MEDIEVAL CHAPELS
Little St. John
The hospital of St. John without the Northgate,
founded in the 1190s, had both a church and a
chapel, where masses were said daily for the hospital's
benefactors and services were conducted for the
inmates and visitors. The church was perhaps a freestanding building, the chapel a room within the
residential part of the hospital where services could
be held for the infirm. Although the proper establish
ment was three chaplains, by the 1520s there was
evidently only one. The hospital survived the Dissolution and in the later 16th and earlier 17th century its
masters continued to appoint a chaplain, salaried at £5
a year, to say daily prayers in the chapel for the
almspeople and others, (fn. 1) including debtors imprisoned
in the nearby city gaol. (fn. 2)
The chapel was destroyed with the hospital's other
buildings during the siege of Chester in 1644 but
evidently rebuilt while Col. Roger Whitley was governor of the hospital between 1660 and 1697. (fn. 3) The
corporation of Chester took over the wardenship in
1703, (fn. 4) and promptly refurnished the interior of the
chapel to include seating for the mayor and aldermen
and stands for the civic regalia, appointing as chaplain
the minister of St. Peter's. (fn. 5) Although the chapel was
taken down and rebuilt at corporation expense as the
south wing of the Blue Coat building in 1715–17, (fn. 6) its
administrative arrangements were unaltered and in
1717 the Assembly specifically ordered that divine
service was to be held in the new chapel as it had
been in the old. (fn. 7)
The living came to be regarded as a perpetual curacy
serving the tiny extra-parochial district of the former
hospital precinct, (fn. 8) whose inhabitants comprised the
almswomen of the hospital, the master and boys of the
Blue Coat school, and until 1808 prisoners in the
Northgate gaol. The corporation retained the patronage until compelled to give it up by the Municipal
Corporations Act of 1835. (fn. 9) The living did not fall
vacant again until 1864, when Bishop Graham, exercising the patronage for a turn, presented his son and
namesake John. The next presentation, in 1873, was by
the trustees of the St. John's Hospital charity, and the
next after that, in 1881, by two private individuals who
had acquired a turn. A Charity Commission Scheme of
1892 vested the advowson in the Chester Municipal
Charities Trustees. (fn. 10)
The Assembly paid its appointee a salary which it
increased from £6 13s. 4d. to £10 a year in 1717, (fn. 11) to
£30 in 1820, (fn. 12) and perhaps to £50 by 1835. (fn. 13) Queen
Anne's Bounty augmented it between 1802 and 1821
with capital sums totalling £1,800 and producing £90 a
year, (fn. 14) and there were also pew rents. In 1825 the latter
were said to amount to £50 a year, suggesting that
under William Fish (perpetual curate 1803–28) the
chapel was a fashionable place of worship, (fn. 15) and even at
the reduced figure implied in 1835 the total income of
£130 a year was larger than that of five or six of the
city's parish churches. (fn. 16) Pew rents were abolished by an
Order of Chancery, probably in 1852, after which all
sittings not reserved for the almswomen and schoolboys were free to the poor. (fn. 17) The income from the
living nevertheless grew steadily to £289 in the later
19th century. (fn. 18)
There was competition for what was virtually a
sinecure even in the 18th century, when the income
was distinctly modest. (fn. 19) In 1828 the position was
'closely contested' between the assistant appointed by
Fish and a son of the city's recorder, the former
proving successful. (fn. 20) In 1778 the services held by an
incumbent who had been in post for the previous 20
years were confined to prayers on Wednesdays and
Fridays, communion twice a year, and a grand service
and sermon each year on the Sunday before a new
mayor was elected. There was no regular Sunday
service, and no baptisms, marriages, or burials. (fn. 21) In
the later 19th and earlier 20th century regular Sunday
services were held. (fn. 22) The clergy holding the living in the
19th and earlier 20th centuries also acted as chaplains
at the new gaol or the Blue Coat or King's schools, or,
in the case of John Graham, as diocesan registrar. (fn. 23)
From 1951 the living was held in plurality with that of
St. Oswald's, and the two benefices were united in
1967. (fn. 24) Services were discontinued in 1969. (fn. 25)
The building of 1715–17 is described elsewhere. (fn. 26)
St. Anne
The fraternity of St. Anne built a separate chapel within
the precinct of St. John's church, probably when the
guild was refounded in 1393. It stood until the Civil
War siege. (fn. 27)
St. Chad
St. Chad's existed by c. 1250. (fn. 28) It lay in the area in the
north-west of the city known as the Crofts and its
status is uncertain but may once have been parochial. (fn. 29)
By 1318 St. John's had appropriated it. (fn. 30) The church
was mentioned in the late 14th century and c. 1500, but
had probably disappeared by the 1530s. (fn. 31) Certainly no
curate was associated with it in the 1540s. (fn. 32) By the early
17th century the exact site of the church had been
forgotten. (fn. 33)
St. James (Handbridge)
Soon before 1358 John Spicer built a hermitage for
himself within a walled enclosure at the south end of
the Dee Bridge in Handbridge, between the river and
the quarry east of the bridge. (fn. 34) In 1367 he was licensed
to have an oratory there. (fn. 35) Spicer's establishment was
presumably the hermitage and chapel of St. James in
Handbridge whose occupants were a recurring source
of anxiety to the authorities in the 1450s. (fn. 36) St. James's
chapel yard survived in 1560, when it was termed a
'vacant place', (fn. 37) suggesting that the buildings had
already been demolished.
St. James (in St. John's Precinct)
A chapel dedicated to St. James and long associated with
an anchorite stood in the precinct of St. John's by the
later 12th century. Disused for ecclesiastical purposes by
1589, it was probably demolished during the siege of
Chester. (fn. 38)
St. Mary (Handbridge)
A building in Kettle's Croft, Handbridge, west of the
Dee Bridge and ruinous by the late 16th century, is
supposed in antiquarian tradition to have been a
chapel dedicated to St. Mary and belonging to the
nuns of Chester. (fn. 39) No reference to such a chapel before
the Reformation has been found.
St. Mary (in St. John's Precinct)
A chapel of St. Mary, also called the White chapel,
within the precinct of St. John's was in use as a
grammar school in 1353. It was perhaps the same
building as the 'basilica' or 'minster' of St. Mary
recorded between 1086 and c. 1200. Although not
recorded under its dedication after 1368 it may have
been identical with the Calvercroft chapel in St. John's,
also dedicated to St. Mary and in existence by the early
16th century. That chapel, which probably stood in the
churchyard, survived the dissolution of the college of
St. John's and was presumably destroyed in the
1640s. (fn. 40)
St. Nicholas (in the Abbey)
A chapel dedicated to St. Nicholas was built in the
south-west corner of the abbey precinct in or shortly
before 1348. It was perhaps intended from the start to
serve as the parish church for St. Oswald's, which
removed to it from the abbey church almost immediately. After being abandoned as the parish church
c. 1539 it served a variety of uses, none of them
ecclesiastical, and remained standing, very much
altered, in 2000. (fn. 41)
St. Nicholas (in the Crofts)
A chapel dedicated to St. Nicholas stood in the Crofts,
somewhere between Watergate Street and Black Friars,
by the 1220s. It was acquired by the Dominican friars
on their arrival in Chester c. 1237 and was perhaps put
to use as their first church. (fn. 42)
St. Thomas the Apostle
The chapel stood within the abbey precinct at the
north-east corner of the great court (later Abbey
Square) and after the Dissolution was incorporated
into the Deanery (Fig. 91). (fn. 43)
St. Thomas the Martyr
A chapel dedicated to St. Thomas Becket stood by 1200
in the graveyard belonging to St. Werburgh's abbey
outside the Northgate, in the fork of the later Parkgate
and Liverpool roads. (fn. 44) Serving also as the meeting place
for the abbot's manor court of St. Thomas, (fn. 45) it became
a private house called Green Hall after the Dissolution. (fn. 46)
The building probably survived only until the demolition of the northern suburbs during the Civil War
siege, (fn. 47) though in 1821 it was claimed that the former
chapel was still in use as a barn. (fn. 48)
Figure 91:
Former St. Thomas's chapel, as deanery, before 1788
Dedication Unknown
In the 13th century a chapel in or near Pierpoint Lane
off the west side of Bridge Street belonged to the clerk
Alexander Hone and later to the Amery family. (fn. 49)