Since 1874 this church has stood guarding the souls of the good people of Stoke-on-Tern
Note: This is an operating church, please be respectful on a Sunday morning.
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The Corbet family have many connections in the area and it was Rev. Rowland Corbet who built the present church in 1874. Nikolas Pevsner in Buildings of England noted the most obvious feature of the church, the very size of it! Standing alone in its water meadows, it is clearly much bigger and grander than the needs of this rural parish.
It is said that the Shropshire Giant, Thomas Dutton, was involved with the building and carried the stones to build the tower. Thomas was 7ft 3in tall and weighed 23 stone. Born in Stoke on Tern in 1852 he spent his early life in the army but returned home in 1881. Later he moved to Manchester to find employment, where he met and married Betsey Allcock, and joined Bostock and Wombwells travelling circus becoming famous throughout Britain and Europe as “The British Soldier Giant”.
It is believed he lived in France with his wife and several children for at least 7 years before returning again to Stoke on Tern to look after his elderly mother, taking over from his father as an agricultural labourer. Thomas spent the rest of his life with Betsey in their cottage nearby in Stoke on Tern. It is widely believed he assisted in the building of the school and this church.
During Thomas’s life he had difficulty purchasing shoes in the correct size for his large feet. He relied on one of the Whitchurch shoe shops to have them made for him. In order to do this they kept one of his shoes as a template, and this shoe still exists today in the Whitchurch Heritage Collection.
He died in 1926, aged 73, is buried in the graveyard and you can visit his grave here.
Details from the Whitchurch Heritage Centre, http://whitchurch-heritage.co.uk
The church itself has several stained glass windows some of which are meant to be copies of windows in the original church which burnt down. The most interesting feature within the church is the alabaster tomb in the Corbet chapel to the memory of Sir Reginald Corbet and his wife Alice and their nine children. He was appointed a Justice of Common Pleas to Queen Elizabeth the first.
The church building remained largely unchanged until 2003 when they obtained a faculty to make the building more appropriate to life in the 21st century. A new heating system, chairs to replace pews, carpet, toilets and a kitchen were added, making it a more welcoming place for worship and fellowship. Worship today, whilst maintaining many Anglican traditions, also includes modern worship and the active use of everybody’s talents and gifts.
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For full information on how you can expand the Church Micro series by sadexploration please read the Place your own Church Micro page before you contact him at churchmicro@gmail.com.
See also the Church Micro Statistics and Home pages for further information about the series.
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Note: Church and Parish Council permission has been granted for the placement of this cache, it is outside of actual church grounds.
Cache is maintained by my sister, klbooth, who attends this church.