St Leonard's Church is in the village of

Warmingham Warmingham is a village and civil parish in the unitary authority of Cheshire East and ceremonial county of Cheshire, England, on the River Wheelock (at ), north of Crewe, south of Middlewich and miles west of Sandbach. The parish also include ...

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 as a designated Grade II* listed building. 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 in the diocese of Chester, the archdeaconry of Macclesfield and the deanery of Congleton. Its

benefice A benefice () or living is a reward received in exchange for services rendered and as a retainer for future services. The Roman Empire used the Latin term as a benefit to an individual from the Empire for services rendered. Its use was adopted by ...

is combined with that of St Peter, Minshull Vernon.

History

The tower dates from 1715. The rest of the church was timber framed, then rebuilt in stone in 1870 by R. C. Hussey. The original windows in the tower were replaced by windows in

Gothic Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths **Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...

style in 1899.

Architecture

Exterior

The tower is built in small bluish bricks, and the rest of the church is in red sandstone squared rubble 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. The tower is at the west end. The church is cruciform in shape with a 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 (geography), gulf, sea, sound (geography), sound, or bight (geogra ...

nave and a less lofty one-bay chancel, very short transepts, and a north porch. The tower has a stone plinth, stone quoins, and stone bands which divide it into four stages. On the north and south sides are clock faces and on the west side is a bullseye window. Above these are two-light bell openings. At the top is a moulded

cornice In architecture, a cornice (from the Italian ''cornice'' meaning "ledge") is generally any horizontal decorative moulding that crowns a building or furniture element—for example, the cornice over a door or window, around the top edge of a ...

, and a crenellated parapet with crocketted

pinnacle A pinnacle is an architectural element originally forming the cap or crown of a buttress or small turret, but afterwards used on parapets at the corners of towers and in many other situations. The pinnacle looks like a small spire. It was mainly ...

s. Other than the tower, the church is in Perpendicular style.

Interior

The choirstalls have carved poppyheads. The

font In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a typeface. Each font is a matched set of type, with a piece (a "sort") for each glyph. A typeface consists of a range of such fonts that shared an overall design. In mod ...

is in carved oak and dates from the 16th century. The stained glass windows in the south transept and the east window are by Maréchal and Champigneule of Metz and are dated 1870. Those in the north transept and the south aisle are by Heaton, Butler and Bayne and are dated 1878. The memorials include a Rococo monument to William Vernon who died in 1732. Other monuments are a rectangular brass plate to Rev William Lingards who died in 1620, a marble tablet with an oval panel to Rev Randulph Crewe who died in 1777, and a marble table to Ralph Vernon who died in 1798. Also in the church is a wooden benefaction board dated 1755.

External features

In the churchyard is the base of a medieval cross dating from around 1298 or later. It is in red sandstone and consists of a two-step base on top of which is a

bevel A bevelled edge (UK) or beveled edge (US) is an edge of a structure that is not perpendicular to the faces of the piece. The words bevel and chamfer overlap in usage; in general usage they are often interchanged, while in technical usage they ...

led block. This holds a short Tuscan column on the top of which are the fixings for a

sundial A sundial is a horological device that tells the time of day (referred to as civil time in modern usage) when direct sunlight shines by the apparent position of the Sun in the sky. In the narrowest sense of the word, it consists of a flat ...

. It is listed at Grade II, and is a scheduled monument.

References