A Chapelry

A chapelry was a subdivision of an ecclesiastical parish in England.

It had a similar status to a township but was so named as it had a chapel which was a place of worship subsidiary to the main parish church.

When the parishes had been established in medieval times and the area was sparsely populated, the parishioners were obliged to travel long distances to the parish church, hence Chapelries were created to remove that burden. Remembering that peasants in olden times often only had part of Sunday off from work and couldn't walk the many miles to the parish church and be back before they had to sleep or return to their employment duties.