Possible MIs for William Wickstead in Wrenbury church

[Andrew RM Hayes]

Have the MIs for the church at Wrenbury Frith been published?
My 10x great grandfather, William Wickstead, requests burial in the church of Wrenbury Frith in his 1627/8 Cheshire will. The PR records his burial on 13th February 1627/8.
His grandson, another William Wickstead, in turn requested burial in the same church, as close to the body of his wife as possible, in his 1665 Cheshire will. The PR records her burial 14th June 1661 and his on 22nd July 1665.

[emeltom]

A lot will depend upon
a) whether or not a gravestone was erected
b) if there was a gravestone has it stood the test of time?

Emeltom

[Andrew RM Hayes]

Thank you for your prompt reply.
I had assumed that they would have been buried in a vault within the church, as requested in the wills. Possibly covered by a ledger stone, or given a mural tablet nearby. In Somerset and Wiltshire, where most of my English ancestors lived, antiquarians recorded many of the MIs within the church, going back several centuries, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.  In several cases the MIs of ancestors mentioned within these accounts failed to survive subsequent "restorations". So I wondered whether anything similar exists for Cheshire.   

[emeltom]

It is highly possible, in that case, that something may still remain but I can't see anything on line, unfortunately.
Have you considered writing to the Vicar?

Emeltom

[AdrianB38]

Neither the Crewe nor Mobberley libraries of the Cheshire FH Society list a set of MIs for Wrenbury, so I'm tempted to say that if they haven't got it, it probably doesn't exist. 

[Andrew RM Hayes]

Thank you for looking. I'm a West country man, so not familiar with family history resources for Cheshire. My next move will be to write to the local vicar/churchwardens.

[Jayson]

Hello Andrew

The monuments/tombstones at Wrenbury haven't been transcribed as far as I can tell, and there isn't a copy at the Cheshire Record Office where one would expect to find such a document if it existed.

I can pop into the church and have a look for the names you have mentioned here, although 1628 does seem rather early.  I can't remember seeing anything that early when I visited the church a few years ago to have a look at the monument of a relation of mine who was buried inside the church in 1798.

Jayson   

[Andrew RM Hayes]

Jayson
I realise that it's a bit of a longshot that anything survives from 1628 or 1665, that's why I wondered whether antiquarians might have transcribed them. But if you are passing, I'd be grateful if you could take a look if its not too much trouble. William Junior's son became a vicar with a living in Berkshire. He was subsequently left the advowson of a Somerset parish by his father in law, which one of his descendants through various lines occupied till after WW2. So the connection to Cheshire came as rather a surprise.

[Jayson]

Andrew
I managed to get to Wrenbury church today. 

While there are numerous monuments dedicated to the Cotton family of Combermere Abbey and the Starkey family of Wrenbury Hall, there was not one monument for the Wickstead/Wicksted family to be seen there. 

What I did find, however, was the Wicksted coat of arms on a pew.  These arms are referred to in Pevsner's The Buildings of England.  However, Pevsner didn't give a description of the said arms so I turned to James Hall's History of Nantwich (published 1883).  In this work there is a very detailed family tree of the Wicksted family of Nantwich with a coat of arms which matched the arms I found at Wrenbury.  Nantwich is very close to Wrenbury. The Wrenbury branch of the Wicksteds are obviously related to the Nantwich Wicksteds but it isn't clear how.

I did take some photographs of the coat of arms and the interior and exterior of the church and will email these to you if you are interested.  Just send me your details via a personal message.

You can find James Hall's History of Nantwich on archive.org.  The Wicksted pedigree covers pages 496-498.

Another book which might be of particular interest to you is Wrenbury Wills and Inventories 1542-1661 produced (in 2009) by The Record Society of Lancashire and Cheshire.  Each will and inventory has been fully transcribed for the period above with detailed family trees for each individual.  Both the Wicksted Wills you mentioned are covered in this along with William Wicksted's Inquisition Post Morton.  This publication doesn't appear to be on archive.org although you might find it elsewhere online.

Jay