Publisher's Synopsis
Church silver has a practical as well as an aesthetic purpose. At the heart of Christian worship is a sacramental meal, which is traced back to Jesus' final meal with his disciples. It involves eating and drinking, from a common loaf and a common cup. The use of precious metal discourages the transmission of infection, and allows for easy cleaning. It also encourages a worshipper to glimpse the precious gift which is received in a humble form. No accurate or authentic record of the church plate of the Diocese of Chester has been undertaken, with the exception of that on the churches of the City of Chester produced by T. Stanley Ball in 1907. Since then many of those city churches have been made redundant and some have been demolished, their plate distributed, lost or sold, making the task of tracing it particularly difficult. This survey has taken Maurice Ridgway over fifty years to complete. When he died, this work had reached final draft stage, and so is as Canon Ridgway wrote it. Its publication comes as a memorial and tribute to the scholar who did so much to put Chester silver firmly on the collector's map.
