The Childe, as pictured on the signboard of the pub the Childe of Hale.

He is dressed in what became known as his London costume, described in the 1882 edition of Ormerod’s History of Cheshire:
‘large lace ruffles about his neck and hands, a striped doublet round his waist, a blue girdle embroidered with gold, large white plush breeches adorned with blue flowers, green stockings, shoes, with red heels, tied with red ribbon, and wearing at this side a sword suspended by a broad blue belt over his shoulder, embroidered like the girdle’. It is in this costume that the surviving portraits of the Childe depict him.

The Childe of Hale's cottage, where he lived all his life.

The Childe's appropriately large grave . . .

. . . and its inscription

Here lyeth the bodie of John Middleton the Childe
Nine feet three Borne 1578 Dyede 1623

THE TOWNSHIP'S main claim to fame is as the home of the fabulous giant known as the Childe—the Childe of Hale.

His name was John Middleton and he was born in the village in 1578, the year that Gilbert Ireland, later to become lord of the manor of Hale, matriculated from Brazenose College, Oxford. When John started to grow up he forgot to stop and by the time he was 20 years old he stood 9ft 3ins (2.8m) tall. The recently-knighted Sir Gilbert took the young giant into his employ, mainly as a bodyguard, and took John with him when he answered an invitation to the court of King James in London. It's said that the king had heard about the Childe while processing through Lancashire. All existing portraits of the Childe show him in what is called his London costume (left).

That was in 1617, when John Middleton would already have been nearly forty years old. Despite his age, he was invited to wrestle with the king's champion. The king's man was skilful, but couldn't overcome the impressive height and weight advantage of the Childe and was relieved to be able to retire from the contest with a dislocated thumb. The Lancashire man's success aroused some jealousy in court, but the king himselftook it in good heart. He sent John on his way home with a gift of £20, a considerable sum then.

Sir Gilbert and the Childe interrupted their return journey to Hale to stop off at Sir Gilbert's old college, Brazenose, in Oxford. John made a huge impression there and it's said that he left an outline of his hand inscribed on a wall of the college. An entry in Samuel Pepys' diary for 9th June, 1668, refers to it, saying: "To Brazen-nose College to the butteries, and in the cellar find the hand of the Child of Hales." A Fellow of the College recalled in the 1930s that until the 1880s there was an outline of a hand on a gilt background on one of the door posts of the cellar door under the south side of Hall.

The college later honoured the Childe by naming their rowing eights boat after him. Today the boat may have changed, but the name hasn't. It's still called the Childe of Hale.

There is a tradition that the Childe was robbed on his way home to Hale and, as a result, he was "obliged to follow the plough to his dying day." That day came not long afterwards, in 1623. His grave is in the parish churchyard, covered by a slab on which is inscribed:

Here lyeth the bodie of John Middleton the Childe
Nine feet three Borne 1578 Dyede 1623

Brasenose boasts one life-sized portrait of the Childe as well as two smaller paintings and two life-sized representations of his hands. In recent years a condemned tree stump opposite the Hale church of St Mary has been sculpted into a representation of the Childe, somewhat inappropriately holding a model of Hale Lighthouse.

Robert Plott, the first keeper of Oxford's Ashmoleum Museum, recorded some of the Childe's impressive dimensions. "From the carpus to the end of his middle finger, "he recorded, "was 17 inches long, his palm 8 inches and a half broad, and his whole height 9 foot 3 inches." Some people dispute his size. The Guinness Book of Records mentions him, but accredit him as a record-breaker through lack of reliable evidence. But it is said that sometime during the eighteenth century his remains were uncovered and measured. And his skeleton was found indeed to be 9ft 3ins tall.

Since the earliest days of the Brasenose Boat Club, the racing VIII boat has always been called ‘The Childe of Hale’ in honour of John Middleton. There is a punning reference to the name of the boat in the Brasenose Ale Verses for 1841, only four years after the official beginning of the College races at Oxford:

‘Yes, Childe of Ale, well named, you too can tell
The virtues of that beer you love so well;
While with nice skill, and mixture true, you float,
Beer for the crew, the water for the boat’.