St Mary’s Church, Selattyn

Submitted by Alan Marsden on Mon, 15/12/2025 - 00:00

St Mary’s Church in the quiet Shropshire village of Selattyn was remarkably open hen I called one late November afternoon. Men were working on scaffolding within, one of whom quite clearly loved the place, and was only too pleased to have me in, wandering about with my camera. It had a rather old font, but its real glory is the fourteenth and fifteenth-century wooden ceilings. Not only were they rather beautiful to behold, but they also fulfilled that essential function of insulating the roof. Although the local school was releasing its inmates when I arrived and doting parents were clogging the lanes with their cars, eager to spirit their little ones away to evening meals or trombone lessons, the place would soon revert to quiet backwater.

Yet it was here, between the years 1710-1713, that one of the most controversial Anglican clerics of the age, Reverend Henry Sacheverell, a high churchman and High Tory, ranted against the Dissenters. His ravings sought to bolster the Church of England and combine it even more tightly to the state, despising all who were for liberty and plurality. What he would make of today’s Church of England with its limp clergy and pallid doctrines is hard to say. I suspect that so restless and angry a man generally drew the tithes of St Mary’s and could barely settle there, seldom bothering to bless the parishioners with the benefit of his fiery preaching.

Being a Protestant Dissenter, I have little sympathy for the man, but have more regard for his style than the limp elastic which passes for twenty-first-century Anglican clerics, some of whom hardly know what they believe. Yet it is strange that such a remote a place should have a four-year long association with so prominent and vexatious a man. Obscure places, even like ours, are not immune from controversy. Even rural churches are untouched by the great cities’ woes and wider denominational hullabaloos. Much as I would like a quiet life, away from the world’s turmoil, the world’s turmoil has a habit of coming to me. It is our peace in Christ which transcends life’s troubles, not our physical locations or ecclesiastical positions.