Editing Macclesfield (section)

== Toponymy ==
The town is recorded in the ''[[Domesday Book]]'' as "Maclesfeld" and in 1183 it was referred to as "Makeslesfeld".<ref>Scholes (2000). page 104.</ref> The [[English Place-Name Society]] gives its name as being derived from the [[Old English]] name, ''Maccel'', and ''field'', yielding the meaning "Maccel's open country".<ref>{{Cite web |title=Macclesfield |url=http://kepn.nottingham.ac.uk/map/place/Cheshire/Macclesfield |access-date=12 May 2012 |website=Key to English Place Names |publisher=Institute for Name Studies, [[University of Nottingham]] |archive-date=14 May 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140514034802/http://kepn.nottingham.ac.uk/map/place/Cheshire/Macclesfield |url-status=live }}</ref>

Although "Silk Town" seems to be its preferred nickname, the traditional nickname of Macclesfield is "[[Molasses|Treacle]] Town".
This refers to an historical incident when a horse-drawn wagon overturned and spilt its load of treacle onto the street, after which the poor scooped the treacle off the road.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.visitnorthwest.com/macclesfield/|title=Macclesfield Cheshire|website=Visitnorthwest.com|access-date=11 June 2022|archive-date=19 May 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220519152329/https://www.visitnorthwest.com/macclesfield/|url-status=live}}</ref>