Church Heritage Record 628379

3-bay aisleless nave, chancel, south porch, and west tower.

Nave c 12m (39 ft) x 5.7m (18 ft), chancel 6m (19ft) long.

The manor is not mentioned in Domesday Book but was probably included amongst the unnamed berewicks attached to Ridlington, later it became attached to the Barony of Oakham.  According to the VCH the church, to which the chapel of Belton was appurtenant, appears to have been granted by Edward the Confessor to Westminster Abbey, as the grant was confirmed by William I. However, the advowson in the early part of the 12th century was in the hands of Richard Bassett, who granted it to the nearby priory of Launde in Leicestershire. Despite repeated restitution efforts by Westminster the priory retained the advowson until the Dissolution.

If there are underground traces of a pre-Conquest church and related features here the churchyard would be of exceptional archaeological potential. An Anglo-Saxon cemetery with 10 sword burials was excavated at North Luffenham 5 miles north-east and there have been other finds in the area (Medbourne, Rutland Water etc).  Oakham was a Royal vill mentioned in Domesday. There is a motte-and-bailey castle on Castle Hill ½ mile to the east and much ridge-and-furrow, and a Deserted Medieval Village (Snelston).  The Historic Environment Record should therefore be consulted if any development is considered.

The nave dates at the latest to the late 12th century with north and south doorways of this date, with 13th-century and later windows.  The tower and spire and the porch are of the late 14th century. At this time or shortly after in the early 15th century the clearstorey was added and a new nave roof added, and perhaps the east and west windows replaced.

A hermitage at Wardley escaped immediate dissolution under the Chantries Act of 1547 as in 1584 Sir Edmund Brudenell was holding the plot, but it was then taken into possession of the Crown. Edward VI granted the advowson of the church to Gregory Lord Cromwell and his wife Elizabeth and their successors.  Early in the 17th century the advowson reverted to the Crown, until 1874 when it passed to the Bishop of Peterborough.

The chancel was re-roofed in 1640, the porch possibly restored in 1694 (dated sundial) and the church refurnished in or shortly after 1797. The ruinous vicarage at Wardley was demolished in 1804, and the vicar moved to Belton. The chancel was entirely rebuilt in 1871, in which the 13th-century windows on either side of porch were “thoroughly repaired”.

The tower is of three stages with moulded plinth and angle buttresses stopping at the middle stage. The west window consists of a single trefoiled opening, similar to and probably contemporary with the clearstorey windows, on the north and south sides the lower stage is blank. In the middle stage there is a small square-headed window on the south side only; the pointed bellchamber windows are of two trefoiled lights with a quatrefoil in the head. The spire has two tiers of gabled lucarnes on its cardinal faces. The lower lights have two trefoiled openings with a quatrefoil in the head; the upper are single. There is a band at the level of the upper lights. Victorian weathervane.  

The gable scar of the “witches hat” earlier roof can be clearly seen in the east face, above the very low-pitched roof added when the clearstorey was built (see below). The chancel has a steeply pitched roof rising high above the nave.

The oldest features are the doorways, the main south doorway being the most ornate and diagnostic, with a semicircular arch of two orders, the inner with a round moulding, resting on moulded imposts, the outer chamfered order on nook-shafts with capitals with differential water-leaf carving and moulded bases. It is probably late 12th-century in date, Pevsner gives c 1175, perhaps more likely c 1200.

It is enclosed within a 14th-century stone porch with a square sundial dated 1694 as a gable finial. There are wooden outer gates. The outer doorway is pointed, 4-centred with a double-chamfered surround and hoodmould to a plain impost, flanked by stumpy diagonal buttresses of two weatherings. The stonework is heavily eroded. The floor is of stone flags, the roof looks to be original but partly renewed, perhaps in 1871. A wand or staff is fixed to the west inner wall.

Flanking the porch is a pointed lancet to the west and a 2-light pointed window with plate tracery of c 1250 with simple uncusped roundel in the head to the east, beyond which is a square 16th-century reading light.  The clearstorey has a 2-light pointed window to each bay of both walls. The change in masonry where the clearstorey has been added, from small rubble to slab construction as seen in the porch, is obvious.

The north wall has a blocked doorway of similar age to the south, but much plainer with round arch and plain chamfer. The head has been opened up to form a kind of lunette lighting the font within. Apart from this and the clearstorey this wall is blind, and there is no obvious sign of earlier windows or other features (such as an aisle) in the fabric.

The chancel has diagonal buttresses with a triple-stepped weathering, similar buttresses to the east end of the nave where the two compartments interface awkwardly. The south wall is pierced by a 2-light Decorated window, the east window is apparently the old one re-used and of 15th-century date, of four cinquefoiled lights, without tracery.  The stonework and tracery is so eroded one could take it all for Medieval. Cross finial to the east gable.

Moving inside through the Victorian boarded door, all the walls are plastered and whitewashed internally, in good condition as is everything in this clearly well cared- for church.

There are slots for a vanished screen in the floor, and within the tower space behind a modern door set within the blocking, slots for timbers above head height can be seen. A ladder leads to the belfry and the bell ropes hang to the floor in this small space.

Back in the nave and looking east, the simple low-pitched oak nave roof has chamfered principals; it is of four bays, and also probably 15th-century. The nave benches, with tall straight backs and narrow squared sides, look to be of the naïve Gothick period, perhaps of 1800 or shortly after.  Pevsner records them to have been blue, they have since been stripped. The pulpit is similarly plain, also the font, dated 1797 (see below).  The nave floor is of stone flags, near the font are two ledgers to George Godfrey (died 1813) and his great-nephew George Godfrey Ward (died 1819).

There is a tripartite Commandments Board with pointed heads with the text below a painted dove in the central panel, and several wall tablets, see below. An American organ and a barrel organ stand on either side of the chancel arch. In general, this is a well preserved example of a pre-Ecclesiological interior, though as noted above stripped of its colour. 

The Victorian chancel arch is of two orders with moulded stops. The plain pointed piscina recess and a rectangular aumbry opposite on the north side belong to the former chancel, probably late 13th or 14th century. As noted already the floor is of colourful encaustic tiles, with geometric patterns, the boarded roof is of pitched pine. The altar table stands partly over an early 18th-century slab with a winged cherub in deep relief in the head, commemorating Thomas Smith.