St Michael's Church, Madeley, is located near the centre of

Madeley, Shropshire Madeley is a historic market town and civil parish in the borough of Telford and Wrekin, Shropshire, England. The parish had a population of 18,774 at the 2021 census. Madeley is recorded in the Domesday Book, having been founded before the 8t ...

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

. It is one of three places of worship that constitute the Parish of Madeley, a

Church of England The Church of England (C of E) is the State religion#State churches, established List of Christian denominations, Christian church in England and the Crown Dependencies. It is the mother church of the Anglicanism, Anglican Christian tradition, ...

parish. The parish is part of the

Diocese of Hereford The Diocese of Hereford is a Church of England diocese based in Hereford, covering Herefordshire, southern Shropshire and a few parishes within Worcestershire in England, and a few parishes within Powys and Monmouthshire in Wales. The cathedral i ...

History

The church was designed by

Thomas Telford Thomas Telford (9 August 1757 – 2 September 1834) was a Scottish civil engineer. After establishing himself as an engineer of road and canal projects in Shropshire, he designed numerous infrastructure projects in his native Scotland, as well ...

and built in 1796. It was the rebuild of an older church, among whose Vicars had been

John William Fletcher John William Fletcher (born Jean Guillaume de la Fléchère; 12 September 1729 – 14 August 1785) was a Swiss-born English Anglican divine, divine and Methodist leader. Of French Huguenot stock, he was born in Nyon in Vaud, Switzerland. Fletch ...

, whose iron tombstone is in the churchyard.

Architecture

St Michael's Church is an octagonal building with a square

tower A tower is a tall Nonbuilding structure, structure, taller than it is wide, often by a significant factor. Towers are distinguished from guyed mast, masts by their lack of guy-wires and are therefore, along with tall buildings, self-supporting ...

. Both the church building and the churchyard's northern boundary wall were listed in 1983, being Grade II* and

Grade II 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, Hi ...

listed respectively.

War memorials

* West end - two carved wooden panels, at their base two brass plaques listing parishioners who died serving in

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

, with figures of St Luke, St Maurice and

St George Saint George (;Geʽez: ጊዮርጊስ, , ka, გიორგი, , , died 23 April 303), also George of Lydda, was an early Christian martyr who is venerated as a saint in Christianity. According to holy tradition, he was a soldier in the R ...

on one side and St Michael, St Joan of Arc and St Barbara on the other. * West end - stone plaque, removed from closed church of St Paul's, Aqueduct, listing men local to that church who died in both World Wars. * North wall - marble plaque listing men of Madeley parish died in First World War. * Plaque to Lieutenant Frederick John Briscoe, killed at

Ypres Ypres ( ; ; ; ; ) is a Belgian city and municipality in the province of West Flanders. Though the Dutch name is the official one, the city's French name is most commonly used in English. The municipality comprises the city of Ypres/Ieper ...

1915. * Plaque to Lieutenant John Spencer Ruscombe Anstice, killed at

Gallipoli The Gallipoli Peninsula (; ; ) is located in the southern part of East Thrace, the European part of Turkey, with the Aegean Sea to the west and the Dardanelles strait to the east. Gallipoli is the Italian form of the Greek name (), meaning ' ...

1915.

Churchyard

The churchyard contains several cast iron tombstones, including those of J. W. Fletcher (died 1785) and Robert Richard Anstice (died 1853), a stone tombstone of

Thomas Parker (inventor) Thomas Parker (22 December 1843 – 5 December 1915) was an English electrical engineer, inventor and industrialist. He patented improvements in lead-acid batteries and dynamos, and was a pioneer of manufacturing equipment that powered electric ...

Report by Toby Neal, mentioning commemorative Thomas Parker Day on 10 October 2015 and restoration project for the grave. and the war graves of seven

British Army The British Army is the principal Army, land warfare force of the United Kingdom. the British Army comprises 73,847 regular full-time personnel, 4,127 Brigade of Gurkhas, Gurkhas, 25,742 Army Reserve (United Kingdom), volunteer reserve perso ...

soldiers of World War I and two 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 to as a soldier in other definitions. As a military rank designat ...

of World War II. The churchyard is also the resting place of the Nine Men of Madeley—miners, of whom the youngest was aged 12 years, who lost their lives at the Brick Kiln Leasow

ironstone Ironstone is a sedimentary rock, either deposited directly as a ferruginous sediment or created by chemical replacement, that contains a substantial proportion of an iron ore compound from which iron (Fe) can be smelted commercially. Not to be c ...

mine in 1864. William Dyas (1872–1940), first-class cricketer and local businessman and politician, is buried in a family vault here.

References

External links