TARVIN, a parish partly in the lower division of
the hundred of BROXTON, but chiefly in the second
division of the hundred of EDDISBURY, county palatine
of CHESTER, comprising the townships of Ashton,
Bruen-Stapleford, Burton, Clotton-Hoofield, Dudden,
Foulk-Stapleford, Hockenhull, Horton with Peek,
Kelsall, Mouldsworth, and Tarvin, and containing 3485
inhabitants, of which number, 1022 are in the township
of Tarvin, 6 miles (E. by N.) from Chester. The
living is a vicarage, in the archdeaconry and diocese of
Chester, rated in the king's books at £19. 11. 0., and
in the patronage of the Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry.
The church, dedicated to St. Andrew, is in the later
style of English architecture, with a fine tower considerably
enriched with sculpture, though now much mutilated.
Courts leet and baron are held here. A grammar
school was founded in 1600, with a house for the
master, by John Pickering, who endowed it with £200,
which was laid out in lands now producing an annual
income of £18, for which twenty children are instructed.
The celebrated calligrapher, John Thomason,
was master of this school; he died in 1740. About
the middle of the sixteenth century, Sir John Savage,
lord of the manor, procured a charter for a market
and a fair to be held here, which have been long disused.
During the great civil Var, Tarvin was a considerable
military post, often taken and retaken by
each party till September 1644, when it fell into the
power of the parliament, and so remained to the end
or the war.