Church Of St Luke

The Church of St Luke is a Grade II* listed building located in Lower Whitley, rebuilt at the expense of Thomas Touchet in the late 16th century and roofed in the early 17th century. The exterior has been altered and extensively restored in 1864 and later. It features English garden wall bond brown brickwork with stone dressings and grey slate roofs. This small church includes a west porch, a north-west bell-turret, and an organ chamber added in 1879, which is expressed as a south transept, chancel, and a polygonal-apse sanctuary.

The west porch is framed in softwood and sits on a brick plinth. The bell-turret is small and square, diminishing in size, and houses one bell in a stone belfry topped with a slate spire. The windows are mullioned and made of red sandstone, featuring round-arched lights, while the pointed three-light east window has rudimentary tracery.

Inside, the church boasts outstanding hammer-beam arch-braced collar trusses, with four in the nave and three in the chancel. These trusses are adorned with richly-carved scrolly console brackets that display volutes and foliar patterns, as well as humorously small Atlases and beasts on the lower scrolls, which appear to struggle to support the overhanging brackets. There are also good turned drop finials, and the lower arrises of the hammer-beams, principal rafters, and purlins have recesses carved with corbel-blocks. The chancel roof features split quatrefoil windbraces, while the common rafters and roof-boarding have been replaced. The pointed stone chancel-arch is contemporary with the roof. The sanctuary and oak screen appear to be mid-Victorian, and the organ dates from 1879. Additionally, there is late 19th-century glass in memory of Frances Belcrow.