Christmas Quiz.. test your knowledge

How well do you know Cheshire? Here are some questions to mull over during the Christmas festivities. The solutions appear at the foot of the page - but no cheating!

1. Which Cheshire-born architect designed the famous Eastgate Clock and most of Victorian St Werburgh Street in Chester?
2. Name the controversial England cricket all-rounder and captain who was born on the Wirral?
3. Who or what in Cheshire is an “asker’?
4. The husband of a famous Victorian actress is buried at Overleigh Cemetery, Chester. Name the actress?
5. Name the Governor of the Bank of England who was born in Winsford in 1872?
6. Where is there a wood carving of a fox dressed as a friar going hunting with a longbow?
7. In what way does Crewe differ from other railway towns?
8. Which Cheshire martyr was canonised by Pope Paul VI in 1970?
9. In which year was the first sod cut for the building of the Manchester Ship Canal?
10. Name the Cheshire cistercian abbey (one of the largest in Europe) which was endowed in 1277 and demolished around 1540?
11. Which racecourse was the first in the north of England to operate a totaliser?
12. What is the link between Cholmondeley Castle and the Grand National hero, Red Rum?
13. What was the connection between Cheshire and famous singer/actress by Deanna Durbin?
14. Who or what in Cheshire is Davenport’s Creeping Ceres?
15. Which village is associated with Alice in Wonderland?
16. In what part of Cheshire would you find the “Urchin’s Kitchen”?
17. Where in Cheshire can you go to be morally re-armed?
18. What were Cheshire Piles?
19. In which village would you find the Cheshire Forest Kennels?
20. Who was the first, and who is the present, Earl of Chester?

ANSWERS
1. John Douglas; 2. Ian Botham; 3. A newt; 4. Lilly Langree; 5. John Swanwick Bradbury; 6. On one of the misericords in Nantwich Parish Church; 7. It was the only railway town built in virgin countryside without so much as a hamlet to link it to the past; 8. John Plessington; 9. 1887; 10. Vale Royal Abbey; 11. Tarporley Racecourse which existed from 1877 to 1939; 12. Red Rum’s trainer, Ginger McCain moved from Southport to train from the Cholmondeley Estate; 13. Deanna Durbin, though born in Winnipeg, was the daughter of James Durbin, of Sale; 14. A strain of gooseberry; 15. The author, Lewis Carroll (Charles Ludwidge Dodgson) was born in Daresbury, near Warrington; 16. Delamere Forest; 17. Tirley Garth, near Tarporley; 18. Game Fowl evolved in the county and famed for cock-fighting; 19. Sandiway; 20. The first Earl of Chester was Hugh Lupus, a nephew of William the Conqueror. The present Earl is, of course, Prince Charles.

SCORES: (15-20) Congratulations, you’re a brain of Cheshire....strong i’th arm, wik i’th yed (wik, of course, meaning ‘quick’); (10-14) You’re getting there, but still a way to go if you’re to be rale Cheshire mon; (0-9) You’re a gawby lommeryed!


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