Church Heritage Record 633204

West tower, aisleless nave with south porch, chancel with north vestry.

The west tower and chancel are now for the most part Decorated, but blocked lancets in the latter show a date of before 1300. The nave windows are also Decorated, but the simple north doorway might show a 12th century date. The north vestry seems to be late 18th century.

The walls are of a variety of materials including rubble, flint, brick and sandstone. The chancel and the south wall of the nave are rough cast, but the tower and north nave wall are bare masonry. The nave roof is thatched, the tower is slated and the chancel is tiled; the vestry has a lead roof. The south porch is covered with pantiles.

The west tower, although still quite tall, has been lowered (probably in the 19th century) so that it now rises hardly higher than the nave ridge. The original belfry stage has been replaced by a shallow weather-boarded stage with a pyramidal roof in the middle of which rises a tiny louvred turret. The lowest stage has a window in the west wall of two lights and a cross within a vesica in the tracery, and apart from tiny slits in the next stage anddiagonal buttresses at the corners, the tower is featureless.

The north wall is divided into three bays by buttresses; each has a two-light window, the main lights of which have cusped ogee heads with an unusual tracery feature of a vesica with ogee ends filled with four mouchettes. In the west bay is a round-headed doorway and a moulded surround, now blocked with brickwork. All the windows keep their stanchions and saddlebars.

The north chancel wall is for the most part hidden by a later vestry, but has a single ogee-headed light in the western part. The vestry, of c.1790, is rectagular with brick quoins surrounding panels of flint. The north wall has two blind round-headed windows with elementary Y tracery of wood, and the walls are crowned with brick battlements. The window in the east wall has three lights, is also round-headed and has wooden intersecting tracery.

The east window of the chancel has three lights and flowing tracery, all renewed. It is under a four-centred arch, and must be in origin late-Decorated; the tracery between the ogee heads of the three main lights and the arch above falls between reticulated and flamboyant. A panel above is pierced with a quatrefoil. In the south chancel wall is a window towards the west matching that in the north wall; a small priest's doorway comes next to the east, then a blocked lancet close to a late three-light Perpendicular window with cusped heads and intersecting tracery; there are no buttresses to the chancel.

The south have windows reflect the design of those in the north wall, but in addition between the two western ones is the entrance to the church. This is sheltered by a porch with a two-centred outer arch carried on attached half-round shafts. In the side walls are decayed two-light Perpendicular windows, but the battlements to the parapet over each side wall bear witness to a late-18th century or 19th century reconstruction. An elegant iron gnomon for a sundial stands over the door, but the figures have disappeared. The porch roof is of three bays, with arch braces from side to side and semi-circular wind-braces against the wall; the roof is panelled and plastered. On the floor of pamments stand stone benches against the side walls.

The aisleless nave is large and light, with a curved plaster vaulted ceiling which for one bay at the east end is replaced by a higher open roof with plastered panels between the rafters. The tower arch is of two chamfered orders and is closed by doors in the French 17th century style. The ladder to the belfry has the date 1681 carved upon it.

Five mediaeval benches survive at the back of the nave, and the box pews which succeeded them have been replaced by 19th century benches, the doors now forming a dado round the walls.

Low by the south doorway is a cusped stoup, without a bowl which was no doubt sheared off when the box pews were erected. In the north wall, towards the east end, are two contrasting niches. One is plain and oroughly round-headed while the other has a crocketted ogee head against a rectangular panel. The head is enriched with rudimentary vaulting and considerable traces of colouring survive.

The chancel arch has attached shafts on the inner side with moulded capitals, and corbels high up at each side show the position of the rood beam. The screen which closes the lower part of the arch is of a heavy design.

The chancel is notable for the big east window and the roof which is made effective by the simple lines of the moulded beams against the plaster but especially because of the richly carved wall-plates with spiral mouldings, stylised leaves and other motifs and a pierced band of Geometrical figures, differing in each of the five bays. Small attached columns stand on corbels along each wall. A fragment of wallpainting of a spiral design on the south wall shows how the features of the woodwork must have been amplified by other decorative elements.

The floor is paved with stone, and the chancel is lit (apart from the east window) by a spacious south window which casts a flood of light upon the Georgian arrangement of three-sided Communion Rails (supported on twisted balusters of slender elegance). The spiral turning is repeated in the legs of the Communion Table and some more parts have been made up into a prayer desk nearby. This suggests either that the pulpit once (when it was higher) had stairs with spiral banisters, or else that the Communion Rails might have encompassed all four sides of the Table, an arrangement which has seldom survived. Under the Table are three black marble ledgers, and upon it is a pretty brass cross and a pair of brass candlesticks. These are set against a reredos of green material hung within a frame of more re-used 18th century woodwork. The reredos blocks the lower part of the east window, which is flanked by big ogee-headed niches (of which the north has survived less well, having lost the florets from the cusps). In the north wall towards the east is a very tall late Perpendicular recess with foliage carved in the spandrels. Within it is the much later door to the vestry.