Pickerings of Twelwall and Walford

The Chronicles of Thelwall, Co. Chester
Published 1846, J. B. Nichols

The Pickering family, who were next in possession of the manor of Thelwall were of a very ancient descent in the county of Chester, and appear to have been, from time immemorial, landed proprietors in the palatinate. In the reign of Queen Elizabeth they were settled at Walford, in the parish of Runcorn, which had long been the seat of their ancestors, and the names of members of the family for successive generations will be found in the early registers at Daresbury.

In Lysons' Cheshire, p. 400, the author observes, " The Pickerings were of Walford, in Mobberley, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth." From what source this information could be derived, I am certainly at a loss to know, the fact being, as I now find, that there is no such locality as Walford in Mobberley. At the time, however, when my attention was first directed to the history of the manor of Thelwall and its successive lords, I was ignorant of this, and relying on the authority of Mr. Lyson’s, diligently searched through, (over and over again,) the registers of the parish of Mobberley, but without finding any mention of the Pickering family, at which I was naturally much surprised.

The Pickering Arms in the early 1900s.

It was only on an accidental search into the registers at Daresbury that I detected the error the author had made, the members of the Pickering family being regularly entered there, by their description " de Walford," (which was the name of an estate within the chapelry of Daresbury) and corresponding with the pedigree at the Heralds' College. The mystery thus unraveled certainly cost me much fruitless labor and research, and it is one of those instances which not unfrequently occur proving how jealously scrupulous the historian (above all other writers) should be, lest he allow himself to arrive too hastily at a conclusion, and without evidence sufficient to warrant it. I can only account for the error into which Mr. Lysons has fallen, from the fact that there is a township of Warford adjoining to Mobberley, and probably he thought that "Walford," mentioned in the pedigree at the time of the Heralds' visitation, was entered by mistake for "Warford."

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Source: Foundation for Medieval Genealogy - Online Library Catalogue. ID: S-00001611.

Pickering of Thelwall coat of arms sign hanging at the Pickering Arms. Photo by Connie Pickering Stover, 2011.

In the window at the south-eastern extremity of [All Saints] church are emblazoned the armorial ensigns of King Edward the Elder, the founder of the ancient city of Thelwall, viz. Azure, a cross-patonce between four martlets or, and in the same window are the arms of the families of Pickering and Nicholson, viz. Pickering,

Ermine, a lion rampant az. ducally crowned or, within a bordure of the second, charged with eight plates. Crest: a lion's gamb erect and erased, az. enfiled with a ducal coronet or;

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