Alberbury Church. Shropshire.
It is a structure of many different dates, and has all the charm that such variety lends. The Loton Chapel, seen in the front of the picture, was built about the year 1340, its windows having the rather intricate tracery in vogue about that time. Overhead we get a glimpse of the tower, a work of earlier date, with its curious, steep, saddle-backed roof, and primitive weather-vane. The east end of the chancel, the oldest part of the church, is pure Norman work.
An ancient churchyard cross with tall, slender shaft, backed by the sombre verdure of some yew trees, adds a pleasing feature to the scene.
The south aisle, used time out of mind as a chapel by the Leightons of Loton Hall, has a richly ornamented open-timber roof, with cherubs' heads cut upon the brackets that support it; and the massive old carved oak benches, black with age, should not be overlooked. Quite out of the common, also, are the windows already referred to, with their peculiar geometrical tracery, and scraps of fourteenth-century glass.
An ugly barrel-vaulted ceiling evidently disguises the original timbered roof of the nave, one principal whereof is still visible at the west end, with its big stone supporting corbels. The chancel is lighted by two semi-headed windows, surmounted by a circular light, all of Norman date; and some fine brasses and mural tablets, to the Leightons and the Lysters, are seen here and there about the interior.
'By Alberbyri Chirche,' notes Leland, 'appere the Ruines of Fulk Guarine the noble Warriar's Castel.' The remains of this early, thirteenth-century stronghold, rise a stone's throw south-westward from the church; but they are so fragmentary and devoid of detail as to have little attraction for the antiquary; indeed, one crumbling ivy-mantled tourelle is about the sum-total of the fabric.