Church Of St Wilfrid

The Church of St Wilfrid is a Grade I listed building located in Grappenhall, dating from the 12th century with significant additions made in the 14th, 16th, and 19th centuries. The church is constructed of red sandstone and features a slate roof. It comprises a west tower, an aisled nave with a south chapel, a chancel, a vestry, and a north transept. The tower has three stages, a Tudor-arched west door, a restored four-light west window with panel tracery, diagonal west buttresses, square east buttresses, paired bell-openings with quatrefoil heads, and crenellation. The aisle windows are designed with round-headed mullioned lights, while the south chapel showcases reticulated tracery. The clerestorey windows feature paired round-headed lights, and the vestry's east window, which was moved from the chancel, has five lights with panel tracery. The south porch and north transept were likely added in 1874 by the architectural firm Paley and Austin.

Inside, the church has a continuous nave and chancel of seven bays with six-bay aisles. Octagonal pillars with plainly-moulded caps support double-chamfered arches. The easternmost south window of the south aisle contains 14th-century glass, depicting St. John Baptist, St. Thomas, St. Bartholomew (flayed, carrying his skin over his right arm), St. Mary Magdalene, St. James (or a pilgrim), St. Philip, and an unidentified saint, with the glass having been rearranged in 1834. The east window of the south aisle was created by Mayer of Munich and London, and there are fragments of medieval glass located elsewhere in the church. An effigy of Sir William Boydell, who died in 1275, was found in the churchyard and placed in the church in 1874 after restoration. The church also features a Norman arcaded rectangular font, which was found in the churchyard and reinstated in the nave in 1874, and a 13th-century dugout chest. The church has a peal of eight bells, five of which were cast by Bagley of Ecton, Northamptonshire in 1700, one by Richard Sanders in 1718, the treble was recast by J. Taylor of Loughborough in 1890, and the fourth bell was made by Mears and Stainbank, who also supplied two new bells in 1890.