WHITEGATE, otherwise NEWCHURCH, a parish
in the first division of the hundred of EDDISBURY,
county palatine of CHESTER, 3 miles (S. W.) from
Northwich, comprising the townships of Darnhall and
Marton, and containing 789 inhabitants. The living is
a vicarage,' in the archdeaconry and diocese of Chester,
endowed with £400 private benefaction, £1000
royal bounty, and £200 parliamentary grant, and in
the patronage of Lord Delamere. The church, dedicated
to St. Mary> has lately received an addition' of
four hundred and fifty-three sittings, of which two
hundred and twenty-seven are free, the Incorporated
Society for the enlargement of churches and chapels
having granted £300 towards defraying the expense.
Whitegate, which once formed part of the parish of
Over, was separated from it, and made a distinct parish,
in 1541: it is bounded and partly intersected
by the river Weaver. During the confinement at Hereford
of Prince Edward, afterwards Edward I., while a
prisoner in the hands of the barons, the monks of the
neighbouring monastery of Dore visited and consoled
him: he afterwards removed them, about the year 1273,
toDernhall, in this parish; a few years subsequently the
king having resolved to build them a new abbey on a
neighbouring spot, gave it the name of Vale-Royal, and
laid the first stone of the new monastery, in August
1277, wherein the monks took up their abode in 1330, at
which period £32,000 had been issued from the royal
treasury, for defraying the expense: the solemnity of
the removal was observed with much magnificence, being
attended by a great concourse of prelates, nobility,
and gentry; at the dissolution the revenue was estimated
at £518. There are still some small remains
of this house in the doorways of the modern mansion,
that now occupies its site, which, in the great civil war,
was plundered and partly destroyed.