St. Giles' Catholic Church, Cheadle

The history of St Giles' begins with the establishment of a Catholic mission in Cheadle by Father William Wareing, a future Bishop of Northampton. He was an assistant to Thomas Baddeley at Cresswell, and in the early 1820s he opened a small chapel in a private house in Charles Street, Cheadle. Among those attending Mass there was Charles Talbot, 15th Earl of Shrewsbury, when he stayed at Alton Abbey without his chaplain. As Wareing's efforts bore fruit, the room became inadequate for the growing numbers, and Lord Shrewsbury asked him to look for larger premises. Eventually he obtained, on the Earl's behalf, a building about 60 ft in length which had been built as an armoury for the local…

Great care was taken over the selection of the building materials, which came principally from local sources. There was an abundance of oak and elm on Lord Shrewsbury's Alton estate, and local quarries produced sandstones of various colours and textures. A new quarry for red and white sandstone was opened at Counslow Hill, between Cheadle and Alton, and from here came the stone for both St Giles' and for the complex of buildings which Pugin and the Earl of Shrewsbury were developing in Alton village, namely Alton Castle and the hospital of St John the Baptist. It appears that Lord Shrewsbury himself suggested that alabaster should be used for the altars at Cheadle and St John's, Alton. It…