1. If you go to GENUKI "
http://www.ukbmd.org.uk/genuki/chs/parishes.html CHESHIRE TOWNS AND PARISHES", you can find the entry for Northwich. (Bookmark this reference!
)
That will tell you that "Northwich was a township in Witton chapelry of Great Budworth ancient parish, Northwich hundred ..., which became a civil parish in 1866." Basically, the church for Northwich was St. Helen at Witton, on the hill over the centre of Northwich. St. Helen, although old, was actually a "chapel of ease" to the parish church of St. Mary at Great Budworth. Normally the major difference between a chapel of ease and a parish church is that btw 1754 and
at least 1837, no marriages would take place in the chapel. However, due to the size of Northwich and Witton, St. Helen was one of those chapel that got a licence to carry on marrying couples after Hardwicke's Marriage Act of 1754.
2. CheshirePRDB, while hugely admirable and important, only covers 27 parishes - it doesn't do Great Budworth or Witton (the later spin-off parish of Northwich Castle - see Castle Northwich in GENUKI - is "in progress" but not yet).
3. Your best bet for Cheshire registers is FamilySearch
https://familysearch.org/ , who indexed "all" the Cheshire parishes and many non-conformist chapels for Chester Record Office. Where a parish is in both FamilySearch and CheshirePRDB, then use the CheshirePRDB to check the entries as I know they have put a huge amount of care into reading their records. On the other hand, FamilySearch is hugely easier to search!
4. Anyone with ancestry in Northwich may find relatives in the extended format entries of St. Helen, Witton. These start 1779 for baptisms and burials (not marriages) and add details of the parents to burials and grandparents to baptisms. The ordinary registers are in this extended format up to 1813(?). After that, there are
2 sets of registers there - the legal format and the Auxiliary format which is the extended format. The Auxiliary set continue until about 1862 when someone must have asked "Why are we maintaining 2 sets of registers?". However, getting hold of the extra info in the extended entries may be tricky - I'm not sure it can be done without a trip to Chester (theoretically it should be on FindMyPast but there has been a complete fiasco over the digitisation of the double page entries of (most of) these extended registers.)
