Church Heritage Record 634533

Nave of five bays with clerestorey and aisles, chancel with small north vestry, west tower, south porch

Nave 20m x 6.5m; aisles each 3.5m ide; chancel 9.5m x 5.9m. Tower approximately 27m high.

The chancel is 12th-century and the remainder of the church was rebuilt in the 15th century. 

An exceptional surviving run of churchwardens' accounts provides much information about the 16th-century changes. In 1550-1 the altars were pulled down, the Ten Commandments and scriptural texts were inscribed on the walls and the organs and rood loft were removed. In 1553-6 the high altar, a side altar and the organs were re-erected and the mural inscriptions were defaced. Two more altars were built in 1557-8. These restorations were again swept away under Elizabeth - the loft in 1561-2 and the organ and candlesticks in the next year. In 1575-6 the Commandments were re-inscribed. The south porch was repaired in 1612 and in 1637-8, and in the latter year the communion table was railed in.

The next major work of which documentary evidence survives was the restoration of the east chancel wall, with replica arcading in the lower part and a new window in the upper, executed in 1852. In 1854 there was a major restoration by Carpenter & Slater, when the north vestry was also added, and in 1875-6 another restoration included the removal of a west gallery and the lowering and repaving of the chancel floor. In 1897-8 the tower was underpinned, some of its battlements, pinnacles and gargoyles were removed and the chancel was re-roofed. In 1923-4 the nave and tower roofs were repaired under the direction of Harold Brakspear, the builders being F. Rendell & Sons.

Nave is of five bays with aisle bays divided by buttresses with two weatherings which die well below the continuous embattled parapet. The buttresses against the clerestorey become elegant pinnacles which rise above the line of the parapet. At the northeast corner of the nave is an octagonal stair turret which once served the rood screen, and over the middle of the east nave gable is a large niche with a baroque statue under a tall pinnacle. There is rich ornamentation, with carved gargoyles along the stringcourses at the base of the parapets. Hoods of the windows are simply returned without carved stops. Aisle windows have three lights with panel tracery, with similar windows in the east and west walls, and the clerestorey windows have three lights with tracery quatrefoils. At the southwest corner of the aisle parapet is a sundial. 

The south wall of the south aisle is not symmetrical with the north wall of the north aisle, the former having four bays where the latter has five. The south porch projects from the second bay from the west. Its outer arch is two-centred and consists of re-used Norman zig-zag with a roll-moulded innermost order set on shafts which have been cut off not far below the moulded circular caps. The arch is closed by 18th-century timber and wrought-iron gates with close-set verticals and a moulded top edge capped by fleur-de-lys finials which ramps up at each end. At each side are buttresses in line with the south wall, and above is a two-light window with cusped Y tracery.

The chancel is of two bays with a pitched roof. The bays are marked by pilaster strips, and the Norman windows, two in each side wall, were replaced when the nave and aisles were rebuilt. In their present form the windows are Perpendicular designs with three equal main lights, a horizontal bar above and panel tracery. Like the aisle windows they have simple returned ends to the hoods, except for the south-east window which has carved heads. The priest's doorway was also inserted or renewed at this time. On the south wall are four 18th-century tablets, now mostly illegible. The buttresses at the eastern angles clasp the walls, and the east -wall seems originally to have been windowless. The present east window was created in 1854 and has nook-shafts, zig-zag round the semi-circular arch, and billet on the hood, an interesting example of Carpenter and Slater, proponents of the Middle Pointed style, working in an earlier style when appropriate. The chamfered sill extends along to the buttresses at each side as a stringcourse. There is also a small round-headed light high in the gable. Below the eastern of the two windows in the north wall is a small vestry with a flat roof concealed by a straight parapet, a two-light window under a label in the north wall and a small doorway in a canted projection at the west end.

The west tower is of three stages divided by stringcourses above a high moulded plinth. At all four corners are prominent diagonal buttresses with a weathering at the midpoint of each stage upon which stands a pinnacle set against the upper part of the buttress. The west doorway has continuous mouldings dying into canted jambs at the base and a moulded hood terminating in large carved heads. The west window is of four cinquefoil-headed lights with a transom and panel tracery. At each side are fine niches with shields on the corbels and crocketted canopies. The lowest stringcourse does not divide the ground stage from the middle stage but runs at the height of the springing of the arch of the west window, rising over it as a hood. The middle stage has small two-light windows in each face. The top stage has two two-light openings in each face. The parapet has battlements, and the buttresses continue up into crocketted pinnacles.

The interior of the nave is spacious and lofty, but the general absence of figurative or foliate sculptural detail and of stained glass from all except the east and west windows renders it slightly forbidding, a characteristic reinforced by the dull grey-brown colour of wall plaster and stonework. 

The alleys are paved with stone flags set with a number of ledger slabs, and the pews stand on platforms. The arcades are carried on tall octagonal pillars with moulded octagonal capitals and bases, and the arches have two hollow chamfers. There are a few monuments on the aisle walls. The tower arch is exceedingly lofty and is carried on three attached shafts with a casement moulding and a bowtel between. The tower space is covered by a tierceron star vault with flowers and foliage carved on the bosses and a central circular bellway. Access to the tower stair is by a small doorway with a pointed chamfered arch closed by an 18th-century doorway with four fielded panels. The west door is medieval, of two leaves, with a wooden box lock. The nave roof is carried on big stone corbels carved as the heads of kings, queens and bishops.

The chancel arch is much lower and broader than the tower arch. It has ogee cinquefoil-ended panels running from the floor to the apex on the canted side facing the nave, and it is flanked on the nave side by empty stone niches with corbels set on shafts, vaulting and crocketted canopies which look entirely 19th-century. Beside the shafts below each niche is a trefoil-headed squint.

The low Norman chancel consists of two bays divided by a central arch with a fat double roll moulding set on paired shafts with fluted capitals and heads at the angles. Each bay has shafts in the corners carrying further rolls which intersect at the midpoint of the groin vault. On the side walls are remains of intersecting arcading, reproduced on the east wall in 1852 with vertical and horizontal zig­zag on the arches carried on seven attached shafts with scalloped capitals all carved with different motifs. Within the spandrels and on the wall between the arches and the stringcourse at sill level of the east window (also inserted in 1852) is a carved scale pattern. The arch of the east window, carried on attached shafts, has a beaded edge. There is a corbel table to the west of the north-west window. The tile pavement laid in 1875 (a gift of Thomas Badger) is mostly of plain green, brown, red black and buff tiles laid in geometrical designs.