The civil parish extends 6 miles (10 km) north east from the Shropshire Union Canal outside Market Drayton. Apart from Loggerheads, much the largest village in the parish, the parish includes the villages of Almington, Hales, Mucklestone, and Ashley, the hamlets of Blore, Oakley, Napley, Winnington and Knighton, and the northern part of the hamlet of Hookgate.[2]
Name
The village takes its name from that of the public house, which used to be known as The Three Loggerheads (meaning "The Three Fools") [3]
and is now simply The Loggerheads.[4]
History
Loggerheads was historically a small hamlet within the parish of Ashley, at the junction of the road from Market Drayton to Newcastle (now the A53) and the road from Eccleshall to Nantwich (now the B5026). It grew rapidly in the 20th century, and in 1984 it became the centre of the new civil parish of Loggerheads, which was formed from the civil parishes of Ashley, Mucklestone and Tyrley, which were abolished.[5]
Loggerheads was home to the Cheshire Joint Sanatorium, a tuberculosissanitorium, which stood in the 250 acres (100 ha) Burntwood woodland. It was opened in the 1920s and the last two patients were discharged in October 1969. The premises stood empty for a few years until Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council purchased the site for redevelopment in 1977.[6][7]
The Burntwood, part of the Blore Forest, was once a large oak woodland but is now predominantly coniferous. The oak trees were removed to make way for the quicker growing softwoods which are of higher commercial value.
