Church Heritage Record 634406

West tower and spire forming the entrance to the church; aisleless nave; chancel with north vestry.

Building work on the church as it now appears falls into four stages. The west steeple is of c.1430. The remainderof the church (nave and chancel) was rebuilt in 1757. On 25 March 1840 a faculty was granted to remove the 1757 chancel and build a new, larger chancel; the estimate was £590 and William Temple of Bishopstrow House had offered to pay for the work. The parish repaired the nave. In 1842 Hale was paid £124 for repairing the roof, altering the gallery, repairing the seats and providing new window frames. Finally, in 1876 the church was restored by W. Scott Champion at a cost of £1,600; the chancel was rebuilt except for the east wall into which a new window was put, a vestry was added and the nave was provided with new seats; the whole church was refitted. The spire was rebuilt in 1931.

Approached from the west, the building immediately shows the earliest parts now visible - the tower and spire and the greater part of the west wall of the nave. The tower, of small dimensions but quite tall and slender, has three stages of which the lowest forms the porch to the church. This has a doorway in the west wall which appears to have been formed in an older arch during the 1876 restoration. The oak door has extravagantly flowing iron hinges of about this date and there are three small trefoiled lights between the stone arch of the doorway and the surrounding arch. A rise in ground level of about 22 feet has shortened the proportions of the tower. This stage has diagonal buttresses at the angles which die into the wall a little below the moulded stringcourse which separates the lower stage from the upper. Below this in the north and south walls is a narrow light for the intermediate chamber within. The upper stage (actually the third internally) has small two-light windows in each face of slender proportions under a square head. Over the western one is a clock face. The embattled parapet conceals a gutter which is drained by two gargoyles on the north and south faces. There are none to the east or west. The octagonal recessed spire has fillets up the angles, a traceried and embattled band about halfway up and a foliate finial.

The nave is rectangular, of two broad bays articulatedby buttresses and each provided with a two-light Gothic window by Champion. These clearly displaced round-headed windows of 1757 and the stonework round each shows signs of disturbance. The buttresses are also his. The 1757 work including the widening of the nave by about 22 feet and the portions of the old wall incorporated in the new west wall each side of the tower bear this out. The roof is of relatively low pitch. The recessed stone panel with the inscription quoted above is set to the east of the central buttress in the south wall and is balanced on the other side of the buttress by a decayed rectangular wall table of 1712 with a bolection moulded surround and a moulded cornice above. Almost the whole inscription (except the date) has fallen away through lamination of the stone. Below these is a stringcourse at sill level which appears to pass behind the buttresses.

Hoare's plan of c.1830 shows an apse with north-east and south-east windows but none facing directly east. This may have been the remnant of a Saxon church or may have been a rebuilding (or built anew) in 1757. In any case the work done in 1840 was to replace it with a rectangular chancel extending further east to provide fifty new seats. By 1875 this chancel was claimed to be in decay and it was entirely rebuilt except for the east wall by Scott Champion. He put two windows in the south wall of similar design but smaller dimensions than those which he had put in the nave and at the corners he added diagonal buttresses of the same profile as the nave buttresses. His roof, being more steeply pitched than that which it replaced, rises slightly higher than the ridge of the nave roof. In the east wall (which in essence he retained) he placed a five-light window with Decorated tracery. On the north side there is quite a large vestry under a pent roof with a west doorway and east and west windows. On the south wall a monument is to the Revd. Walter Birse, d.1664, rector for forty-seven years (he was extruded during the Commonwealth and returned afterwards).

The church is entered through the ground floor of the tower. This has exposed stone walls and communicates with the nave by an arch with three orders of wavy moulding of which the middle one runs to the floor but the outer two are carried on attached shafts with moulded capitals. Otherwise the impression of the interior is almost all of 1876 or later. Champion replaced the 1840 "circular apology" for a chancel arch with one of correct fourteenth-century style with orders of wavy mouldings, and opened up the nave roof (which had been plastered), replacing some timbers so that it now seems almostly of 1876. At the west end the weathering of the earlier roof to the previous narrower nave may be seen against the tower wall. Scott Champion's roof has tie-beams to each bay resting alternately on foliate corbels and smaller moulded corbels above the windows. It is of five bays with king-posts, struts and cusped arch braces. The main timbers appear to be basically those of the eighteenth-century roof. The walls are plastered with the window reveals left exposed. The central alley is paved with bricks and there is boarding under the pews. The tower arch and chancel arch are spanned by screens of gingery oak of a later date.

The chancel is entirely Scott Champion's work. It is typical of the rather lavish style of the time with an open timber roof having moulded arch braces to the collars with king-posts and struts above. The walls again are plastered and the stone dressings left exposed, while the lower parts are panelled in oak and the floor is paved with tiles. There are two steps at the chancel arch, and two more at the communion rails. An arch on the north communicates with the vestry which has a fireplace in the north-west corner.