Seighford is a small village only 2½ miles NW of the centre of Stafford. St Chad's is a curious mixture of brick and stone building. he W tower is of red brick and 17thc., with brick clasping buttresses and stone pinnacles added in 1748. This, or something like it, is also the date of the brick nave, but the chancel and the N nave aisle and its eastward extension to form a N chapel are of stone. The tower was built in the western bay of the nave, so that the W bay of the four-bay N arcade is alongside it. This end of the aisle has now been converted for use as a kitchen and lavatory. The arcade itself is 12thc. and the nave has no clerestory. The chancel arch is also 12thc., but the chancel contains a 13thc. piscina and nothing earlier. The arch to the N chapel is segmental and very broad, presumably rebuilt. The responds supporting it are Perpendicular (Pevsner reports the W respond as EE). The chapel is now occupied by the organ, with a vestry to the E. There are two antiquarian view of the church in the William Salt Library. A sepia wash drawing of 1838 by T. P. Wood shows its elevated position well in a distant view from the N (SV VIII 155a), and another sepia wash drawing by Buckler shows the church from the SE (SV VIII 156). Both show the building much as it is today. The only Romanesque features are the N nave arcade and the chancel arch.

In 1086 Seighford was one of a group of vills belonging to the manor of Eccleshall and all held by the Bishop of Chester and by two Frenchman and one thegn from him. No church was noted at that date, and the earliest mention of one seems to be as a gift to nearby Ranton priory by the priory's founder Robert fitzNoel, presumably the descendant of one of the Domesday subtenants. Land in Seighford was also given to Ranton by the founder's daughter, Alice. anton was still receiving spiritual income from Seighford in the taxation of 1291, and a further reference to land held by the priory here occurs in 1313. In 1320 the bishop ordained a vicarage for Seighford. Presumably after the dissolution, and certainly byc.1600 the manor passed to Richard Elde, descended from the Eldes of Boughton (Derbys) but thereafter styled Elde of Syford, who d.1620. It remained in the Elde (later Eld) family until the end of the 19thc. A portrait by Gainsborough in the Boston Museum of Fine Art shows John Eld of Seighford Hall,c.1775. The painting was commissioned by the trustees of the Staffordshire General Infirmary, which Eld founded in 1766. Seighford Hall itself is a timber-framed building, apparently 16thc., which has been a nursing home since 1978.

Benefice of Chebsey, Ellenhall and Seighford-with-Cresswell.

The scallop and bell capitals of the arcade are generally simple, but the author agrees with Pevsner that the introduction of the waterleaf motif on pier 3 points to a date in the 1170s. This is supported by the tapered cylinders between the cones of pier 2, and the profile of the western bases of the arcade. The chancel arch could be contemporary, but the arch and base profiles suggest an earlier date, possibly before 1150.