Portal:Cheshire/Selected article/30



St Mary's Church, Astbury, is a grade-I-listed Anglican parish church in the village of Newbold Astbury. The existing church is Norman in origin, perhaps replacing a Saxon building on the site. The exterior dates from the 13th and 14th centuries, and all styles of English Gothic architecture are visible: Early English, Decorated, and Perpendicular. During the English Civil War, Sir William Brereton's Roundheads stabled their horses in the church. The interior was restored by George Gilbert Scott in the 19th century.

Described as "one of the most exciting Cheshire churches," it has an unusual trapezoidal shape, with an exceptionally wide nave, broader than that of Chester Cathedral. The tower is separate from the body of the church, joined to it by a passage with a porch, and is built in millstone grit, a rare material in Cheshire churches. The interior contains a Norman round-headed archway, and has the largest collection of medieval fittings and furniture of any Cheshire church. A late-13th-century canopied tomb, two medieval memorials and more than fifty 17th-century gravestones survive in the churchyard.

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