Additional Notes on Ringway Church and Others

Miscellaneous documents and transcripts concerning English MSS 510-512 and the Hankinson family and its connections; also notes on Ringway Church and on the Reverend Thomas Whitaker, a former curate (fl. 1785-1818?).

Ringway, or Ringey, Chapel was a chapel of ease within Bowdon parish, Cheshire. It was originally built as an episcopalian place of worship, but later converted to a dissenting chapel. George Ormerod quotes the seventeenth-century antiquary Sir Peter Leycester: A chappell of ease, called Ringey chapel,... was much frequented in the late [civil] war by schismatical ministers, and, as it were, a receptacle for non-conformists; in which dissolute times, every pragmatical illiterate person, as the humour served him, stepp'd into the pulpit, without any lawful calling thereunto, or licence of authority. The chapel was rebuilt in 1720 and the living was augmented with Queen Anne's Bounty. In 1863 a separate parish was created and the chapel became the church of St Mary and All Saints Ringway. In 1967 it closed and was replaced by Hale Barns, All Saints church and parish.

For further information on Ringway Chapel, see George Ormerod, The history of the county palatine and city of Chester, 2nd edition revised by Thomas Helsby, 3 vols (London: George Routledge, 1882), vol. 1, p. 554.