St Luke's Church is in the village of Goostrey, Cheshire, England. It is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade II* listed building. It is an active Anglican parish church in the diocese of Chester, the archdeaconry of Macclesfield and the deanery of Congleton. Its benefice is combined with that of St Peter, Swettenham.
History
The parish of Goostrey is first mentioned in the Domesday Book and a church or chapel was present by 1244. By 1617 a timber-framed chapel was present on the site which consisted of a nave and a chancel with a south aisle belonging to the Booths of Twemlow. In 1667 another south aisle was constructed for Edmund Jodrell and this was enlarged in 1711. In 1792 this chapel was demolished and the present church built between 1792 and 1796.
Parish of Goostrey
The ecclesiastical parish of Goostrey includes not only the civil parish of that name, but also that of Twemlow, named after the burial mounds or 'lows' found in this part of Cheshire, indicating that people lived here over four thousand years ago. The first documented mention of Goostrey is in the Domesday Book (1086), when most of the parish was held by William Fitz Nigel, Baron of Halton, and by Hugh de Mara, another follower of the Earl of Chester. They gave much land in Goostrey to endow the new abbey of Saint Werburgh in Chester, and later land in the parish was given to help endow the Vale Royal Abbey, near Northwich.
The medieval history of the parish is recorded in grants and agreements which regulated the relations between the abbey at Chester and their local tenants. Occasionally these documents give an insight into the personal lives of the period. For example, in 1286 Honde Merlun broke into the church at Goostrey and took away all the ornaments; or when five brothers of William Eaton of Blackden were slain together and buried in the chapelyard in 1385.
St Luke's Church
St Luke's Church, a Church of England church, was built before 1220, but it was not until 1350 that the mother church of Sandbach allowed burials here. The parishioners of Goostrey frequently found the way to Sandbach impassable because of floods and must have rejoiced when the five mile (8 km) journey across the Rivers Dane and Croco was no longer necessary. The old church was timber framed, as Marton still is today, but all that remains from the Middle Ages of that church is the 15th-century font.
Three of the bells rang in the old building; the oldest was cast in 1606, the next recast in 1705, when the work cost £5, and the third a little later. Of the other three, two were given in 1869 by Anna Maria Toler in memory of Mrs Thomas Hilditch, and the third is modern, dated 1912. The present ring consists of six bells, two of which were cast in 1869 at the Whitechapel Bell Foundry by Mears & Stainbank, and the rest are by James Barwell, dated 1913. The organ was built in 1876 by Wadsworth.
Some of the communion plates are 18th-century, and in 1719 a silver paten was given by Miss Dorothy Jodrell. It was made in London in 1715 by Samuel Wastell. A chalice and flagon, towards which Randle Armstrong gave £20 in 1759, were made in that year by Fuller White of London. There is a modern paten, dated 1902, made in London, and there is a modern chalice given in memory of Sarah Elizabeth Knowles, made in Sheffield and dated 1931.
Parish records
The parish registers, which are well preserved, date back to 1561. They contain a few interesting notes, such as one in 1661 when Marie Worthington, the wife of the minister of Goostrey, died, and after the entry is written the word 'scould' in a different ink. Another note among the next year's burials tells that Mr Whishall 'married five wives,' and later, in 1674, when James Dean married Margaret Hall, we read that she was his third wife 'all within the year'. At the back of the volume, among a list of notices relating to collections made in the chapelry, are documented donations sent to towns like Ripon in Yorkshire or Bridgnorth in Shropshire, as well as one contribution sent to Hugh Evans 'having his house and his household goods burnt in the county of Salop'. The registers also document how everyone agreed to the appointment of Mr Henry Newcome as minister on 7 October 1648, and it seems that even into the 18th century the inhabitants had some say in which clergyman was given the living of Goostrey, even though the final decision must have rested then as now with the vicar of Sandbach. Mr Newcome was a strict puritan, and forbade two of his most prominent parishioners from coming to Holy Communion for their frequent drinking. He left after eighteen months to become Rector of Gawsworth.