By far the best known example of such Cheshire churches is that of Nether or Lower Peover, which was formerly a chapel of the large parish of Great Budworth. It was probably always a timber building, as it still remains, save for a substantial western tower of stone which dates from Elizabethan days. There was certainly a chapel there prior to 1269, for in that year it was agreed between the prior and convent of Norton (who held the church of Budworth and lands in Peover) and Richard Grosvenor and other parishioners of Nether Peover, that the priory should find them a secular chaplain to say mass in their chapel every Sunday and Wednesday throughout the year, and on Christmas Day and all the leading festivals, as well as on St. Oswald’s Day, in whose honour the chapel had been founded. The parishioners were also to have liberty of baptism in their chapel, provided they could obtain leave from the mother church of Budworth. The parishioners were to find books, vestments, vessels, and other ornaments of the church at their own cost. Baptismal rights for this parochial chapelry were not, however, gained until the year 1331, when Bishop Roger de Norbury granted to the inhabitants of the hamlet of Peover the use of a font (Lichfield Diocesan Registers, ii. f. 25). In the original edition of Ormerod’s _Cheshire_ (1819) it is stated that it appears from the register book of Peover that the tower was built of stone in 1582, “John Bowden being then master of the work.” It is added that “the two out-isles on either side of the chappel have been enlarged by the parishioners in late ages.” The present church is usually spoken of as the best example of a timber church now extant; but this is scarcely the case, for it underwent a vigorous restoration, accompanied by a considerable rebuilding of the outer walls, at the hands of Mr. Salvin in 1851-52. An account of this building, written shortly before the restoration, states that “The church is divided from the side aisles by four wooden arches on each side, formed by rude beams of wood springing from wooden pillars, from which, again, spring other spars, forming an obtuse arch over the nave. The principal part of the exterior is formed of timber and plaster, which presents a most picturesque appearance.” Although the substantial timber framing, stained black, with the filling-up of white plaster, is almost entirely new, Mr. Salvin found the inner arcade work, just described, for the most part sound, and little more was done to it than the clearing away of several coats of whitewash. In an interesting account of the unrestored church by Rev. W. H. Massie, written about 1850, which appeared in the first volume of the Cheshire Archæological and Historical Society, it is stated that the mouldings of some of the window mullions, and more especially the ogee heads of doorways, pointed unmistakably to the erection of the timber church, as it then stood, in the fourteenth century.