CHESTER, St JOHN

The collegiate church of St John played an important role in the religious and civic life of Chester and was home to a number of chantries plus the guild or fraternity of St Anne, many of which had chapels within the church. It had acquired an important relic, the Rood of Chester, which generated income for the college from the offerings of pilgrims until it was removed in the mid-1530s.

The consistory court of the archdeacon of Chester was held at St John’s until it was removed to the cathedral after the foundation of the new diocese in 1541. In 1547 or 1548 the college was dissolved, its church became a parish church and the advowson passed to the Crown by whom it was granted or sold to a series of lay patrons, including Alexander Cotes who acquired it in 1587 and came into conflict with the parishioners.

After the dissolution the building was too large for the parishioners to maintain, the eastern part fell into decay and in the 1570s the north-west tower collapsed onto the west end of the church which was rebuilt at great cost.

Sources

The volumes of the Victoria County History of Cheshire covering the city of Chester are available online:

https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/ches/vol5/pt2/pp125-133

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

FARNDON

Farndon was a small parish close to the Welsh border on the river Dee. It comprised the townships of Farndon, Barton, Clutton and Crewe, plus a moiety of Churton.

The church building, which may have been constructed in the thirteenth century, was badly damaged by fire during the Civil War, during the struggle to control the river crossing. It was subsequently rebuilt, and the only remaining part of the medieval building is the tower. A window of painted glass, restored in the nineteenth century, commemorates Royalist soldiers of the Civil War. An illustration of the window, shown below, is from a drawing by the Very Rev Hugh Cholmondley, Dean of Chester, contributed to the 1819 edition of Ormerod’s History of the county (between pages 408 and 409 of volume 2).

The church was appropriated to the college of St John in Chester, although the rectory was farmed out at various times. Following the dissolution of the college in 1547 or 1548 the parish was impropriated, and by the nineteenth century it was the property of the family of Grosvenor of Eaton who were responsible for appointing a perpetual curate to serve the parish.

At times parts of the tithes were sold or leased.

Sources

Douglas Jones, The Church in Chester 1300-1540 (Chetham Society 3rd series, 7, 1957), pp. 51, 88.

George Ormerod, The history of the county palatine and city of Chester: compiled from original evidences (London, 1819), vol. ii

George Ormerod, The History of the County Palatine and City of Chester (second edition, revised and enlarged by T. Helsby, London, 1882), vol. ii, pp. 742-745

HOLT

Although it was a chapelry of the parish of Gresford, which was in the diocese of St. Asaph, Holt was in the diocese of Chester at this time.