Slaughter’s Rough sounds a bit gruesome doesn’t it? But the word ‘rough’ when referring to land, means uncultivated, and Slaughter was the name of a man, Thomas Slaughter, who once owned an estate, or land, in the township of Newton-by-Daresbury. The piece of land marked on maps as ‘Slaughter’s Rough’ is on Newton Lane, opposite the lane up to Newton Bank.
Thomas Slaughter married Ann Warburton of Arley, at St Paul’s cathedral, in 1739. She was the daughter of Thomas Warburton and niece of Sir George Warburton, Baronet, of Arley Hall, and it was her brother, Peter, who inherited the estate from his uncle in 1743, to become the 4rd Baronet. Part of that estate was in the township of Newton-by-Daresbury. However, the Warburton family had also inherited an estate in Hertfordshire, through marriage with the Docwra family, and chose to live there rather than in Cheshire, and from the 1730s, Thomas Slaughter was running the Arley estate for Sir George, as steward to the Manorial Court. (One online family historian says that Thomas was the son of George Warburton)
Thomas inherited the manor of Newton from Sir George, (unless it came to him through his marriage with Ann!). Sir Peter Warburton, Ann’s brother, set about renovating Arley Hall, and Thomas and Ann, went to live in Chester, where he was made the High Sheriff of the county in 1755. They had two children, a son, also called Thomas, and a daughter, Elizabeth. It was she who inherited Thomas’s estate in Newton when he died in 1789, at the age of 78, and she then sold it to George Litton, and the Heron family. Elizabeth died a spinster, in 1832, and was buried at St. John’s in Chester, alongside her parents.
