Around 76 AD, the
Romans started to build a fortress in Chester. They built a road from
Deva (Chester) to Condate (
Northwich) which passed Tarvin about a kilometre to the north. The Romans may have used Tarvin, being high ground close to the Roman road, as a Roman coin of
Constantius 1 (AD 293–305) was found in the area and other finds in other nearby villages reinforce the evidence of the Romans' presence in the area. West of Tarvin the Roman road crosses the
River Gowy. Apparently, in earlier times, this river was called the Tarvin. It is suggested that the name Tarvin comes from the
Brittonic word for boundary, which is still present in the Welsh language as
tervyn/terfyn and could have resulted from the Latin
terminus being incorporated into Brittonic. The boundary could refer to the eastern extent of the Roman
prata legionis, the land annexed by the Romans (from the
Cornovii) to support their fortress at Chester. The Gowy was later the boundary between the Saxon land divisions
(hundreds) in this area, which was a part of the
Kingdom of Mercia known as the
Wreocensæte. A
Saxon cross dating to the 10th/11th century has been unearthed by archaeologists in Tarvin. The find, made in a
Civil War trench, is very rare. The Saxon cross may have been broken up before the assault of Chester in 1645 by the Parliamentary garrison. Tarvin appears as a substantial manor in the
Domesday Book of 1086 (listed as Terve), the largest community in the
Hundred of Rushton with 30 households. Tarvin Manor comprises some 2000 acres of cultivable land (22 ploughlands) as well as 'woodland'. The Domesday Book records the Lord of Tarvin Manor in 1066 as the bishop of
Chester St John, and the same in 1086 but adds the name William Malbank, who was named as Lord or Tenant-in-Chief across over 100 manors in Cheshire after the conquest. According to Ormerod "Tarvin is one of the few Cheshire manors which experienced no change in its proprietor at the Conquest, being the property of the Bishop of the diocese, who retained his former possessions after that event." (The nearby Manor of Burton was also to stay the property of the Bishop of St John's.) Although the manors stayed with the bishops, the bishops changed to Norman appointees. Bishop Peter moved from Lichfield to Chester St John's in 1075, and upgraded St John's to cathedral status (Lichfield was the ecclesiastical centre of the
Kingdom of Mercia since 669). He died in 1085 and was succeeded in December 1085 by Bishop
Robert de Limesey who moved the bishop's seat to Coventry circa 1102, whereupon St John's became a
co-cathedral. Ormerod states that the Domesday Book reports devastation at Tarvin and suggests that this might have arisen due to a stand being taken at Tarvin as the Normans advanced on Chester. The adjacent manor of
Barrow, with 8 ploughlands, is listed as having William Son of Nigel as its Lord. Barrow later came to fall within the parish of Tarvin, and was described as a 'free chapel within the prebend of Tarvin' until the 16th century, some time after which it became a separate parish. Although Tarvin was within Rushton Hundred at the time of the Norman conquest, from the end of the 12th century over a prolonged period there was a reorganisation of the
hundreds associated with the formation of Lancashire, and transfer of some hundreds to Wales (Atiscross, Exestan, and part of Dudestan), and Tarvin became associated with the Eddisbury Hundred. The hundreds of Cheshire from this time were
Broxton,
Bucklow,
Eddisbury,
Macclesfield,
Nantwich,
Northwich and
Wirral. Apart from
Terve and the current name
Tarvin, the village has also been referred to as
Tervyn (e.g. in records of an assault on a monk in 1326) and
Terfyn in the accounts of a trip from Chester to London in 1811, The prebend occurs at a similar date to the changes to the borders of Cheshire due to
yielding some hundreds to Wales; furthermore Bishop Alexander de Stavenby was a diplomat acting for King Henry III both with France and spent time in Wales
trying to renew truces. As the disputed Hundred of Dudestan (Duddeston) included manors only a few miles from Tarvin, such as
Christleton, Waverton and Stapleford, the choice of Tarvin for the prebend (apart from it already being an episcopal manor) may have been carefully chosen to be on a boundary, but not as suggested above gave a further £20 for the finishing of it, the first schoolmaster to be nominated and chosen by his two
executors, who were also his kinsmen. The will also provided an endowment of £200 for purchase of lands, the rents from which were to support the school: lands were purchased in
Tattenhall. The number of children was limited to 20 (of whom 6 to be from the 'towne of Tarvin' and the rest 'in the other townes belonging to the parish of Tarvin'), and there was a house for the master. The ten
feoffees for the management of the trust were to be inhabitants of the town. One of the masters (for 36 years) was John Thomasen (died 1740, aged 54), described as the finest penman in England, especially known for his transcriptions of the Greek poets in authentic characters: in 1714 he produced a handwritten copy of the
Eikon Basilike for
Queen Anne. The grammar school survived until final closure in 1939. Restored in 1997, the building is to the left approaching the entrance to St. Andrew's church, and is used as parish rooms. The endowment survives and individual grants from it are available via the Tarvin Educational Foundation (registered charity 525966) "to assist the educational needs of students of secondary school age or older who live in the ancient parish of Tarvin." ==Civil War==