IT IS a matter of history that a local family, the
Maistersons, lived in Nanrtwich for nearly 500
years. There are also remembered in the naming of a
housing development off Beam Street -
Maisterson Court.
There was never a Maisterson Court as a building
and, in fact, the Maistersons lived in Pillory
Street.
Perhaps the most famous
person of the family was John Maisterson who led a
group of four men who were prominent in the task of
building part of Nantwich after the Great Fire of
1583. Queen Elizabeth the First provided £1,000
towards the re-building costs and allowed trees from
Delamere Forest - the boundary of which came nearer
to Nantwich than it does today - to be felled and
used to create new buildings.
Sadly, John Maisterson died on the
third anniversary of the outbreak of the fire. His
epitaph read: “Had he not bin, this Towne had bin
noe Towne as nowe it is” – if he had not been born,
the town would not be as it is now.
Local historian, Andrew Lamberton, told me: "It
would have been more appropriate to have called the
development Mainwaring Court as the Mainwarings
had a mansion on the site of the
Crewe almshouses which are only a stone’s throw from Maisterson Court."
Disaster in winter
