The village of Mottram St.Andrew has been known by many names. It is an ancient place whose origins are lost in the mists of time and almost irrecoverable. Like most English villages it must have owed its beginnings to some Saxon incursion about which we know nothing. It was however recorded in the Domesday Book of William the Norman, known as William the Conqueror. In 1086 the Domesday Book stated that:
“Gamel holds Mottre. His father held it. There is one hide and a half rateable to the gelt tax. The land is four carucates. It is waste. There is a wood three leagues long and two broad, and two hedged enclosures and an aery for hawks.” Gamel also held Chadkirk in Stockport parish.
The passage indicates that there was enough arable land to need the services of four teams of oxen, and that it would support more than one family. It is also possible that Gamel was a Saxon. The Domesday Book is written in one hand perhaps that of a cleric from the time of Athelstan, who had grown old in the service of the Saxon king. He recorded the demise of the Saxon thegns who had held the land for so long and who were replaced by the Normans. Gamel was to see the land which his father had held, and perhaps many others of his family long before him, pass into other hands. The Anglo Saxon landed gentry had been destroyed in the sporadic fighting between 1066 and 1071. It is no wonder that so much of the land in the north of England was described as waste. Gamel had survived longer than most. It is also no wonder that when William the Conqueror came to die in 1087, expressed penitence for the blood that he had shed.
In 1414 the village name is recorded as Mottram Andrew. Two place names give the clue for the addition. Opposite the Hall gates there is a house known as St.Andrews Cottage, once a farm. A priest named Andrew is said to have lived there, and it is easy to see that he might have been known as the Andrew of Mottram or the Mottram Andrew.
The other old name is Priest Lane once connecting the roads to Alderley Edge and Prestbury but taking its name from a very much older track following a different route. It is more than probable that this once passed close to the priest’s cottage and was used by him in visiting other parts of the village. As there is no suggestion in early writings that of any connection with an ecclesiastical building, the association of Priest Lane with an individual seems the obvious conclusion. The St. was added at a much later time. No doubt the good man had acquired Sainthood by tradition or it may have been merely for the sake of euphony. A St.Andrew’s Well in the Mottram Wood from which the Old Hall was supplied with water is another indication of the close connection of someone of the name of Andrew with the district.
In the 12th century the lands passed into the ownership of a Norman family named Motterum. The Motterum family were associated with the Manor for a long time. Edward de Motterum owned it in the reign of Henry the Second (1135-1189). Several members of that family were Bailiffs of the Forest of Macclesfield. The office was of considerable honour and consisted of executing processes, carrying the mace and receiving rents for the King. In the reign of Edward the Third (1312-1377), Adam de Motterum kept the gaol there, also Roger de Motterum, who married Joyce de Stanley of Disley, was rewarded by the Black Prince for his services in the Battle of Poitiers in 1356.
In 1410 John de Motterum, probably the son of Roger and Joyce, was the Bailiff of the Forest of Macclesfield and keeper of the gaol there. Members of this family are recorded in this township in the 15th and 16th centuries and their name is common in the Prestbury registers.
In 1420 the Motterum family lost the office of Bailiff by forfeiture to the Savage family before it passed to the Cholmondely family.
Another branch of the Motterum family through Edward’s younger son inherited the Mottershead estate and owned Lower House and Higher House farms.
In 1360 Agnes de Motterum, heiress of the older line, married David de Calverley and the de Calverleys, of Lea a township of the Broxton hundreds, in due time inherited the Manor which they held until 1645, when the Manor was sequestrated from Hugh de Calverley probably due to his support for King Charles.
There was a Sir Hugh de Calverley who was described as “a warrior and valiant knight” a hero of the 14th century. He was one of the 30 English who encountered as many Bretons at Joselin. The site of the conflict known as Champ des Anglais. Another of his achievements was the burning of 26 ships at Boulogne. He was Governor of Calais and afterwards of Guernsey, and tradition has it that he married Eleanor, Queen of Aragon. He died in 1394. His nephew another Sir Hugh, the son of David and Agnes, was the hero at Froissant and died on the 20th April 1394, three days before his uncle.
After being in the possession of the de Calverley family for nearly 300 years, the Manor was sold to Nathaniel Booth, the son of William Booth, from Dunham.
In 1716/7 it was sold again to Richard Crooke of Macclesfield who died in 1726 in Macclesfield without issue leaving his five sisters as co-inheritors.
In 1738 Mottram was bought by William Wright of Offerton. He founded and bore the whole cost of the erection of St.Peter’s Church in Stockport which was consecrated on the 31st May 1768 and endowed with the rents of certain lands in Mottram. He died in 1770 and left no issue as unfortunately all his children had died before him so it was left to his cousin, the Reverend Henry Offley Wright, Vicar of Derby, to become his heir. When he died in 1799, his son Laurence carried on until his death in 1842. He left no children, and his nephew the Reverend Henry was the next heir, but he died in 1864 and his eldest son had already died with no family, and his three daughters inherited the estate. Maria the eldest was married to John Shuttleworth of Hathersage and had settled there, the second daughter was married to Charles Richard Banastre Legh of Adlington and was presumably settled there and the third daughter Julia Catherine was married to James Frederick D’Arley Street of Lee Hall, Mottram. They came to live at Mottram Hall and they changed their name to Wright to continue the name.
Information for this document has been researched from the following:-
1.J.P.Earwaker. East Cheshire.
2.George Ormerod. History of East Cheshire.
3.Cheshire County Council. Township Pack No.54
