St Mary's Church, Nantwich

St Mary's Church in Nantwich, Cheshire, is one of the finest medieval parish churches in England — so grand and beautiful that it has long been called "the Cathedral of South Cheshire". A Grade I listed building of warm red sandstone, crowned by an unusual octagonal central tower, it was described by the architectural writer Raymond Richards as "one of the great architectural treasures of Cheshire", and the historian Alec Clifton-Taylor included it among his list of "outstanding" English parish churches. With its richly vaulted chancel, its carved stonework and its celebrated medieval woodwork, St Mary's is a building of cathedral-like splendour at the heart of the historic salt town of Nantwich.

The church had humble beginnings as a chapel of ease in the large parish of Acton, the mother church a little to the west. About 1130 both Acton church and the Nantwich chapel came under the control of the Cistercian abbey of Combermere. The present church, however, was a grand new building begun about 1340 in the elaborate Decorated Gothic style, the style most fashionable in English church-building at the time. The masons came from Yorkshire and used local sandstone, probably quarried at Eddisbury near Delamere. The work was interrupted between 1349 and 1369, almost certainly because of the catastrophe of the Black Death, which devastated England in those years; but by the 1380s the prosperity of the town — built on its valuable salt industry — had recovered, and building work resumed, this later phase being carried out in the Perpendicular style by master masons of great skill.

The result is a church of remarkable richness. Its most distinctive external feature is the octagonal central tower, an unusual and striking design rising over the crossing. Inside, the church is famous for the quality of its medieval craftsmanship: the chancel has a magnificent lierne-vaulted stone ceiling, a web of intersecting ribs studded with carved bosses; the sedilia — the seats for the clergy — are crowned with exquisitely carved stone canopies; and above the choir stalls are intricately carved wooden canopies. Greatest of all are the twenty misericords at the back of the choir stalls — the carved seats whose undersides depict a wonderful variety of scenes, from saints and angels to humorous and grotesque figures from daily life and legend. These misericords are among the finest in England, and rank with the best medieval woodcarving in the country.

The church suffered the usual losses at the Reformation and in later centuries, and in the nineteenth century it was substantially restored by the most prolific of all Victorian church architects, Sir George Gilbert Scott, who repaired and renewed the fabric while preserving its medieval glory. The town of Nantwich around it has its own dramatic history: a great fire in 1583 destroyed much of the town, and Queen Elizabeth I herself contributed to its rebuilding, which is why Nantwich today is famous for its black-and-white timber-framed Tudor buildings.

Today St Mary's continues as a thriving Anglican parish church in the Diocese of Chester, the great church of Nantwich, with a full round of worship and a busy community life. Its scale, its architecture and its medieval treasures make it one of the most rewarding churches to visit in Cheshire, fully deserving its title as the cathedral of the south of the county.

The church stands at the heart of the historic market town of Nantwich, in south Cheshire, on the River Weaver. The town's fine Tudor buildings, its medieval streets and its old salt-making heritage lie all around, along with the Shropshire Union Canal, the great houses and gardens of the Cheshire countryside, the town of Crewe with its railway heritage, and the wider landscapes of south Cheshire and the Shropshire border, with the Welsh hills within easy reach.

From its origins as a chapel of ease of Acton, through the building of the great Decorated church from about 1340, the interruption of the Black Death and the resumption of work in the Perpendicular style, the carving of its superb misericords and the restoration by Sir George Gilbert Scott, St Mary's Church gathers many centuries of Cheshire history into one building. A Grade I listed church with its octagonal tower and its medieval treasures, the "Cathedral of South Cheshire", it remains the living parish church of Nantwich — one of the great medieval churches of England.