The Church of St Luke,

Sheen, Staffordshire Sheen is a village and civil parish in north-east Staffordshire, England. The parish is about north to south and about east to west. The eastern boundary is the River Dove (the boundary with Derbyshire), and the western boundary is the River M ...

is a

Grade II* listed 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 ...

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 ...

church. Its origins are of the 14th century, but it was largely rebuilt in the mid-19th century, firstly by C. W. Burleigh, and then by William Butterfield. The church, and its associated parsonage, were the last buildings recorded by

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 ...

in his Buildings of England series, when he concluded the series in 1974 with his

Staffordshire Staffordshire (; postal abbreviation Staffs.) is a landlocked county in the West Midlands region of England. It borders Cheshire to the northwest, Derbyshire and Leicestershire to the east, Warwickshire to the southeast, the West Midlands Cou ...

volume, finishing a project begun in 1945.

History

The church was founded in the 14th century. Reconstruction began in 1850, under the supervision of a local architect, C. W. Burleigh of

Leeds Leeds () is a city and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds district in West Yorkshire, England. It is built around the River Aire and is in the eastern foothills of the Pennines. It is also the third-largest settlement (by populati ...

. Burleigh was soon replaced by William Butterfield, due to the intervention of the patron of the living, A. J. B. Beresford Hope. Beresford Hope was interested in reorganising the parish in line with the

Tractarian The Oxford Movement was a movement of high church members of the Church of England which began in the 1830s and eventually developed into Anglo-Catholicism. The movement, whose original devotees were mostly associated with the University of O ...

movement; in 1851 he presented his friend Benjamin Webb to the perpetual curacy of Sheen. Webb had been reluctant to accept the living because of the remoteness of the area, and resigned in 1862; he was replaced by T. E. Heygate, the assistant curate since 1851.

Pevsner's visit

On the morning of Tuesday 6 October 1970, Pevsner arrived at the church in the company of the journalist

Geoffrey Moorhouse Geoffrey Moorhouse, FRGS, FRSL, D.Litt. (29 November 1931 – 26 November 2009) was an English journalist and author. He was born Geoffrey Heald in Bolton and took his stepfather's surname. He attended Bury Grammar School. He began writing as a ...

. Pevsner had begun work on the Buildings of England series in 1945, with the first volume, ''Cornwall'', being published in 1951. By the time he arrived in Sheen, to complete the work with the volume covering Staffordshire, 45 volumes had been written. Moorhouse recorded the visit to Sheen in an article in

The Observer ''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the w ...

, published on 10 October 1970, and entitled "Pevsner's Last Building". Pevsner recorded his own impressions of Butterfield's parsonage, and of Victorian architecture more generally, in the conclusion of his entry for Sheen. (See box). The church remains an active parish church in the Diocese of Lichfield.

Architecture and description

The church is of coursed stone, with a tower,

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 ...

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 ...

vestry A vestry was a committee for the local secular and ecclesiastical government for a parish in England, Wales and some English colonies which originally met in the vestry or sacristy of the parish church, and consequently became known colloquiall ...

and porch. The tower has a

pyramidal A pyramid (from el, πυραμίς ') is a structure whose outer surfaces are triangular and converge to a single step at the top, making the shape roughly a pyramid in the geometric sense. The base of a pyramid can be trilateral, quadrilater ...

roof. The style of the whole is Pointed Gothic. The church is a Grade II* listed building. The parsonage is also Grade II* listed, and Pevsner describes it as "personal and forceful". At the time of their visit, Moorhouse noted that the parsonage was "abandoned and mostly boarded up". It has since been restored.

Notes

References

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Sheen, St Luke's Church Church of England church buildings in Staffordshire Grade II* listed churches in Staffordshire Diocese of Lichfield

History

Pevsner's visit

Architecture and description

See also

Notes

References