Scheduled Monument: Site Of The Church Of St Chad (1017060)

EXTRACT FROM ENGLISH HERITAGE'S RECORD OF SCHEDULED MONUMENTS MONUMENT: Site of the church of St Chad PARISH: WYBUNBURY DISTRICT: CREWE AND NANTWICH COUNTY: CHESHIRE NATIONAL MONUMENT NO: 32564 NATIONAL GRID REFERENCE(S): SJ70014986 DESCRIPTION OF THE MONUMENT The monument includes the footprint of the partly demolished church of St Chad at Wybunbury. The nave and chancel of the church which used to stand on the site were pulled down in 1976 because the foundations could not be stabilised and the structure was becoming dangerous. The tower is still standing after extensive engineering works to underpin the structure. This work has destroyed any archaeological value of the ground beneath, and consequently the tower is totally excluded from the scheduling. The dedication of the church to St Chad, who was Bishop of the Mercians in AD 669, suggests that the church may have been important during the latter years of the Kingdom of Mercia. The Domesday survey records the settlement of Wybunbury as having a priest. From the 17th until the early 19th century the parish included 18 townships, suggesting that the church had been an important minster church (mother church) during the medieval period. The church tower dates to the 15th century, although fragments of a 12th century building were found near the tower during excavations in 1893. The church was partly demolished and rebuilt in 1593 and again in 1760, leaving only the tower. The chancel was demolished and rebuilt in 1792, 1833 and 1893. The restoration of 1893 incorporated the chancel into the existing nave, leaving the area of the former chancel to become a burial ground which is still in use as a memorial garden and as a place for cremation interments. The scheduling includes the platform of the former nave of 1760, which is considered to include below ground remains of earlier structures. This platform measures 26m from east to west and 20m from north to south. On the northern side of this area there are the remains of six buttresses which project into the path made of former gravestones which runs beside the visible stone foundations to the memorial garden at the eastern end. The surface of the path to the north of the site, and the paths, memorials and gravestones which are part of the memorial garden to the east are excluded from the scheduling, although the ground beneath these features is included. The church tower is totally excluded from the scheduling. ASSESSMENT OF IMPORTANCE A parish church is a building, usually of roughly rectangular outline and containing a range of furnishings and fittings appropriate to its use for Christian worship by a secular community, whose members gather in it on Sundays and on the occasion of religious festivals. Children are initiated into the Christian religion at the church's font and the dead are buried in its churchyard. Parish churches were designed for congregational worship and are generally divided into two main parts: the nave, which provides accommodation for the laity, and the chancel, which is the main domain of the priest and contains the principal altar. Either or both parts are sometimes provided with aisles, giving additional accommodation or spaces for additional altars. Most parish churches also possess towers, generally at the west end, but central towers at the crossing of nave and chancel are not uncommon and some churches have a free-standing or irregularly sited tower. Many parish churches also possess transepts at the crossing of chancel and nave, and south or north porches are also common. The main periods of parish church foundation were in the 10th to 11th and 19th centuries. Most medieval churches were rebuilt and modified on a number of occasions and hence the visible fabric of the church will be of several different dates, with in some cases little fabric of the first church being still easily visible. Parish churches are found throughout England. Their distribution reflects the density of population at the time they were founded. In regions of dispersed settlement parishes were often large and churches less numerous. The densest clusters of parish churches were found in thriving medieval towns. A survey of 1625 reported the existence of nearly 9000 parish churches in England. New churches built in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries increased numbers to around 18,000 of which 17,000 remain in ecclesiastical use. Parish churches have always been major features of the landscape and a major focus of life for their parishioners. They provide important insights into medieval and later population levels or economic cycles, religious activity, artistic endeavour and technical achievement. A significant number of surviving examples are identified to be nationally important. The remains of the parish church of St Chad form an important survival of archaeological evidence for the succession of churches which have been built on this site. Below ground features will include both building foundations and burials which will provide insight into the methods of construction used in different periods as well as the evidence for diet, disease and genetic characteristics of the buried population inside the churches. MONUMENT INCLUDED IN THE SCHEDULE ON 14th December 1999