298 A TOPOGRAPHICAL 



issue male failing, it came by marriage into the family of the 

 Chetwynds. 



In the year 1673, Walter Chetwynd, lord of the manor, and pa- 

 tron of the parish church of Ingestre, obtained a faculty of the 

 Archbishop of Canterbury to build a new church in a more com- 

 modious place, and to pull down the old ruinous edifice, and con- 

 vert the materials to that use. " In 1676 it was fully finished, 

 being built in the form of our parish-churches, not very large, but 

 elegant and uniform. The walls were all squared freestone, the 

 chancel paved with black and white marble, the windows adorned 

 with the arms of the Chetwynds, in painted glass, the ceilings 

 with the same in fret-work, and the side walls beautified with 

 the funeral monuments of the family, curiously carved in white 

 marble. The bones he caused to be brought from the old church, 

 and deposited them in a vault made under the church. The body 

 of the church he caused to be separated from the chancel by a 

 screen of Flanders oak curiously carved, the pulpit and seats be- 

 ing made of the same wood, and all of equal height ; and a curious 

 font of white marble standing in the entrance. Over the portal at 

 the west end, on a small white marble table, is this modest in- 

 scription : 



DEO OPT. MAX. 



Templum hoc 



A fundamentis extructum 



WALTERUS CHETWIND, 



(\\&\i.fil. Walt. Equit. aurat. Nepos.) 



L. M. 



D. D. D. 



Anno JErce Christiana , 

 1676. 



" The church being thus finished at Mr. Chetwynd's charge 

 only, was consecrated anno 1677, by Thomas Wood, Lord Bishop 

 of Lichfield and Coventry, by performing all the sacred offices of 

 the day ; which done, the pious and generous founder and patron, 

 Mr. Chetwynd, offered upon the altar the tithes of Hopton, a village 

 hard by, of the value of 50. per annum, as an addition to the 

 rectory for ever ; presenting the bishop and dean, who preached 

 at the same time, each of them with a piece of plate, double gilt, 

 as a grateful acknowledgment of their service, and entertaining the 

 nobility and gentry, who came to see the solemnity, with a splendid 

 dinner at his house, together with many of the common people."* 



* Magna Britannia, No. 62, p. 84. 



