Malpas is a large village that used to be a market town. It is also a civil parish in the unitary authority of Cheshire West and Chester and the ceremonial county of Cheshire, England. The parish lies on the border with Shropshire and Wales. The name is from Old French and means "bad/poor" (mal) and "passage/way" (pas).
There is no evidence for Roman settlement in Malpas, but it is known that the Roman Road from Bovium (Tilston) and Mediolanum (Whitchurch) passes through the village.
Dedications to St Oswald are thought to be associated with Æthelræd II (879-911), also known as Earl Aethelred of Mercia and Æthelflæd of Mercia (911-918); they are known to have encouraged the growth of this cult along the Welsh border in places such as Hereford and Shrewsbury. This may indicate that Malpas was not a Norman 'New Town', but an Anglo-Saxon burh.
