Ancient parishes of Cheshire

[1] Initially, the ancient parishes had only an ecclesiastical function, but reforms initiated by King Henry VIII, developed by Queen Elizabeth I 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 that exist today.

[2] 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.

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.

[59] The following table contains the extra-parochial places or areas of Cheshire with some details about each of them:[59][60][61]