Three rival etymologies have been proposed for the name Frodsham, and the scholars cannot quite settle on one. The most straightforward gives Frod's village or the village on the ford, from Old English personal name plus ham, meaning a homestead. A second reading suggests "promontory into marsh," which fits the geography neatly because Frodsham did have a promontory castle directly above marshland. A third proposes Old English frod, meaning wise or experienced, joined to ham, giving "wise village." Whatever the truth, Frodsham is the only place in the British Isles to bear the name, and the earlier spellings (Fradsham, Frandsham, Frodisham, Ffradsam) suggest the locals were not entirely sure how to pronounce it either. The settlement is of Saxon origin. Its eleventh-century church appears in the Domesday Book, and the medieval Earls of Chester made Frodsham a significant manor, raising it to borough status in the early thirteenth century under Earl Ranulf III.

Frodsham sits at a strategically rich corner of England. To the north, the River Weaver flows into the Mersey estuary, and that confluence made the town a serious port during the Cheshire salt trade. Salt mined inland at Northwich and Nantwich was floated down the Weaver and transhipped here for the coasting trade. To the south rises the wooded sandstone escarpment locals call Beacon Hill, Frodsham Hill, or Overton Hill depending on which approach you use. Just over 500 feet at its summit, it forms the northern end of the Mid-Cheshire Ridge that extends south through Delamere Forest to Tarporley. Frodsham Hill is a geological showpiece. The Sherwood Sandstone Group exposed in railway and road cuttings is so significant that the area is designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest. Several faults run northwest to southeast through the parish, including the Overton Fault and the Frodsham Fault, both downthrowing to the east, with movement believed to have occurred during the Tertiary period.

Atop Frodsham Hill, overlooking the Liverpool skyline, stands a curious assemblage of late-twentieth-century leisure history. The Mersey View nightclub, known locally as just "the View," famously hosted one of the Beatles' early appearances. Before the nightclub and the Forest Hills Hotel were built, the same spot held an enormous helter skelter and a collection of vintage coin-operated amusement machines. The View persists, the helter skelter does not, and the Beatles played there long before anyone could have imagined what they would become. Below the summit, the Frodsham Caves are cut into the sandstone foundations of the hill, used over the centuries for everything from quarrying to shelter. The cliffs and outcrops draw climbers, walkers, and naturalists, and the hill is popular with dog walkers in the way that only a free, dramatic, accessible piece of English countryside can be.

Frodsham's older landmarks include St Laurence's Church on Church Road in Overton, the Anglican parish church of the town, and the spire of the former Trinity Wesleyan Methodist Chapel, still visible on the skyline though the congregation has long since dispersed. Castle Park House, refurbished in 2005 and 2006, is now a one-stop council facility for Cheshire West and Chester. The town's most recent moment of national attention came in November 2014, when a hoax Twitter account, @Frodshamxmas, suggested that the actor William Shatner would turn on the town's Christmas lights. Local councillors, news outlets, and even the local MP unwittingly retweeted the claim before Shatner himself, with characteristic dryness, denied it: "There's a reason why the word Sham is in the name!" The hoaxer was never identified. The lights went on anyway. Frodsham, like most Cheshire towns, takes its embarrassments well.