The Church of St Mary the Virgin is in the village of
Wistaston
Wistaston is a civil parish and village in the unitary authority of Cheshire East and the ceremonial county of Cheshire, in North West England. It is approximately west of Crewe town centre and east of Nantwich town centre. It has a ...
,
Cheshire
Cheshire ( ) is a ceremonial and historic county in North West England, bordered by Wales to the west, Merseyside and Greater Manchester to the north, Derbyshire to the east, and Staffordshire and Shropshire to the south. Cheshire's county t ...
, England. The church is recorded in the
National Heritage List for England
The National Heritage List for England (NHLE) is England's official database of protected heritage assets. It includes details of all English listed buildings, scheduled monuments, register of historic parks and gardens, protected shipwrecks, an ...
as a designated Grade II
listed building
In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...
.
It is an active
Anglican
Anglicanism is a Western Christian tradition that has developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the context of the Protestant Reformation in Europe. It is one of th ...
parish church
A parish church (or parochial church) in Christianity is the church which acts as the religious centre of a parish. In many parts of the world, especially in rural areas, the parish church may play a significant role in community activities, ...
in the
diocese of Chester
The Diocese of Chester is a Church of England diocese in the Province of York covering the pre-1974 county of Cheshire and therefore including the Wirral and parts of Stockport, Trafford and Tameside.
History
Ancient diocese
Before the si ...
, the archdeaconry of Macclesfield and the deanery of Nantwich.
History
It is believed that there has been a church or chapel on or near the present site for nearly 700 years. The first record of a rector goes back to 1379. The first church on the site would have been a wooden building. The existing records start in 1572. In 1827 the decision was taken that "due to decay it
he church
He or HE may refer to:
Language
* He (pronoun), an English pronoun
* He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ
* He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets
* He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' ...
was unsuitable for public worship".
The present church was built in 1827–28 to a design by
George Latham. The chancel was lengthened, and a
transept
A transept (with two semitransepts) is a transverse part of any building, which lies across the main body of the building. In cruciform churches, a transept is an area set crosswise to the nave in a cruciform ("cross-shaped") building withi ...
was added in 1884.
Further alterations were made in 1905.
[
]
Architecture
Exterior
The church is built in brick with a slate
Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. It is the finest grained foliated metamorphic rock. ...
roof. Its plan consists of a west tower, a nave
The nave () is the central part of a church, stretching from the (normally western) main entrance or rear wall, to the transepts, or in a church without transepts, to the chancel. When a church contains side aisles, as in a basilica-type ...
and a chancel
In church architecture, the chancel is the space around the altar, including the choir and the sanctuary (sometimes called the presbytery), at the liturgical east end of a traditional Christian church building. It may terminate in an apse.
Ove ...
.[ The architectural historian ]Nikolaus Pevsner
Sir Nikolaus Bernhard Leon Pevsner (30 January 1902 – 18 August 1983) was a German-British art historian and architectural historian best known for his monumental 46-volume series of county-by-county guides, ''The Buildings of England'' (1 ...
considered that the church is "entirely Georgian
Georgian may refer to:
Common meanings
* Anything related to, or originating from Georgia (country)
** Georgians, an indigenous Caucasian ethnic group
** Georgian language, a Kartvelian language spoken by Georgians
**Georgian scripts, three scrip ...
" in style and that this style was maintained in the 1884 additions.[
]
Interior
The chancel has oak panelling with carvings of sunflowers. The reredos
A reredos ( , , ) is a large altarpiece, a screen, or decoration placed behind the altar in a church. It often includes religious images.
The term ''reredos'' may also be used for similar structures, if elaborate, in secular architecture, for ex ...
contains representations of the Agnus Dei
is the Latin name under which the " Lamb of God" is honoured within the Catholic Mass and other Christian liturgies descending from the Latin liturgical tradition. It is the name given to a specific prayer that occurs in these liturgies, and ...
and Alpha and Omega signs. The right hand chancel window is to a design of Burne-Jones
The Burne-Jones Baronetcy, of Rottingdean in the County of Sussex, and of The Grange in the Parish of Fulham in the County of London, was a title in the Baronetage of the United Kingdom. It was created on 4 May 1894 for the artist and designer E ...
and was made by Morris and Company.[ In the church is a parish chest dated 1684 and a number of wall memorials dating from the 19th century. The two- manual organ was built by Hill in 1884 and in 1890 it was moved from the west gallery to the south of the chancel. There is a ]ring
Ring may refer to:
* Ring (jewellery), a round band, usually made of metal, worn as ornamental jewelry
* To make a sound with a bell, and the sound made by a bell
:(hence) to initiate a telephone connection
Arts, entertainment and media Film and ...
of eight bells. Six of these were cast by Gillett & Johnston
Gillett & Johnston was a clockmaker and bell foundry based in Croydon, England from 1844 until 1957. Between 1844 and 1950, over 14,000 tower clocks were made at the works. The company's most successful and prominent period of activity as a bel ...
in 1920 and the other two in 1982 by the Whitechapel Bell Foundry
The Whitechapel Bell Foundry was a business in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. At the time of the closure of its Whitechapel premises, it was the oldest manufacturing company in Great Britain. The bell foundry primarily made church bells a ...
.
External features
The churchyard contains the war graves of three soldiers and an airman
An airman is a member of an air force or air arm of a nation's armed forces. In certain air forces, it can also refer to a specific enlisted rank. An airman can also be referred as a soldier in other definitions.
In civilian aviation usage, t ...
of World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
, and three soldiers of World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
. It also contains the local war memorial.
See also
* Listed buildings in Wistaston
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wistaston, Church Of St Mary The Virgin
Church of England church buildings in Cheshire
Grade II listed churches in Cheshire
Churches completed in 1828
19th-century Church of England church buildings
Georgian architecture in Cheshire
Diocese of Chester