Burton (near Neston)

"BURTON, a parish (formerly a market-town) in the higher division of the hundred of WIRRALL, county palatine of CHESTER, comprising the townships of Burton and Puddington, and containing 481 inhabitants, of which number, 326 are in the township of Burton, 2½ miles (S. E. by S.) from Great Neston. The living is a perpetual curacy, in the archdeaconry and diocese of Chester, endowed with £600 royal bounty, and in the patronage of R. Congreve, Esq. The church, dedicated to St. Nicholas, was rebuilt in 1721. At Denwall, in this parish, there is a colliery, opened about 1750, that extends a mile and three quarters from high water mark under the river Dee: the coal is chiefly sent to Ireland. At the same place was anciently an hospital, to which Alexander de Savensby, Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry (to which see the manor belonged) appropriated, in 1238, the tithes of Burton. Henry VII., about 1494, gave this hospital, together with all its revenue, including the rectory of this parish, to the hospital of St. John the Baptist, founded at Lichfield, by Bishop Smith, to which the estate still belongs. A free school for poor children of the township of Burton, and for four of that of Puddington, was founded in 1724, by Dr. Wilson, the pious and benevolent bishop of Sodor and Man, who was born here, on the 20th of December, 1663: he gave £400 for erecting and endowing it, and his son, Dr. Thomas Wilson, rector of St. Stephen's Walbrook, and a prebendary in the collegiate church of Westminster, added £200. The market, granted in 1298, to Bishop Langton, was held on Thursday, together with a fair for three days at the festival of St. James." [From Samuel Lewis A Topographical Dictionary of England  (1831) ©Mel Lockie]