St Luke's Church Clock, Holmes Chapel скачать в хорошем качестве

St Luke's Church Clock, Holmes Chapel

A look at St Luke's Church Clock in Holmes, Chapel Cheshire on Saturday 20th December 2014. A Saxon church may once have stood on this site. However the history of the church can be traced back to around 1245 when the Abbot of Dieulaces granted a licence to hold services in the chapel at Church Hulme to the Abbot of St. Werbergh’s Abbey, Chester. It was a chapel of ease for the mother church at Sandbach and enabled local inhabitants to hold baptisms, marriages and burials and to worship regularly without the necessity of travelling to Sandbach. The original church was probably a simple wooden structure. Around 1430, it was extended to become a black-and-white half-timbered building with a red Cheshire sandstone tower. The roof was of scalloped oak, supported by eight wooden pillars. The Needham family of Cranage supplied some of the funds. The Winnington family of the Hermitage may have provided money for the chapel on the south side, as they claimed it for their use. The church used to have at least two stained glass windows, memorials to members of the Needham family, in the north aisle. These were intact until about 1640 when they were probably destroyed during the Civil War. The tower bears bullet marks at its base, resulting from a skirmish in the village in 1643. In 1702, Thomas Hall, ironmaster, purchased the Hermitage. He made major changes to the structure of the church. The half-timbered walls were removed and replaced with local brick, leaving only the original eight pillars. The mediaeval roof was hidden behind three arched plaster ceilings to retain warmth in the unheated church. In 1705, galleries were incorporated on the south and west sides. Thomas Hall also donated the central brass chandelier, surmounted by a wooden dove, in 1708. Five of the seven bells date from 1706 and the remaining two from 1858. The present church clock was installed in 1841 with its faces set in wooden diamonds on the north and south sides.