St Peter's Church, Chester

The church is built of red sandstone and is approximately square in plan. Its floor is at the level of the adjacent Watergate Row and the church is entered by a flight of seven stone steps on the south face. At the west end there is an embraced tower that rises one stage above the roof, with a clock and a bell opening of two lights. The top is crenellated, with crocketed pinnacles and a pyramidal slate spire.[1]

Interior of the church

Inside the church is a continuous nave and chancel with four aisles. The west end is attached to and extends behind the backs of the adjacent buildings. Over the outer aisles and at the west end are galleries.[1] The baptistry lies below the tower. On the northeast pier is a niche that formerly contained a statue of the Virgin and Child, and surrounding it is the best-preserved medieval wall painting in Cheshire.[3] On the south wall under the gallery are three corbels with medieval carvings of an angel, a woman and an old man.[6] The marble font is dated 1662. In the south aisle attached to a pier is a 15th-century brass thought to depict a lawyer, and elsewhere in the church are memorials from the 17th century[3] and two memorial boards by the Randle Holme family.[6] The stained glass in the east window dates from 1863 and is by Heaton, Butler and Bayne. Glass in a window on the southeast of the church is by Clayton and Bell, and there is a west window by Trena Cox.[4] The organ has two manuals and was built by Whiteley.[7] There is a ring of six bells. Five of these which are dated 1709 are by Rudhall of Gloucester and the other, dated 1921, is by John Taylor and Company.[8] The parish registers date from 1559 and the churchwardens' accounts from 1626, although the volume dating from 1686 to 1803 has been lost.[3]