St. Michael’s Church, a grand building beautifully restored, has had varied fortunes. It was damaged when the Parliamentary army besieged and took the town, and was later very largely rebuilt on a semi-pagan “classic” model. The great ornamental iron gates enclosing the stone-flagged churchyard are relics of this period, and incidentally disclose the ironworkers’ ideas of what angels are like: a gilded figure over the principal gate representing a very saucy-looking young woman ecstatically pirouetting on one foot, a kind of celestial can-can, and flourishing a big trumpet. Time has not yet obliterated the epitaph in the churchyard upon one Mary Broomfield, who died in 1755, aged eighty; and it is still possible to read how “The chief concern of her life for the last 20 years was to order and provide for her funeral. Her greatest pleasure was to think and talk about it. She lived many years on a pension of 9_d._ a week, and yet saved £5, which at her own request was laid out at her burial.” A day with Mary Broomfield when in her most characteristic mood must have been a real treat: the conversation doubtless resolving itself into a discussion of the suitability or otherwise of fringes on shrouds and the respective merits of copper or brass coffin-plates. The work of bringing back the old church to something of its ancient state was costly, but the result is striking. There is a very wealth of monuments, many of the Savages, a Cheshire family of great note in their day, lying in effigy in the Savage Chapel and in the Chantry also associated with them: most notable among them all the loving figures of Sir John Savage, 1495, and his wife, Katharine Stanley. These lie side by side; the knight’s right hand clasping her left. It would have been better had the alabaster figures not been blackleaded by some old-time caretaker! The Leghs, of Lyme and Adlington, vie in the interest of their monuments with the Savages. Of foremost interest is the inscription to “Perkin a Legh”: Here lyeth the bodie of Perkin a Legh That for King Richard the death did die, Betrayed for Righteovsnes 1399, And the bones of Sir Peers his sonne, That with King Henrie the Fift did wonne In Paris. This Perkin served King Edward the Third and the Black Prince his sonne in all their warres in France, and was at the Battell of Cressie and hadd Lyme given him for that service. And after their deaths served King Richard the Second, and left him not in his troubles, but was taken with him and beheaded at Chester by King Henrie the Fourth. And the sayd Sir Peers his sonne served King Henrie the Fift and was slain at the Battell of Agincourt 1415.