St Andrew's Church, Wroxeter

St Andrew’s Church stands in the quiet village of Wroxeter, on the edge of the old Roman town of Viroconium. It is built mostly of sandstone taken from the ruins nearby, with a tall west tower, a south porch, and a small chancel. The nave’s north wall still shows its Anglo-Saxon origins, its stones fitted with Lewis holes from earlier buildings. The churchyard gate piers are themselves made from Roman masonry, reused in the 19th century. A preaching cross once stood in the churchyard, and fragments of a 7th-century cross-shaft remain set into the south wall. The church’s history reaches back to at least the 5th or 6th century, when a church may have stood near the Roman baths. By the time of the Domesday Book it had a college of four priests, and later William FitzAlan gave it to Haughmond Abbey. The building grew in stages: a chancel about 1190, a south aisle about 1210, and a chantry chapel soon after. After the Reformation much was lost, but the tower was raised in 1555 using stone from the abbey. Restorations in the 19th century stabilised the structure, and in 1987 it passed to the Churches Conservation Trust. Inside, the chancel holds an Easter Sepulchre with traces of medieval wall paintings and an aumbry for sacred vessels. The nave contains box pews and a large font carved from a Roman column. On the walls hang benefactors’ boards, Royal arms, and a painted reredos with the Creed. Stained glass by E. Baillie shows the twelve apostles, while later windows by Morris & Co. depict saints and war memorials. The tower’s six bells range from 1598 to 1877, and the west gallery houses an 1861 organ. Among the memorials are alabaster tomb-chests for Thomas Bromley and Sir Richard Newport, and a marble monument attributed to Grinling Gibbons.