St Alkmund's Church

St Alkmund's Church is the active Anglican parish church of Whitchurch in Shropshire, standing at an elevated position in the centre of the town — a Grade I listed building in the Diocese of Lichfield, the archdeaconry of Salop and the deanery of Wem and Whitchurch. By tradition it was founded in 912 by the Anglo-Saxon Queen Æthelflæd, "Lady of the Mercians" and daughter of Alfred the Great; the saint to whom it is dedicated, Alkmund — son of Alhred, King of Northumbria — may by some accounts have been first buried at Whitchurch, before Æthelflæd translated his relics to Shrewsbury around the time of the foundation. The church even gave the town its name: the earliest textual record of a church on the site, in 1089, describes a building of white stone — the "white church" that became Whitchurch.

The medieval church gathered famous dead. In 1403, after his death at the Battle of Shrewsbury, Sir Henry Percy — "Hotspur" of Shakespeare's Henry IV — was temporarily buried here. And toward the end of the fifteenth century the body of John Talbot, 1st Earl of Shrewsbury — "the English Achilles", terror of the French in the Hundred Years' War, killed at the Battle of Castillon in 1453 — was removed to the church: his embalmed heart was buried under the porch, and his bones lie under his effigy in the Lady Chapel. The first rector had been instituted in 1296, and later rectors included Nicholas Bernard (1600–1661), previously Dean of Ardagh, who is buried here, as is the great Nonconformist diarist Philip Henry.

On 31 July 1711 the fifteenth-century central tower of the medieval church collapsed, and the whole building had to be rebuilt. The foundation stone was laid on 27 March 1712, and the new church was consecrated with remarkable speed on 8 October the same year — built by the mason William Smith of Tettenhall to the designs of John Barker of Rowsley. The result is one of the finest Queen Anne churches in the country: red sandstone ashlar with grey sandstone details under a slate roof, in the neoclassical style, with a six-bay nave, north and south aisles, three-bay apsidal chancel, south porch and integral west tower. The windows are tall and round-arched with small panes in cast-iron frames — originally clear glass, some replaced with Victorian stained glass. The four-stage tower carries oculi, a carved coat of arms, paired niches, round-headed belfry openings, clock faces of 1977 with mechanism by JB Joyce & Co of Whitchurch — the town's own world-famous tower-clock makers — and a crowning balustrade with large urn finials and weather vanes. A balustraded porch approached by stone steps stands below an inscribed sundial with wrought-iron gnomon.

Inside, Tuscan columns and round arches divide the aisles from the nave, with a west gallery on unfluted wooden Doric columns. Beneath the gallery is a triptych war memorial to the parish men who died in the First World War, with a mosaic of St Michael in the central panel, dedicated by the parents of Lieutenant Thomas Chesters Bowler, who is among those listed. The Lady Chapel, entered through an oak screen at the east end of the south aisle, holds a Jacobean communion table with nineteenth-century marble top, a red sandstone reredos with carved panels and painted inscriptions, and above it a painting of the Last Supper attributed to Bonifazio Veronese. In the chapel's south wall is the chest tomb of John Talbot, 1st Earl of Shrewsbury — his recumbent fifteenth-century praying effigy with dogs at its feet on a nineteenth-century tomb chest — with the arms of Queen Anne high on the east wall. At the east end of the north aisle is the tomb of Sir John Talbot, founder of the town's grammar school, who died in 1550, with a sixteenth-century alabaster effigy of a praying knight. Under the gallery stands a red and yellow sandstone font dated 1661 with wooden cover, beside a hexagonal table made from the sounding board of the former eighteenth-century pulpit; an eighteenth-century brass chandelier hangs in the nave, Commandment boards line the north aisle, and a brass plaque commemorates the composer Edward German — Whitchurch's most famous son, the successor of Sullivan in English light opera. A north aisle window holds fragments of medieval glass; the apse glass of 1860 by Warrington depicts the Ascension between St Peter and St Paul, and a south aisle window of 1868 is by Ward and Hughes. The three-manual organ results from Peter Conacher's 1894 rebuilding of an earlier instrument — moved that year from the west gallery to the north of the chancel — restored and altered by Hill, Norman & Beard in 1966. The ring of eight bells includes seven cast by Rudhall of Gloucester — five in 1714 and two in 1767 — with one of 1842 by John Taylor & Co.

The church was restored in 1877–79 and 1885–86, the brick internal walls refaced with stone and the apse redecorated in 1900–02, the porch rebuilt in 1925, and the north and south galleries removed in 1972. Its rectors have included the Honourable Henry Egerton (1723–1746), also Bishop of Hereford; Francis Egerton, 8th Earl of Bridgewater (1797–1829) — the eccentric founder of the Bridgewater Treatises; William Henry Egerton, whose tenure ran an astonishing sixty-two years (1846–1908); Canon Judy Hunt (2012–2023), previously Archdeacon of Suffolk; and, from 2024, the Reverend Christopher Precious. In the churchyard stand a Grade II listed chest tomb of 1815 to Ann Loveit, a Grade II listed sundial on a vase-shaped column, and the war grave of a Royal Field Artillery soldier of the First World War. Anglican services continue on Sundays and some weekdays — eleven centuries after Æthelflæd, the white church on the hill still names and crowns its town.