Chapelry
A chapelry was a subdivision of an
Status
It had a similar status to a township but was so named as it had a chapel of ease (chapel) which was the community's official place of worship in religious and secular matters, and the fusion of these matters — principally tithes — initially heavily tied to the main parish church. The church's medieval doctrine of subsidiarity when the congregation or sponsor was wealthy enough supported their constitution into new parishes.[2] Such chapelries were first widespread in northern England and in largest parishes across the country which had populous outlying places. Except in cities the entire coverage of the parishes (with very rare extra-parochial areas) was fixed in medieval times by reference to a large or influential manor or a set of manors. A lord of the manor or other patron of an area, often the Diocese, would for prestige and public convenience set up an additional church of sorts, a chapel of ease which would serve the chapelry: typically an area roughly equal to the old extent of the manor or a new industrious area. The chapels as opposed to mission churches/rooms had a date of consecration, dedication to a saint or saints and typically their own clergy and were by and large upgraded, "(re-)constituted" into parishes. A small minority fell redundant and were downgraded or closed, though at a lesser rate than mission rooms which were usually cheaply built and declined after the invention of different modes of private wheeled transport.
The
Illustrated examples
Middlesex
From the outset the townspeople of New Brentford, founded around St Lawrence's Hospital in the manorial land of Boston Manor in 1179, were "to worship at Hanwell on the four principal feasts and to be buried there", except "the infirm, chaplains, and their servants". Offerings, tithes (but a smaller portion after c. 1660) and an annual donation of wax went from the "curate/curacy" (dubbed sometimes the chaplain) to the rector, namely the parish priest, of Hanwell. Around 1660 New Brentford, already governed by its own vestry, was made a separate parish. In 1714 the rector of Hanwell managed to assert his right to the hay tithes from Boston manorial demesne but in 1744 he gave up the small tithes of New Brentford, all hay tithes except those from Boston demesne, and all offerings. In 1961 the parish of St. Lawrence, New Brentford, was amalgamated with St. George's and St. Paul's, Old Brentford, to form the united parishes of Brentford in the Church of England.[3]
Cornwall
In Cornwall the parish of
References
- ^ Status details for Chapelry. Vision of Britain through time. URL accessed 24 February 2008.
- ^ Status details for Township. Vision of Britain through time. URL accessed 24 February 2008.
- ^ Diane K Bolton, Patricia E C Croot and M A Hicks, 'Ealing and Brentford: Churches, Brentford', in A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume 7 ed. T F T Baker and C R Elrington (London, 1982), pp. 153-157. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/middx/vol7/pp153-157 [accessed 17 May 2018].
- ^ The Cornish Church Guide; parochial history, pp. 53 et seqq, (1925) Truro: Blackford
Further reading
- Orme, Nicholas (2007) Cornwall and the Cross; Christianity 500-1560. Chichester: Phillimore; pp. 107-110</ref>