Monument record 810/1 - Connersley,or Conewardsley Grange

The placename Connersley is the Domesday village of Kenardeslie. This became a grange of Vale Royal from about 1281 until the Dissolution. A Grange is an area of monastic land that lies outside the Abbey’s main land holdings. They were usually farms and were run by the laymen of the monastic order or by hired labour. There are Connersley fieldnames shown near Vale Royal House on an early estate map. The grange may have acted as the home farm for the Abbey. This is the suggested site of a deserted settlement. The abbey may have been founded on the site of the early village and the villagers settled elsewhere. Medieval and later villages were abandoned by their inhabitants for many reasons. The effects of disease and poor harvests made rural living difficult, and whole communities are thought to have relocated to urban settlements. Landowners sometimes relocated settlements for aesthetic reasons and for landscaping. Once abandoned the villages quickly became derelict and were not inhabited again surviving only as earthworks, often visible only from aerial photographs. They can also be identified by documentary evidence or the presence of a church where there is no settlement.