Church Heritage Record id19696

Nave and chancel are rectangular. It seems from the springing of vaults that the chancel was originally to be articulated in two parts as chancel and sanctuary. North vestry, south porch.

The nave and chancel are twelfth-century; there are several thirteenth-century windows, and the arch to the north vestry is also of this date. The south pach dates from c.1575, but may have been brought from the Manor House at a later date. The interior was repaired in 1765. Butterfield restored the church in 1848-53, beginning at the east end and proceeding westwards (the cost was £300). The north vestry organ chamber was built in 1877 to designs by James Money of Newbury. The roof was repaired in 1910 by S. Slingsby Stallwood, and two buttresses were erected.

The walls are plastered externally but are apparently of flint rubble with stone dressings; the diagonal buttresses at the west end are of flint and the porch is of flint and brick. The roofs are covered with red tiles.

The west end is seen first, a simple gable with two round headed openings one above the other. The plaster covers the stone surrounds so that the apertures seem to be punched through the wall surface. The lower is a window and the upper, formerly also a window, now has louvres (for the bell has hung within the gable since the Early English bell-cote was removed). The gable is capped with stone copings and the angles are buttressed.

In the north wall is a thirteenth-century doorway (now blocked) and a single round-headed window. The north vestry of 1877 stande in a transeptal position on the site of a thirteenth-century chantry chapel and has a re-used thirteenth-century north window but east and west windows copied from the Norman openings elsewhere in the church. On the east gable of the nave is a weathercock. The south nave will has two round-headed Norman windows, one opposite that in the north wall and one oppostie the later arch to the vestry (but presumably this took the place of a fourth window). The south doorway has a semi-circular head within an enriched hoodmould (now much damaged); there are two orders of mouldings, both decorated with zig-zag.

The south porch to the nave is constructed of materials brought at some undocumented time from the Manor House. The brick and flint of which it is built date from 1575, and the initials RC which appear in the spandrels stand for Richard Choke who came to live at the Manor House about 1564. It seems likely that the porch was transferred to the church in 1769 when the Elizabethan Manor House was burnt down. The quatrefoil lights in the side walls are similar to two in the west end of the barn which still survives beside the present house. On the lintel is a sundial.

The chancel has an east window of three round-headed lights, the middle one larger than the others. The north and south walls each have two round-headed windows, one in each bay, and the symmetry is to slightly altered by two later insertions in the south wall. The first is a plain thirteenth-century lancet low-side window very close to the west end of the chancel, and the second is a priests' doorway at the eastern end of the same bay; the present form of the latter is a nineteenth-century restoration.

Because the windows are set high in the walls, and perhaps also because the walls are distinctly battered, the impression of the nave is that the building is sunk into the ground. At the west end is a wide round timber arch supporting the bell within the west gable. Apart from two old tie-beams the roof is part of Butterfield's work, an open timber construction with scissor braces and his usual rathor slender scantlings. The floor was re-laid in 1903, but the benches which fill the nave are also his, as is the pulpit now on the south side of the chancel arch.

It is the chancel arch and the eastern arm of the church which together form the most notable part of the building. The arch sags uncomfortably in the middle, the more so because an old beam running horizontally above exaggerates the downward curve. Above this beam the wall is recessed, either to relieve weight on the arch or suggesting the former existence of a representation of the Doom or a Rood. The arch is carried on large semi-circular responds with smaller attached shafts on the west side and plain imposts on the east. The capitals of the responds are scalloped, but those of the attached shafts are square with a large oval eye on each face. The arch itself is elaborately decorated with two main orders of moulding on each side, the west side being further enriched with a hood-mould decorated with fir-cones on the chamfored underside. The outer order on each side is of two large and two small courses of zig-zag and the inner order has a row of 29 heads. There are traces of twelfth-century colouring on the arch, most clearly a patch of lozenge-shaped diaper on the south respond done in red and some six-rayed stars, also in red, on the soffit of the outer order on the east side.

The springing of the vault ribs remains at all eight angles (by the chancel arch, by the east window and by the central flat responds with scalloped capitals which divide the rectangular chancel into two square bays. The most extensive remains are in the western corners, and consist of a rollmouding in the centre with beakheads up both faces - two pairs on the north and three on the south). These rest upon corbels below the level of the abacus of the chancel arch which seem not to be original. Part of the bracket for the rib vaulting remains on the south side, and also a very small portion of the groining ribs. In the eastern corners are corbels carved to represent the heads of an ox and a lion, no doubt the symbols of the Evangelists St. Luke and St. Mark.

The other architectural details of the chancel consist of a small round-arched piscina in the south wall near the east end and, further west, a wide round arch for the sedilia. A rectangular aumbry in the north wall is closed by doors designed by Butterfield with good ironwork and pierced trefoil decoration which is repeated in the panels of the communion rails. The floor tilos of the chancel seem to be of Butterfield's time also, being dull red with some patterned in buff.