around 28 times as many hits as "Altrincham, Greater Manchester"). We must not assume that readers will know of recent boundary changes. Someone might have found a document about Altrincham that suggests that it's in Cheshire (say a pre'74 one - or even a recent example like all of those google hits) - goes to Wikipedia and doesn't get taken to their chosen article. My thoughts are that if it's reasonable that someone might search for the article title - then it's ok to have a redirect. Similarly for Sale, Greater Manchester - we should include a redirect from Sale, Cheshire (and in fact we do). It's not misleading - Altrincham, Sale etc. all used to be in Cheshire. Wikipedia doesn't present only the view of what currently is the situation. The article itself can then explain that Altrincham is in Trafford MBC, Greater Manchester, is within the historic boundaries of Cheshire. Richard B 13:15, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Wildboarclough And Macclesfield Forest

I started the Macclesfield Forest and Wildboarclough article and then realised there was also an article for Wildboarclough. Shall I keep the article or delete it? JFBurton 20:17, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

I think the article about Wildboarclough is about the settlement. Macclesfield Forest and Wildboarclough would primarily be about the civil parish, in which Wildboarclough is but one settlement. Indeed, the Macclesfield Forest and Wildboarclough article gives Langley as one other settlement in it, and also mentions a number of smaller hamlets. There may well be other features within this civil parish that are separate from the Wildboarclough village. So I suggest keeping it, and writing about its features, the villages and settlements contained within it, and then provide links to the villages, and any major features (which would require articles writing about them) as appropriate.  DDStretch  (talk) 17:01, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Chester Shot Tower as a potential 'Did You Know...'

I've today created an article about the Chester Shot Tower, which is probably the oldest such building in the world. I think it might be the kind of topic that's interesting for DYK, but looking at the comments there, it seems to be rather shorter than the moderators seem to go for. Does anyone know anything about the structure, or have any printed references on shot towers? Espresso Addict 15:38, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

The Bull Ring

This has been successful as a DYK today and also placed on our project page. But it's not in Cheshire. Should it be deleted? Peter I. Vardy 18:28, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm removing them as soon as I've posted this message. I've left a message for the editor on his talk page. If you read that, you will see that the Bull Ring is mentioned in a book about Prehistoric Monuments in Cheshire (I also have this book), but not in any major substantial way, and in half of its references, it makes the point that The Bull Ring is in Derbyshire, and only included as a site of a place not in Cheshire but which might be conjectured by some to have had an impact on people living in Cheshire at that time. As I've noted, there is a similarly-named Ancient Monument in Cheshire: The Bullstones. Its location is close to Macclesfield and it is dealt with in some detail in the book I mentioned. I think this could have led to some confusion along the way.  DDStretch  (talk) 20:54, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Project-independent quality assessments

Quality assessments are used by Wikipedia editors to rate the quality of articles in terms of completeness, organization, prose quality, sourcing, etc. Most wikiprojects follow the general guidelines at Wikipedia:Content assessment, but some have specialized assessment guidelines. A recent Village pump proposal was approved and has been implemented to add a |class= parameter to {{WikiProject banner shell}}, which can display a general quality assessment for an article, and to let project banner templates "inherit" this assessment.

No action is required if your wikiproject follows the standard assessment approach. Over time, quality assessments will be migrated up to {{WikiProject banner shell}}, and your project banner will automatically "inherit" any changes to the general assessments for the purpose of assigning categories.

However, if your project has decided to "opt out" and follow a non-standard quality assessment approach, all you have to do is modify your wikiproject banner template to pass {{WPBannerMeta}} a new |QUALITY_CRITERIA=custom parameter. If this is done, changes to the general quality assessment will be ignored, and your project-level assessment will be displayed and used to create categories, as at present. Aymatth2 (talk) 13:21, 10 April 2023 (UTC)