Places: Lower Peover

LOWER PEOVER (PEOVER INFERIOR)

Lower Peover was a chapelry in the extensive parish of Great Budworth. It comprised the townships of Plumley, Nether or Little Peover and Allostock. It remained part of Great Budworth parish until 1814.

Great Budworth belonged to Norton Priory before the dissolution, and the Priory supplied a cleric to officiate in the chapel of Lower Peover every Sunday and Wednesday plus various feast days and also to perform baptisms because of the distance from the mother church. Tithes were payable to Great Budworth. Residents of the chapelry were required to supply books, vestments, vessels etc. for the chapel and after the dissolution of Norton Priory they also had to pay the minister.

The earliest parts of the chapel building are understood to date from the late thirteenth century and it remains an excellent example of a timber-framed church building, sympathetically restored in 1852. The brick tower had been added in 1582.

In 1625 a dispute arose between Lady Mary Cholmondeley, who had inherited the property of the Holford family in Plumley, and Mrs Margaret Shakerley, widow of Peter Shakerley of Hulme in Allostock. Lady Mary claimed that Mrs Shakerley had nailed up a door of the chapel thus blocking her family’s usual access into their pew. Further details of this dispute, including some transcriptions of correspondence between Lady Mary and the bishop, can be found in volume 107 of Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire (see link below.)

There is a schoolhouse in the chapel yard which was built in 1710.

‘The Bells of Peover’, a hostelry adjoining the churchyard, was built in 1839 and is famous for its wisteria in the Spring. It was patronised by General Patton while he was billeted locally just before D-Day in 1944.

Sources

George Ormerod, The History of the County Palatine and City of Chester, vol. 3 (second edition, revised and enlarged by T. Helsby, London, 1882).

CCEd location ID: 5097

William Fergusson Irvine, ‘Disputes at Nether Peover chapel in 1625’, Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 107 (1955):
https://www.hslc.org.uk/journal/vol-107-1955/