A thousand years of worship

Local people have worshipped on this site for over a thousand years. A church is people; the building itself is only an architectural record of a community at prayer. So the structural alterations of many centuries reflect two things: a continuity of worship, and the ever changing rituals and beliefs of the English Church. Or, put simply, in the words of Sir John Betjeman:

Our churches are our history shown,
In wood and iron and glass and stone.

c. AD 755	Wooden Anglo-Saxon church on site
1086	Bunbury mentioned in Domesday
1135	Stone Norman church exists
1320	Church rebuilt in Decorated style.
1385-6	Sir Hugh de Calveley endows new collegiate church.
c. 1490	Nave remodelled.
1527	Ridley Chapel begun by Sir Raufe Egerton
1548	Chantry chapels and colleges dissolved during Reformation; Bunbury loses its endowments. Church reverts to Crown
1565	Elizabeth I sells tithes to Thomas Aldersey (London haberdasher and Member of Parliament).
1590	Aldersey appoints puritan Haberdashers' Company as his trustees.
1642	"Bunbury Convention" held in church. Neutrality of Cheshire in Civil War declared.
1643	Convention fails. "Church fired by Royalists much damage".
1700s	Nave galleries added
1751	John Wesley preaches at Bunbury.
1863-6	Victorian "restorations": plaster, wall-paintings, box-pews, galleries all removed; new roof; floor tiled.
1931	Electric light introduced.
1940	Land-mine seriously damages church
1960	Reverend Ridgeway appeals on new medium of television for repair funds.
2000	?

The Tower

Back to Tour start