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| St. Mary's from the south | View from the west | |
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| Gargoyle | Three storey porch | |
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| The Nave and Chancel | The Tower | |
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| Detail of Screen | West Gallery | |
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| Ceiling of Nave | East Window | |
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| The Astbury yew tree in December 2001 | Canopied tomb of the Breretons |
St. Mary's at Astbury is one of the largest and most impressive churches in the county. It presents some problems for the amateur photographer and I keep returning in the hope of finding ideal conditions. Until the recent restoration the stone was quite dark. Because of the size of the church a wide angle lens would be needed to frame a shot of the tower from the church gate. To photograph the west end with the tower and three storey porch one needs a summer evening with the sun in the west. From the bottom of the churchyard on the south side the spire is almost lost from view as shown at the top left. The brochure available in the church has some very good photographs; the one of the south side appears to have been taken from the level of the clerestory windows, possibly from a helicopter, while the magnificent centre spread, showing the nave, screen and altar, must have been taken from the top of a step-ladder.
Pevsner described it as an exciting but puzzling church. It has a tower to the north of the main body of the church rather than in line with the nave and chancel as shown in the middle picture above. The money for the tower's construction was given in a will in 1366 and it has details are in the Decorated style. The earliest windows are in the north chapel and are from the late 13th century. The windows of the south aisle date from the period 1300 to 1310 as does the two storey south porch.
The church has a three storey porch at the west end, where the tower would commonly be built. The upper chamber of one of the porches formerly held a chained library. The view from the west also shows the 17th century stone arched gate.
There are old tombs of the Brereton family in the churchyard. The one with a canopy shows the effigy of a knight with his lady. It is rare to see a monument of such age outside and these are badly weathered. Raymond Richards notes that it is the tomb of Sir Ralph Brereton but the brochure in the church mentions that is could be the tomb of a Brereton or a Ventables. My photograph below, taken with flash and enhanced digitally allows one to pick out most of the following incripiton, but the beginning of the last work was provided from Ormerod's History of Cheshire, Volume 3 page 33. Note that the letter N is written back-to-front throughout. It translates as "Here lie Radulphus Brereton, knight, and lady Ada his wife one of the daughters of David Earl of Huntingdon. Ormerod gives a family tree of the Breretons of Brereton in which he states "Sir Ralph de Brereton, knight, said in some pedigrees to marry Ada, daughter of David Earl of Huntingdon, relict of Henry Hastings, and living in 1275".
HIC IACENT RADULPHUS BR
ERETON MILES ET DOMINA
ADA UXOR SUA UNA FI
LIARUM DAVIDIS COMI
TIS HUNTINGDONIS
The yew tree is believed to be over 1000 years old and its hollow trunk is now supported.
Sources:
The Buildings of England: Cheshire, by Nikolaus Pevsner and Edward Hubbard, first edition 1971, Yale University Press edition in 2003.
The King's England, Cheshire, edited by Arthur Mee, published by Hodder and Stoughton, 1938, fourth impression 1950.
St. Mary's Church, Astbury, published by the Rector and Wardens in 1995, Old Vicarage Publications, Reades Lane, Congleton, CW12 3LL, ISBN 0-947818-75-8, a coloured brochure available in the church for £1-50 in 2005.
Old Cheshire Churches, with a supplementary survey of the lesser old chapels of Cheshire, completely revised and enlarged by Raymond Richards, first published in 1947 and reprinted by E. J. Morten, Didsbury, 1973.
