St Boniface's Church, Bunbury

St Boniface's Church stands prominently in the village of Bunbury, Cheshire, a Grade I listed building dating mainly from the fourteenth century and one of the most admired parish churches in the county. Raymond Richards, author of Old Cheshire Churches, considers it architecturally one of the most important examples of its period in Cheshire; Alec Clifton-Taylor included it in his list of "best" English parish churches; and Simon Jenkins gave it two stars in England's Thousand Best Churches. It is an active Anglican parish church in the Diocese of Chester, the archdeaconry of Chester and the deanery of Malpas, its benefice combined with that of St Jude, Tilstone Fearnall.

A church has stood on the site since the eighth century — first a wooden Anglo-Saxon building, replaced by a stone Norman church by 1135; carved Norman stones found beneath the floor are stored in the south porch. The church was rebuilt in the Decorated style in 1320, but its defining moment came in 1385–86, when Sir Hugh Calveley, one of the most famous English soldiers of the Hundred Years' War, endowed it as a collegiate church, prompting the rebuilding from which much of the existing structure dates. A chantry chapel was added in 1527 by Sir Rauph Egerton of Ridley. After the dissolution of the chantries and collegiate churches in 1547, the merchant Thomas Aldersey acquired the church's tithes and advowson and endowed a preacher and curate in Bunbury, donating the rights to the Worshipful Company of Haberdashers, who honoured his wishes by appointing Puritan ministers — among them, later, the noted divine William Hinde. Nave galleries went in during the eighteenth century and came out again in the restoration of 1863–66 by Pennington and Bridgen, which also removed wall paintings and box pews, tiled the floor and built a new roof. In 1940 a land mine seriously damaged the church, and the roof was replaced in 1950 by Marshall Sisson.

Built of red sandstone with a lead and slate roof, the church is mainly Perpendicular in style. A west tower leads to a broad six-bay nave with narrow eight-bay north and south aisles that enclose the tower; the three-bay chancel, narrower than the nave, leads to a sanctuary with a vestry to the north, and the Ridley chapel adjoins the chancel's south side, with a south porch at the fifth bay. The tower has a west doorway under a three-light window, single-lancet ringers' windows, four-light belfry windows, and battlements and pinnacles at its crown; the north aisle parapet is of stone openwork with crocketed pinnacles, while the south aisle's is crenellated.

The interior is a treasury. Fragments of medieval wall paintings survive; the octagonal stone font is dated 1662, the oak communion rail 1717, and a Baroque brass chandelier 1756. The choir stalls and pulpit are of carved oak, the pulpit on a stone base, and the chancel screen of 1921 is by F. H. Crossley. The stone screen to the Ridley chapel — the chantry built in 1527 for Sir Ralph Egerton — is "the only substantial painted medieval screen to survive in Cheshire", and twelve painted figures from a former parclose screen of about 1450, including Saint Catherine, Saint Apollonia and Saint Anthony of Egypt, were restored in 1988 (the woodwork at the Victoria and Albert Museum) and are mounted along the south wall. Original stained glass survives in fragments in several windows, with glass by Kempe of 1905 in the south chancel wall, windows of 1952 by R. C. Evetts in the north chancel wall, and east, west and north-aisle east windows by Christopher Webb of St Albans.

The monuments give the church its fame. In the centre of the chancel, enclosed within contemporary ironwork, lies the alabaster chest tomb and effigy of Sir Hugh Calveley, who died on 23 April 1394 — the knight-commander who won renown in the War of the Breton Succession and the Castilian Civil War, held military posts across Brittany and Normandy, and founded Bunbury's college in the 1380s. The niches of the sarcophagus once held weepers, the small mourning figures of medieval tombs, and the effigy was likely commissioned by his old comrade-in-arms Sir Robert Knolles — though there is some doubt whether Calveley was actually buried here. In the north wall of the sanctuary is the tomb of Sir George Beeston, commander of the Dreadnought against the Spanish Armada in 1588 — reputedly at the age of eighty-nine. His Latin epitaph, set up by his son Hugh, Receiver General of the Crown revenues in Cheshire and North Wales, traces a military career spanning four reigns: chosen as a gentleman pensioner by Henry VIII at the siege of Boulogne in 1544, serving under Edward VI against the Scots at Musselburgh in 1547, then under Mary and Elizabeth as captain or vice-captain of the fleet, knighted after the Armada's defeat, and dying in 1601 — his memorial claims at the age of 102. Beside him rests his wife Alice, daughter of Thomas Davenport of Henbury, who bore him six children and died in 1591 after sixty-six years of marriage; a further inscription records their son Sir Hugh Beeston, who died in 1627, and grandson George, "a youth, alas! snatched away by a too early death" in 1611. Through Beeston's daughter Dorothy the family line ran to Anne Copleston, who married Edward Chichester, 1st Viscount Chichester, Governor of Carrickfergus.

The church holds quieter curiosities too. A triple sedilia and double-draining piscina are set in the south wall of the sanctuary. In the north aisle stands the effigy of Jane Johnson, who died in 1741 — removed to the churchyard and buried around 1760 on the orders of the incumbent, rediscovered in the nineteenth century, and restored to the church. Three memorial boards are believed to have been painted by members of the Randle Holme family of Chester, and in the north-east corner are stone coffin lids and defaced effigies from the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries. The organ, built in 1895 by P. Conacher of Huddersfield, was extensively rebuilt in 1968 by Henry Willis & Sons. The tower carries a ring of eight bells, the two oldest from about 1500 and 1610, two cast by Rudhall of Gloucester in 1715 and 1758, and the rest from the Whitechapel Bell Foundry — Thomas Mears II in 1817, and Mears and Stainbank in 1895 and 1898. The parish registers begin in 1559 and the churchwardens' accounts in 1655.

The churchyard matches the church's distinction: the north gates and the west memorial gates of about 1919 are listed at Grade II, as are a red sandstone sundial of 1710 and a gravestone of two sandstone slabs probably from the early sixteenth century. The old churchyard holds the war graves of five soldiers of the First World War, and the extension those of four soldiers and a naval officer of the Second — the village's own roll of honour beside the tombs of the warrior of Crécy's age and the sea-captain of the Armada.