Neston Town Trail
Neston has a wealth of historic and unusual buildings and in 2004 Neston Civic Society produced a guide to some of the most interesting ones. Written by 
the late Geoffrey Place and illustrated by Bernadette and Naomi Bowes, the Neston Town Trail is reproduced here over six pages.
You can either click the links at the bottom of each page to take you through the guide to Neston's past in sequence, or select any part of the guide from the links immediately below:
The numbers in the text refer to the 'Blue Plaques' on the buildings.
No 1 Neston Parish Church , (pictured) which is dedicated to St Mary and St Helen, was almost wholly rebuilt in 1875 to the design of Francis Doyle, who was also the architect of the Presbyterian church nearby. The rebuilding was necessary because some galleries had been added inside the church during the previous century, in a way that weakened the structure.
It may never have been a sound building, for it was discovered that one of the main walls had been undermined by the digging of the burial vaults, while the other one had never been given proper foundations. Only the tower remains of the former building.
A priest was recorded here in the Domesday survey of 1085, and there are some ancient stones which may be of Saxon origin; but the first certain evidence of a church on this site comes from a document of about 1180. It states that Ralph Montalk, Baron of Mold, gave Neston Church to St Werburgh's Abbey in Chester, "because of my evil deeds".
The High Street, in earlier times more often called Main Street, is built on a ridge of sandstone, which in at least two places was still visible, exposed in the roadway until the 1890s. Most of the ancient settlements in Wirral were built on the sandstone outcrops which offered a firm, dry footing.
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