Shotwick, Cheshire Genealogy

Parish History
St Michael's Church, Shotwick is in the village of Shotwick, Cheshire, England (grid reference SJ336717). It is a Grade I listed building. It has a Norman doorway but most of the church dates from the medieval period. Its furniture includes some ancient items. In the churchyard are a number of structures which have been listed as grade II. The church is in the diocese of Chester, the archdeaconry of Chester and the deanery of Wirral South. Its benefice is combined with that of St Nicholas, Burton.

Shotwick is a tiny agricultural village of only fifteen houses and a small seventeenth century manor house situated on the Wirral peninsula, some eight miles from the Roman city of Chester in the North West of England.

St. Michael’s is a medieval double aisled church with largely eighteenth century furniture including box pews and a three decker pulpit. It stands on the site of a former ford across the River Dee which forms the border with Wales.The Saxon church, which was most likely a wooden structure, would have either perished, or disappeared in the general rebuilding of churches that followed the Conquest. What is certain is that when the Domesday Book was compiled, a church existed at “Soto-wiche”, belonging to the secular canons of St. Werburgh. This church had probably been established about 100 years before.

The Norman Church, which supplanted the Saxon one about the beginning of the 12th Century, consisted simply of a nave and chancel without aisles. The Norman arch of the South doorway is part of this first building, and is the oldest part of the present church, the chancel doorway being a little later, probably Transitional.