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| St. Bartholomew's mid-morning in March |
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| A view showing the apse, March 2015 |
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| The church in late summer sun, Sept 2004 |
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| St. Bartholomew's mid-morning in March |
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| A view showing the apse, March 2015 |
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| The church in late summer sun, Sept 2004 |
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| Monument on the East End | The Badger Inn is next to the church |
Church Minshull appears in the Domesday Survey as Maneshale. Raymond Richards in his book on Cheshire Churches mentions that Ormerod in his history of the Cheshire, first published in 1819 states that "The chapel of Munschulf is mentioned by Earl Randle Gernons in his confirmation charter to Combermere (abbey) as being an appendage of the church of Acton." Acton was formerly the mother church for the Nantwich area. The rectorship was appropriated by the abbey and was leased to Edward Mynshull in the 31st year of the reign of Henry VIII, which would be 1540. It was later the property of the Daniel family of Daresbury and sold to John Minshull of Minshull. From that time the right to appoint the rector was part of the estate of Minshull Hall. Very few memorials from the earlier church survive.
In 1572 a local man, Sampson Erdeswick, recorded details of fifty coats of arms on the wall and in the windows. There were also inscriptions recording the benefactors who had given the painted windows. Among those commemorated was a Bostock whose father had died in 1459 at the Battle of Blore Heath in Staffordshire during the Wars of the Roses. Another was to a Masterson who was a soldier in the reigns of Edward III, Richard II, Henry IV and Henry V. A third was to the widow of a Massey who had been killed at the Battle of Shrewsbury in 1403.
The inscription beneath the fine carved armourial bearing in the picture reads:
Near this place lye Interred the Bodys of Thomas Minshull late of Eardswick in the County of Cheshire, Esq. and Alice his Wife who was Daughter of James Trollope of Thirlby in the County of Lincoln, Esq. They left two Sons and five Daughters. This Monument is Erected by their three Surviving Daughters in Dutifull Remembrance of Parents upright and just in all their ways; both they and their Children Suffered great wrongs by unjust People. He was Loyal to his King and true to his Country. His Mother was Sister to Sir Edward (or Edmund) Fytton of Gawsworth in Cheshre: who Suffered for King Charles the first of Blessed Memory.
At the start of the 18th century the church was too dangerous to be used and was pulled down to be replaced by the current brick structure between 1702 and 1704 during the reign of Queen Anne. It is in the classical style with a stone portico over the porch. The arched windows of Venetian style may be from the restoration of 1861. Pevsner states that the south porch looks like it may date from 1861 also.
Raymond Richards lists the various monuments in the current church including a hatchment of Thomas Brooke, lord of the manor who died in 20 June 1820. There is also a painted wooden panel by one of the Cheshire heraldic artists called Randle Holmes. There were three of this name in the same family. It had the arms of the Cholmondley family impaling Tollemache and records the death of Jane, daughter of Sir Lionel Tollemache of Helmingham in Suffolk the wife of Thomas Cholmondley of Vale Royal, who died 14 April 1666. At the base of the tower is a vault of the Wade family of Wades Green. Local tradition has it that this is the grave of George Wade, a Field Marshal and commander of the King's army during the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745. While he may have been born at Wade's Green Hall he is buried at Westminster Abbey where there is an inscription recording the fact. There was another George Wade who was commander of the ship of the line immortalised by Turner as the "Fighting Temeraire". Wade's log book recounts his voyage to Belle Isle and Havanna in 1761-2. A charity board in the church listing donations includes one by Mrs. Ann Wade, mother of Captain Wade of Wade's Green.
The parish records begin in 1561 and include a burial on 20 Feb 1649 of Thomas Damme of Leighton said to be seven score and fourteen (154). The incumbents of the church are known back as far as John Minshull in 1541
In 1785 a village school was buit in the churchyard and a new one was constructed in 1858 on the Church Minshull Estate, which had been in the Brooke family for several generations. The school closed in 1982 and pupils were moved to Worleston School.
The Buildings of England, Cheshire, by Nikolaus Pevsner
and Edward Hubbard, Yale University Press, 2003, ISBN 0 300 09588 0
Wikipedia site on Church Minshull
Old Cheshire Churches, with a supplementary survey relating to the lesser Old Chapels of Cheshire, completely revised and enlarged by Raymond Richards, published by E.J. Morten of Didsbury, 1973.
Strict 