The ancient parishes of Cheshire refers to the group of parishes that existed in the English county of

Cheshire Cheshire ( ) is a ceremonial and historic county in North West England, bordered by Wales to the west, Merseyside and Greater Manchester to the north, Derbyshire to the east, and Staffordshire and Shropshire to the south. Cheshire's county t ...

, roughly within the period of 1200–1800.Dunn, F. I. (1987). page 5. Initially, the ancient parishes had only an ecclesiastical function, but reforms initiated by

King Henry VIII Henry VIII (28 June 149128 January 1547) was King of England from 22 April 1509 until his death in 1547. Henry is best known for his six marriages, and for his efforts to have his first marriage (to Catherine of Aragon) annulled. His disag ...

, developed by

Queen Elizabeth I Elizabeth I (7 September 153324 March 1603) was Queen of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death in 1603. Elizabeth was the last of the five House of Tudor monarchs and is sometimes referred to as the "Virgin Queen". El ...

and expanded by later legislation led them to acquire various secular functions that eventually led to a split between the ecclesiastical parishes and the purely

civil parishes In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authority. ...

that exist today.

Ancient parish overall details

The data are in the form of two tables: the first one gives information about each ancient parish whilst the second one gives information about each chapelry that may exist within each ancient parish. This complexity is brought about by having ancient parishes which, after the dissolution of the monasteries in the sixteenth century, possessed in some form or another both an ecclesiastical role and a civil role. This dual role existed until the nineteenth century.

Ancient parishes

Chapelry details

Extra-parochial areas

Various areas of Cheshire were not included in any ancient parish. As Dunn states: ''The reasons are various and occasionally obscure''. Dunn later goes on to state that associations with religious houses (priories, abbeys and so on) or with the Crown seem to explain most of them, but this area of research is still ongoing. The following table contains the extra-parochial places or areas of Cheshire with some details about each of them:Sylvester, D. and Nulty, G. (1958). pages 36–39.

Notes and references

Notes

Bibliography

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