[1] It is now a meeting room attached to St Mary's Church Hall in Halton, Runcorn, Cheshire.

In 1733, Sir John Chesshyre, a wealthy lawyer, built one of the earliest free libraries in England at Halton and left an endowment in his will for its maintenance.

[3] But the ill health of Chesshyre's brother, Robert, who was overseeing the works, delayed its opening.

[1] Chesshyre's entry in the 1887 Dictionary of National Biography, however, records that the library contains mostly theology and also the Statutes at Large, Thomas Rymer's Foedera, William Dugdale's Monasticon, and some Greek and Latin classics.

[4] The church land adjacent to the library was acquired by the North-West Water Authority and a new parish hall was built in 1976 with money received as compensation.