page_title: Coole Pilate
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Coole Pilate / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Austins Bridge (No 83) near Audlem, Cheshire
context_page_description: Coole Pilate is a civil parish in the unitary authority of Cheshire East and the ceremonial county of Cheshire, England, which lies to the north of Audlem and to the south of Nantwich. The area is predominantly rural with scattered farms, and a total population of 60 people. At the 2011 Census the population remained less than 100. Details are included in the civil parish of Austerson. Nearby villages include Broomhall Green, Hankelow, Hatherton and Newhall.
context_section_description: Coole Pilate means a croft growing pill oats. A brine spring is shown on an 1831 map of the area, and is presumably the source of local place names such as "Brine Pit".
  Little is known of the early history of the area. A square perforated stone hoe believed to date from the Bronze Age was found in a field to the west of Old Hall in 1936, suggesting possible settlement during that period. Coole Pilate is not mentioned by name in the Domesday survey. Most of the area of the modern civil parish fell within the ancient parish of Acton in the Nantwich Hundred; it was served by St Mary's Church, Acton. A loom weight was found in the area, suggesting that weaving was carried out locally around the 16th century. There is evidence of a local brickworks and pottery around the 18th–19th centuries.
  In around 1836, landowners in the parish included the Earl of Kilmorey, a major landowner locally, as well as Charles Wicksted, Richard Johnson and the Reverend Jeremiah Smith. The Birmingham and Liverpool Junction Canal, now part of the Shropshire Union, was completed in 1835. The Nantwich and Market Drayton Railway, constructed in 1863, ran north–south through the parish; a halt at Coole Pilate was opened in 1935. The halt closed in 1963 and the line was subsequently dismantled, although the supports of the former railway bridge over the Shropshire Union Canal still remain near Austin's Bridge.
  The parish had a platoon in the Home Guard during the Second World War, which guarded the canal bridges and reinforced the RAF at the nearby Hack Green Radar Station.
caption: Shropshire Union Canal at Austin's Bridge; the old railway bridge is in the background
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