BALDERSTONE (BALDERSTON)

This was one of some twenty-four townships in the parish of Blackburn in Lancashire. It is situated in the Ribble Valley to the north of the parish.

There was a chapel of ease in the township, but this seems to have been in ruins by the end of Elizabeth’s reign.

Sources:

Wm. Alexander Abram, A History of Blackburn Town and Parish (Blackburn, 1877), pp. 413-424

‘Townships: Balderston’, in A History of the County of Lancaster: Volume 6, ed. William Farrer, J Brownbill( London, 1911), British History Online https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/lancs/vol6/pp313-319

CHESTER, St MARY-on-the-HILL

This was one of the nine parishes of the city of Chester. The advowson had been granted to Chester Abbey and after the dissolution this passed to the dean and chapter of the cathedral. It was a valuable living.

The church was situated next to the castle, but little of the parish lay within the city walls, the majority being detached parts outside including Handbridge and Upton by Chester.

This was a fashionable church, being favoured by the wealthier inhabitants of the city who chose it for worship and burial. The rectors were often pluralists from landed families such as John Brereton, rector from 1534 until his death in 1542, who held other Cheshire parishes in plurality. He was also canon of St Paul’s and a royal chaplain. His brother, William, was executed in 1536 accused of adultery with Anne Boleyn.

The church building was badly damaged during the Civil War siege but rebuilt over the succeeding centuries. It was closed in 1972 and is now owned by the council and used as a cultural centre.

The surviving churchwardens accounts are some of the oldest in Cheshire, dating back to 1536.

Sources

J. P. Earwaker, The History of the Church and Parish of St Mary-on-the-Hill Chester (London, 1898) (image from this volume courtesy of HathiTrust).

https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/ches/vol5/pt2/pp133-156

WALTON-ON-THE-HILL

This parish was situated in the south-west corner of the county of Lancashire. It comprised the townships of Bootle cum Linacre, Everton, Fazakerley, Formby, Kirkby, Kirkdale, Liverpool, Walton and West Derby. The extra parochial areas of Simonswood and Toxteth Park were within its borders. The most important town in the parish was Liverpool, which became a separate parish in 1699.

Being a large parish, it included a number of chapelries such as those at Kirkby, Liverpool and West Derby and also the detached chapelry of Formby.

The advowson of the parish was purchased by Thomas Molyneux of Sefton in 1470 and remained with this manor until 1747. Several members of the Molyneux family were rectors during the sixteenth century and most appointed vicars as they were absentees.

The parish church building was largely destroyed during the May Blitz of 1941, but subsequently rebuilt and rededicated.

Sources

Janet E. Hollinshead, Liverpool in the Sixteenth Century (Lancaster, 2007).

https://www.achurchnearyou.com/church/15213/about-us/

https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/lancs/vol3/pp5-11

Prestbury

Prestbury parish was one of the largest in the diocese comprising thirty-two townships, with a circumference of about forty miles. There was a dependent chapelry in Macclesfield and several chapels of ease including Chelford and Siddington. Macclesfield was a much larger and more important settlement than Prestbury by the sixteenth century, being by then the centre of local ecclesiastical and legal administration.

There has probably been a church in Prestbury since Saxon times and a small Norman chapel building still stands in the churchyard. The parish had been granted to the monastery of St Werburgh in the twelfth century and following the dissolution of the monastery Sir Richard Cotton bought the manor and advowson. Both were acquired shortly afterwards by Thomas Legh of Adlington, who became the lay rector. Other branches of the Legh family lived in the parish, including the Leghs of Ridge in the township of Sutton.

In the town of Prestbury, a timber-framed vicarage, dating from the sixteenth century, known as the Priest’s House still stands almost opposite the church and further down the main street is the Legh Arms, dating from the late sixteenth century. This is partly timber-framed and has a roof of local Kerridge slate.

Sources

J. P. Earwaker, East Cheshire Past and Present, vol. 2 (London, 1880), pp. 177-525

George Ormerod, The History of the County Palatine and City of Chester (second edition, revised and enlarged by T. Helsby, London, 1882), vol. iii, pp. 646-653

ALDERLEY

Alderley parish comprised the townships of Over Alderley, Nether Alderley and Great Warford and may have developed from a chapel of ease in Prestbury parish. The escarpment known as Alderley Edge is the site of copper mines, worked from the Bronze Age to the twentieth century, and sandstone was quarried there.

The parish church, built in part from this local sandstone, is situated in the township of Nether Alderley. Little survives of the fourteenth-century building which forms the basis of the present church, the tower was added in 1530 and the Stanley family pew in about 1600.

The Stanleys are historically associated with the parish and their pew is accessible only by a flight of stone steps outside the church. The front of the pew is now decorated with six coats of arms of wives of the Stanleys from 1600 to 1800.

The font, which had been buried, was rediscovered in 1821 and is thought to date from the fourteenth century. The remains of a medieval stone cross survive in the churchyard, where an ancient yew tree also stands.

The grooves in the wall of the porch are said to have been caused by arrows being sharpened.

A sixteenth-century sandstone water mill with a roof of Kerridge slate at Nether Alderley now belongs to the National Trust. This mill was close to the house where the Stanley family lived. The house, having been rebuilt in the late sixteenth century, was rebuilt again in the early eighteenth century but burned down in 1779.

Sources:

J. P. Earwaker, East Cheshire Past and Present, vol. 2 (London, 1880), pp. 594-642 (images from this volume courtesy of HathiTrust)

George Ormerod, The History of the County Palatine and City of Chester, (second edition, revised and enlarged by T. Helsby, London, 1882), vol. iii, pp. 565-585