furness family history society

THE PARISH CHURCH OF SAINT LUKE, TORVER

Photo by W. Bernard Bland

Torver is only a mile along the road from Coniston Water a small village in the valley surrounded by mountains. The church is hard to photograph as it is close to the roadside and surrounded by trees. It is just a nave and chancel, with a massive central tower on which a curious wind-vane in the form of a big green fish. The church has an old chest hollowed from the trunk of a tree, in which has been kept a rare scrap of paper signed by Cranmer in 1538, a faculty for the consecration of the church and the burial of the dead. Before that time there was no burial-ground here, and a coffin had to be borne over many miles of bad mountain roads to the nearest one. The bowl of the font is older than Cranmer’s time and has been used for baptism by two men with fine records of long service. One Matthew Carter, whose tribute is an inscription on the wall; he was rector 56 years last century ( in the 1800’s) The other was T. Ellwood who came after him and wrote a book about his 45 years in a mountain parish.

Information taken from Arthur Mee’s LANCASHIRE written in 1936

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