Mancetter

In Roman Britain, a posting station was built along Watling Street close to the river crossing, and a rectangular earthwork of this is still extant. The much larger legionary fortress of the Legio XIV Gemina was built here by about 50 AD, before the legion moved to Wroxeter in about 55. Around the fortress grew the settlement of Manduessedum. The tower has a peal of five bells, of which the oldest was cast about 1350, another early in the 16th century and the treble, tenor and third bell in the middle of the 17th century. The advowson of St. Peter's was impropriated by the Cistercian Abbey of Merevale in 1449. Mancetter Manor is a timber-framed building dating from about 1330. An intermediate floor was inserted in the great hall in about 1480 and the south wing was added in about 1580. The central chimneystack was probably inserted in the 17th century, and small extensions to the house were made in the 18th and 19th centuries. ==Etymology==

The modern name Mancetter is a reduced form of an old Celtic name Manduessedum, first recorded in the Antonine Itinerary in the 4th Century. It is composed of a British element *mandu – ‘horse’ or ‘pony’ and a Gaulish *essedo - ‘horse chariot’. Although the first element is common in Gaulish names, the application of the second element to a place-name is obscure. The second element of the modern name is ultimately from the OE -ceaster – ‘a city, an old (Roman) fortification, Roman site’. By the time of the Norman Conquest in 1066 ceaster was probably pronounced roughly like modern "Chester". The form -cetter reflects the difficulty that some French-speaking Norman clerks had with the English sounds ch and st (compare also Exeter, Old English Escanceaster). ==Notable people==

• John Sinclair (1860–1938), physician ==References==