St Giles' Church, Barrow

St Giles’ Church stands in the small hamlet of Barrow, Shropshire, beside the Severn Gorge. It is an active Anglican parish church with a Norman nave and an Anglo-Saxon chancel, the only one of its kind in the county. The building is Grade I listed and has been a place of worship for over a thousand years. Its tower rises in stages, the lower part from the 12th century and the brick top added in the 18th. A red-brick Neoclassical porch, built in 1705, shelters the south door. The church’s origins lie with Wenlock Abbey, and its chancel may date from the 8th or 11th century. In about 1100 a Norman nave replaced an earlier timber structure, and the tower arch still shows the original west doorway. G. E. Street restored the church in 1851–52, and Ewan Christian rebuilt the north chapel and chancel east wall in 1894–95. Traces of Anglo-Saxon work remain in the chancel’s north wall and in the tower arch’s carved tympanum. Inside, the Anglo-Saxon chancel arch was altered during Street’s restoration, and the font is a plain 12th-century tub on a cylindrical stem. The timber pulpit is drum-shaped with traceried panels, and a 17th-century poor box is mounted on a later stem. Outside, the churchyard holds the Grade II chest tomb of John Rose, founder of the Coalport China Works, and the war grave of a Royal Artillery soldier from the Second World War.