Stockton Church

Stockton Church

There is one small piece of evidence that there was a church at Stockton in Norman times and that is a window in the chancel. 

Stockton, was much more important in former times than it is now. There is reference to Stockton in the Doomsday Book, and even within living memory, there were more dwellings at Stockton than there are now. Today there are only three dwellings at Stockton - one of which is the Glebe House, and another the red brick Georgian rectory dated 1702, now lived in by Lord Hamilton, owner of Apley Estate, and patron of Stockton parish.

The church stands high above the river Severn, about half a mile from the main center of population which it serves - the village of Norton which can be seen to the west of the church from the churchyard. The whole parish is part of the Apley Estate, one of the few agricultural estates to survive the 19th century agricultural depression intact. Much of the land in this part of Shropshire is still owned by the Estate.

The church building was restored in 1880, when the chancel was raised several feet, as can be seen from the level of the piscina and sedelia in the sanctuary. The leper window has been bricked up at some time. The church has a fine and unusual barrel roof (visible from the nave). There is a fourteenth century font and the tower is fifteenth century. The communion table is Elizabethan and the pulpit Jacobean.