This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/2R.2ADE/698.1.1 Message Board Post: Hi, My name is Mike Hollinshead and I was born in Stockport Cheshire. I now live in Edmonton Canada. My ancestors, back to the mid 18th century, all lived in Macclesfield. They were all silk weavers. My mother found the two adjacent weavers cottages in Macclesfield which my great great grandfather rented in the 1830s. The loom weights were still hanging from the rafters in the garrett. We originally came from Stoke and the area around. There was a potter named Hollinshead who was a partner in two potteries in the late 19th century. My younger sister Margaret, who is a librarian at the Rylands Library at the University of Manchester, has traced the family back via birth, marriage and death records and the census. I used to walk in the area you mention near Sutton as a boy and as a young man. There are in fact several places called Hollins in that general area (the intersection of Cheshire, Derbyshire and Staffordshire). One is the one you mention, which is along a path from Macclesfield up to Teggs Nose, a hill which overlooks Langley and Sutton Lane Ends and is referred to as The Hollins. I used to walk over it when I went to work at Scragg's in Sutton Lane Ends from my home near the Waters in Macclesfield. There is also a village called Hollinsclough in Derbyshire, in Dovedale, which I cycled through as a boy. Across the valley to the north is Hollins Hill on the lower slopes of which is a farm called Hollins. There is also a farm called Hollins off the A52 near Kingsley, and another between Biddulph and Rudyard. These are very close to the potteries where my family lived before the 1750s. The name Hollins is said to derive from the Old English word for a Holly tree. Hollies are certainly not uncommon in the area. Cheers, Mike Hollinshead