Prior to the building of the post-war council estate and the later modern housing developments, the church was about a mile away from the majority of its parishioners in the village of Over and Winsford's High Street. Over was anciently a parish, manor and borough which in 1894 became amalgamated with the township of Wharton to form the Urban District of Winsford. Winsford is now a town within the Borough of Vale Royal. Recent research has shown that in medieval times the area round the church and to the west and south of it was known as Darnhall and the area higher up on the ridge, to the north, was Over.
The dedication of the church to St. Chad is one that is often associated with Anglo-Saxon churches reflecting early traditions surrounding the Saints missionary work in the area and may indicate a long-standing episcopal link. Chad, or Caed, was a seventh century missionary who was educated at Lindisfarne and sent by St. Columba to preach Christianity to the peoples west of the Pennines. In 669, he became bishop of the Mercian people: he died in 673. Churches with a similar dedication can be shown to have links with the Mercian royal house or the Episcopal seat at Lichfield and so it may be that originally the area of the ancient parish was either a royal estate or one of the bishop's holdings during the Saxon period.
England was theoretically Christian by AD 686, but it was in the century and a half following this date that the real conversion of England was effected, primarily by Celtic monks who travelled, preached and evangelised from their 'minster' bases. St. Chad's at Over may have been one of an ad hoc network of ‘minster' churches that covered the country in the seventh and eighth centuries. These were localised, collegiate churches, staffed by a team of peripatetic clergy who travelled into their ‘parochiae' (larger precursors of the parish) to preach the gospel and administer the sacraments. Such churches were founded by kings, queens, bishops or members of the Saxon aristocracy, with the territory of the lord's estate determining the extent of the ‘parochiae'.
This is an extract from a booklet soon to be available that has been written by Tony Bostock. Tony is also in the process of writing a more indepth history which will be availlable from the library in town.
