Background
Sir John Chesshyre was born at Hallwood, Halton, near Runcorn, Cheshire, the son of Thomas and Catherine Chesshyre.
Sir John Chesshyre was born at Hallwood, Halton, near Runcorn, Cheshire, the son of Thomas and Catherine Chesshyre.
Thomas Chesshyre was Bailiff of the Lordship of Halton and Whitley. The family had been Royalists in the Civil War and they had sustained severe financial penalties when the Parliamentarians were ruling the country. John Chesshyre was admitted to Gray"s Inn in 1682 and called to the bar there in 1689.
In 1705 he accepted the degree of serjeant-at-law.
He became one of the crown counsel as queen"s sergeant in 1711 and was knighted in 1713. In 1727 he was declared the king"s first serjeant.
His profession made him a wealthy manitoba In the six years from 1719 he earned an average of over £3,000 a year, making him one of the highest earning counsels practising in Westminster Hall.
In 1725 he reduced his practice, confining it to the Court of Common Pleas, thus reducing his annual income to an average of £1,300.
Sir John is best remembered locally for founding a library at Halton and for leaving an endowment in his will for its further maintenance. The library had been completed in 1733 and was furnished with 400 books which were mainly ecclesiastical histories and works of law. This made it in effect the first, or one of the first, free libraries in England.
Sir John also built the vicarage in Halton in 1739 and endowed the curacy there.
As time passed, the endowment proved insufficient for the maintenance of the building and its contents. By the middle of the 19th century it had "no function and no money".
By the middle of the 20th century it was in a state of advanced dilapidation. The adjacent land owned by the church was acquired by the North-West Water Authority.
A new parish hall was built with money received as compensation from the Water Authority and a passageway was made to link the hall with the library which now serves as a meeting room.
The library is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade II* listed building, and its gates are listed at Grade World War II