St Chad's Church, on Greengate Street in the centre of

Stafford Stafford () is a market town and the county town of Staffordshire, England. It is located about south of Stoke-on-Trent, north of Wolverhampton, and northwest of Birmingham. The town had a population of 71,673 at the 2021–2022 United Kingd ...

, is a

Grade II* listed In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, H ...

Anglican Anglicanism, also known as Episcopalianism in some countries, is a Western Christianity, Western Christian tradition which developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the ...

church.

Saint Chad Chad (died 2 March 672) was a prominent 7th-century Anglo-Saxon monk. He was an abbot, Bishop of the Northumbrians and then Bishop of the Mercians and Lindsey People. After his death he was known as a saint. He was the brother of Bishop C ...

, who died in 672, was the first

Bishop of Lichfield The Bishop of Lichfield is the ordinary of the Church of England Diocese of Lichfield in the Province of Canterbury. The diocese covers 4,516 km2 (1,744 sq. mi.) of the counties of Powys, Staffordshire, Shropshire, Warwickshire and West M ...

. The church was built in the 12th century, and is the oldest building in Stafford. The church was neglected in the 17th and 18th centuries, and much of the

Norman architecture The term Norman architecture is used to categorise styles of Romanesque architecture developed by the Normans in the various lands under their dominion or influence in the 11th and 12th centuries. In particular the term is traditionally used f ...

was obscured; there was much restoration work in the mid 19th century, particularly by

George Gilbert Scott Sir George Gilbert Scott (13 July 1811 – 27 March 1878), largely known as Sir Gilbert Scott, was a prolific English Gothic Revival architect, chiefly associated with the design, building and renovation of churches and cathedrals, although he ...

The original building

The building is

cruciform A cruciform is a physical manifestation resembling a common cross or Christian cross. These include architectural shapes, biology, art, and design. Cruciform architectural plan Christian churches are commonly described as having a cruciform ...

and has a crossing tower.St Chad, Stafford
The Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture in Britain and Ireland, accessed 12 August 2014. There is an inscription in Latin on the impost at the north-east corner of the crossing: ORM VOCATUR QUI ME CONDIDIT ("He who built me is called Orm"). It is thought that "Orm" is Orm le Guidon, an important landowner in the 11th to 12th century.Famous Ormes
The Orme Web Site, accessed 14 August 2014. The

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 ...

is bordered by massive stone

column A column or pillar in architecture and structural engineering is a structural element that transmits, through compression, the weight of the structure above to other structural elements below. In other words, a column is a compression member ...

s which have

scallop Scallop () is a common name that encompasses various species of marine bivalve molluscs in the taxonomic family Pectinidae, the scallops. However, the common name "scallop" is also sometimes applied to species in other closely related famili ...

capitals Capital and its variations may refer to: Common uses * Capital city, a municipality of primary status ** Capital region, a metropolitan region containing the capital ** List of national capitals * Capital letter, an upper-case letter Econom ...

. The columns support four-

bay A bay is a recessed, coastal body of water that directly connects to a larger main body of water, such as an ocean, a lake, or another bay. A large bay is usually called a ''gulf'', ''sea'', ''sound'', or ''bight''. A ''cove'' is a small, ci ...

arcades which have chevron decorations on the two eastern arches of each arcade. The crossing arch, at the eastern end of the nave, has chevron decorations, and "beak-heads" on the columns. All these are features of the original Norman building.''St Chad's Church''. Leaflet obtained at the church in 2007. There are intersecting arches on either side of the

chancel In church architecture, the chancel is the space around the altar, including the Choir (architecture), choir and the sanctuary (sometimes called the presbytery), at the liturgical east end of a traditional Christian church building. It may termi ...

; these are original features uncovered during the 1850s restoration. The two windows in the north wall of the chancel have interiors which are the only original window features in the building.Stafford St Chad
GENUKI, accessed 12 August 2014. The tower was rebuilt in the 14th century; after this the church became neglected. In the 17th century the original aisles were destroyed, the arcades were bricked up, and the

transept A transept (with two semitransepts) is a transverse part of any building, which lies across the main body of the building. In cruciform ("cross-shaped") cruciform plan, churches, in particular within the Romanesque architecture, Romanesque a ...

s were removed.

Restoration

There was some restoration in the 1740s by Richard Trubshaw, after the west end of the nave collapsed. His work included rebuilding the parapets of the tower and building a new west front, of brick. In the 1850s some restoration of the chancel was done by Henry Ward of Stafford. Restoration work was continued in the 1870s by

: he built a new west front of stone, in Romanesque style, and he opened up the south arcade and built a new aisle on this side. After his death in 1878, work was continued by Robert Griffiths of Stafford, using Scott's designs. From 1880 to 1886 he opened up the north arcade and built a new north aisle; he restored the tower, and the north transept. The south transept was built in the 1950s.

Furnishings

The organ was built by J. Kirkland of London in 1888, and extended by J. J. Binns of Leeds in 1909. It was restored in 1995 by Peter Collins of Melton Mowbray. The font, in Norman style, was built in 1856. The altarpiece was created in 1910 by Sir Walter Tapper. The inner porch, the rood-beam and the telescopic cover of the font were designed in the early 20th century by Sir Charles Nicholson, 2nd Baronet.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Stafford, St Chads Church Grade II* listed churches in Staffordshire Church of England church buildings in Staffordshire English churches with Norman architecture Diocese of Lichfield St Chads Church Anglo-Catholic church buildings in Staffordshire

The original building

Restoration

Furnishings

See also

References