BUDWORTH (LITTLE), a parish in the first division
of the hundred of EDDISBURY, county palatine of
CHESTER, 3 miles (N.B. by B.) from Tarporley, containing
524 inhabitants. The living is a perpetual
curacy, in the archdeaconry and diocese of Chester,
endowed with £10 per annum private benefaction,
£400 royal bounty, and £800 parliamentary grant,
and in the patronage of the Bishop of Chester, who is
the impropriator, on the nomination of the lessee of the
great tithes. The church, dedicated to St. Peter, belonged,
previously to the dissolution, to St. Mary's nunnery
in Chester, and was called a free chapel within the
parish' of Over, the church of which was also appropriated
to the same convent: the nave and the chancel
were rebuilt with stone, in 1798, pursuant to the will of
Mr. Ralph Kirkham, a wealthy merchant in Manchester,
and a native of this parish, who gave £1000 for that
purpose; his remains were interred here. Horseraces
were formerly held on a four-mile course, but they have
long been discontinued. A school-house was erected in
1706, near the park -wall at Oulton, in which about
twenty children are instructed. Lady Isabella Dod, by
will dated in 1720, bequeathed £2500 for the erection
-and endowment of ahnshouses for the support of twelve
poor persons of Little Budworth, and eight of a town
an Buckinghamshire.