Cookies

We use essential cookies to make our site work. We'd also like to set analytics cookies that help us make improvements by measuring how you use the site. These will be set only if you accept.

For more detailed information about the cookies we use, see our cookies page.

Essential Cookies

Essential cookies enable core functionality such as security, network management, and accessibility. For example, the selections you make here about which cookies to accept are stored in a cookie.

You may disable these by changing your browser settings, but this may affect how the website functions.

Analytics Cookies

We'd like to set Google Analytics cookies to help us improve our website by collecting and reporting information on how you use it. The cookies collect information in a way that does not directly identify you.

Third Party Cookies

Third party cookies are ones planted by other websites while using this site. This may occur (for example) where a Twitter or Facebook feed is embedded with a page. Selecting to turn these off will hide such content.

Skip to main content

The Leaning Tower

Wybunbury Parish Council The Leaning Tower

Believe it or not, the village of Wybunbury and the Italian town of Pisa have something in common

Wybunbury's 29.3 m tower is all that remains of a late fifteenth century church demolished in 1833. (Later churches, replacing the fifteenth century one, were also demolished in 1892 and 1977). The church was at some time dedicated to the Mercian Bishop of St. Chad who established his See at Lichfield in 669.

Known as the 'Hanging Steeple of Wybunbury' because of its tendency to lean, the Tower has undergone two remarkable feats of engineering to straighten it.The tower was stabilised using under excavation by James Trubshaw in 1832 and this is the earliest known application of the technique, which was also used more notably to stabilise the Leaning Tower of Pisa!So it could be claimed that if it wasn't for Wybunbury one of the world's most famous monuments may have inclined its way to a decline.

A new St Chad's Church for Wybunbury was soon built on a new site further down Main Road. The Tower remained intact on the churchyard grounds, in splendid isolation as a landmark for South Cheshire. The Tower now belongs to the people of Wybunbury, who formed a Trust to save it and its six bells in 1983.

×