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Samuel Lewis - A Topographical Dictionary of England (1831)

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RUNCORN, a parish in the hundred of BUCKLOW, county palatine of CHESTER, comprising the chapelries of Aston by Sutton, Daresbury, Halton, and Thelwall, and the townships of Acton-Grange, Aston-Grange, Clifton, alias Rock-Savage, Hatton, Keckwick, Moore, Newton by Daresbury, Norton, Preston on the Hill, Run corn, Stockham, Sutton, Walton (Inferior), Walton (Superior), and Weston,and containing 7738 inhabitants, of which number, 3103 are in the township of Runcorn, 4½ miles (N. by W.) from Frodsham.

The living is a vicarage, in the archdeaconry and diocese of Chester, rated in the king's books at £10. 4. 2., and in the patronage of the Dean and Canons of Christ Church, Oxford. The church, dedicated to St. Bartholomew, is partly in the early, and partly in the later, style of English architecture; of the north door and the piers in the nave, the design is very uncommon, yet good in execution. There is a place of worship for Wesleyan Methodists.

In 915, Ethelfleda, sister to King Edward the. Elder, and widow of Ethelred, Earl of Mercia, built a town and castle near the river Mersey, at this place, then called Romicofan, some traces of which are visible at a place called Castle-Rock, by the river side, about three hundred yards below the church: this part of the Mersey is called Runcorn Gap, and at high water is about four hundred yards broad. This ancient fortress commanded the passage from the kingdom of Mercia to that of Northumberland. In 1133, William Fitz-Nigel founded here a monastery of canons Regular, which, about the reign of Stephen, was removed to Norton.

The Duke of Bridgewater's canal passes through a great part of this parish; at Runcorn it is sixty feet above the level of the Mersey, with which it communicates by a chain of ten locks. Runcorn, which had previously been a very poor village, has, in consequence of the trade on the canal, and its having become a place of considerable resort for bathing, grown very populous, and been improved in its appearance by the erection of many handsome buildings. The township abounds in fine stone quarries, from which considerable quantities of hewn stone are sent by water to Chester, Liverpool, Manchester, &c. The chapel at Aston was rebuilt on an enlarged scale in 1737.

From Samuel Lewis A Topographical Dictionary of England  (1831) ©Mel Lockie