Places: Prestbury

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, vol. 3 (second edition, revised and enlarged by T. Helsby, London, 1882).