St Giles Catholic Church

Story

St. Giles' Church is a Roman Catholic church in the town of Cheadle, Staffordshire, England. The Grade I listed Gothic Revival church was designed by Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin.HistoryOriginsThe history of St. Giles' begins with the establishment of a Catholic mission in Cheadle by Fr. William Wareing, a future Bishop of Northampton. He was an assistant to Fr. 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, Earl of Shrewsbury, when he stayed at Alton Abbey without his chaplain. As Fr. Wareings' 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 Earls' behalf, a building about 60ft in length which had been built as an armory for the local militia during the Napoleonic Wars, and the adjoining adjutant's house. This was converted into the new chapel, and the first resident priest was Fr. James Jeffries, appointed in 1827. In the same year the fifteenth Earl of Shrewsbury died and was succeeded by his nephew, John Talbot, as the sixteenth Earl. Earl John made Alton Abbey his principal residence and renamed it "Alton Towers".