Willaston is believed to have taken its name from an ancient farmstead known as Wiglaf's tun. Like other English villages, the name has been changed many times over the centuries. This is due to the neighbouring parish of Wistaston having a similar sounding name. To add confusion, Willaston was once ecclesiastically divided between the neighbouring communities of Nantwich and
Wybunbury. Whilst there are at least two other villages called Willaston, the earliest documentary evidence relating to Willaston in this part of Cheshire can be found in the
Domesday survey of 1086, where is it referred to as Wilavestune, owned by a 'free man' named Ulviet. A few years after the Norman conquest the title passed to Willam Malbank. The manor of Wilvastune remained in the Malbank family for several generations before ownership transferred to the Chanu family in the 13th century. At this time, Willaston was a remote, sparsely populated community with no village centre. Nevertheless, it covered a much larger area than it does today, stretching from Newcastle Road and London Road, Nantwich in the south, along Millstone Lane and as far as the ancient grazing land of Beam Heath in the north. These boundaries did not change until 1936, when local government decided to transfer some of Willaston's land to the expanding communities of
Nantwich and
Stapeley. In 1553, the manor of Willaston was bought by Richard Sneyd, Recorder of Chester. The Sneyd family lived at
Keele Hall in Staffordshire and were the major landowners in Willaston until the middle of the 19th century. Although Willaston had a number of farmsteads in the Middle Ages, most of the surrounding landscape was uncultivated. However, this began to change as more common land fell into private ownership during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The process (known as 'enclosure') brought major changes to rural communities like Willaston, as individual plots of land were fenced off and used for arable farming, meadows and the grazing of livestock. The Sneyd family were absentee landlords but they owned most of the lands in Willaston from 1533 to the late 19th century. The medieval moated site of the Chanu family was lost during the construction of the Nantwich by-pass in 1989. It was situated to the south-east of the Old Willaston Board School on land now owned by Cheerbrook Farm. ==Local amenities==