Many of the village churches of Cheshire were built on the sites of former churches, and often a portion of the older building remains to prove this. The Norman font at Grappenhall and the little Norman window at Woodchurch are all that is left to prove that churches existed here before the present buildings were erected. In such churches you can often trace the successive buildings and rebuildings, alterations and additions that have been made from time to time. A single church may indeed show the chief features of all the styles from the time of the Conqueror to the Civil War. At Prestbury you may see a Norman doorway in the little chapel in the churchyard; in the chancel of the church is a window of pure Early English, and in the nave a pillar of the same period. There are Decorated windows in the aisles, and a Perpendicular window at the east end. The Cheshire churches are beautiful still; they must have been even more beautiful in the sixteenth century, before the Puritans of the Reformation and the Civil War in their mistaken zeal destroyed almost everything of beauty within and without that could be destroyed. On the walls of the interior were often painted pictures of Bible stories such as the Creation, the Crucifixion, or the Resurrection of our Lord. When the plaster was stripped from the walls of Gawsworth Church some of these wall-paintings were discovered. Drawings were made from them, which you may see in the Free Library of Macclesfield. On the wall of the nave of Mobberley Church some of these paintings still remain, but their meaning is not very clear. The chancel was divided from the nave by a screen of carved oak, with a long narrow gallery above it called a rood-loft, from the rood or cross which was placed in the centre of the gallery. The crosses have gone, but at Mobberley you may see the ancient screen, with an inscription, and the date 1500 carved upon it. [Illustration: SHOCKLACH: CROSS AND NORMAN DOOR] Throughout the Middle Ages it was the custom for the lord of the manor to reserve some portion of the church for his own use, or to add to the building a chantry or chapel where his own chantry priest might pray daily for the salvation of his soul. These chapels are generally at the eastern ends of the aisles. You will know them by the handsome monuments which were raised over the graves of the founders, for these chapels were used as the burial-place of the founders and their families. The Calveleys had a private chapel at Bunbury, the Mainwarings at Over Peover, the Dones at Tarporley, the Troutbecks in S. Mary's, Chester, and the Cholmondeleys at Malpas.