Church of St Lawrence is a Grade II* listed building in the Cheshire West and Chester local planning authority area, England. First listed on 1 June 1967. A Medieval Church.
Church of St Lawrence
- WRENN ID
- small-chamber-wagtail
- Grade
- II*
- Local Planning Authority
- Cheshire West and Chester
- Constituency
- Runcorn and Helsby MP: Sarah Pochin (RUK)
- Country
- England
- Date first listed
- 1 June 1967
- Type
- Church
- Period
- Medieval
- Address
- Church of St Lawrence, Church Lane, Stoak
- OS grid reference
- SJ 423 732
- Coordinates
- 53.25343, -2.86532
- Source
- Historic England listing
Description
The Church of St Lawrence is a Grade II* listed building, mostly constructed in 1827 by George Edgecumbe, with a chancel in the Perpendicular style. It stands on the site of a Saxon chapel and is built from red sandstone with slate roofs. The church has a cruciform plan, featuring a west tower, nave, north and south transepts, and a chancel. The tower, designed in a 15th-century style, is embattled and buttressed. The west end includes an arched door with a rectangular hood, a deeply recessed 2-light hooded window, a clock in a lozenge tablet, and a 2-light bell opening with a rectangular hood. The nave has four rectangular hooded windows set in deep recesses, alternating between two 2-light and two 1-light windows, positioned between stepped buttresses. The south transept features a 3-light window in the Perpendicular style. The chancel has an east window of three lights with panel tracery, and side windows with two cusped lights. There are memorial tablets on the east wall, including one to Thomas Hill of Stanney from 1809, with an inscription on an urn in shallow relief on a triangular ground. A square apron supported by stone brackets bears an inscription to Ann Hill, his wife, from 1829. The north wall of the chancel has an inscription for the church wardens from 1698.
Inside, the church has a hammer beam roof with 3½ bays in the nave and 1½ bays in the transepts. The altar, dating from 1686/7, features twisted legs and a plain bottom rail, while the altar rail, likely of similar age, has twisted balusters and a moulded rail. An octagonal panelled pulpit from the late 17th or early 18th century stands on a later base. Benches around the font have twisted and turned legs, probably from the early 18th century. Fragments of an early 16th-century rood screen with openwork cusped arches are incorporated into the 1827 gallery. The church contains 11 memorial tablets, painted on wood and likely created by Randle Holmes, dating from 1627 to 1702, primarily commemorating the Bunbury family. Additional memorials include a painted wood tablet from 1685, a wall tablet from 1668 to Henry Bunbury and family, a marble oval tablet, a marble square tablet from 1682 to Thomas Bunbury, and a large, elaborate marble wall monument to Henry Bunbury, dated 1732, erected by his family.
Local climate
Church of St Lawrence receives an average of 890 mm of rain a year. This makes it wetter than 66% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is lower than that of 78% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 31 freeze-thaw cycles a year, fewer than 62% of listed buildings. Of these, 14 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.
Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
More on this building
Sign in or create a free account to unlock:
- No EPC on record for this property
- No sale records on file
- No related consent applications matched
- Detailed attributes — period, style, materials, features
- Flood risk assessment
- Radon risk assessment
- Weather exposure and heating demand — rain and frost month by month and year by year, wind direction, solar and humidity
Matched applications, energy data and sale records are assembled automatically and may contain errors. Flag incorrect data.
Similar buildings
The closest matches to this building from all 493,000 UK listed buildings, by architecture, period and materials.
this building 1 similar nearby listed buildings