Church Heritage Record 611216

West tower; the remainder of the church is a rectangle bisected lengthwise by an arcade of four bays. There is no separate chancel, porch or subsidiary building.

The church was built on an ancient site after its predecessor had been destroyed during the Civil War. The new church was erected by James, Third Earl of Northampton, in 1665 (as the rainwater heads testify), although the base of the tower may incorporate earlier fabric. There have been no later additions or alternations.

The tower is of three stages with plain weathered stringcourses and a moulded plinth. At the corners are diagonal buttresses of three stages with weatherings. These die at the top of the middle stage and for the top stage take the form of narrower diagonal pilasters divided into panels by horizontal moulded strips. The lower two stages are blind on all sides, either because defence was still in the mind of the builder in 1665 or because this was necessary to stablilise the re-used fabric of the previous tower. On the south face between two stone scrolls there is a rainwater head inscribed "I N 1665" together with the Compton crest of a flaming beacon. The position of this so low on the building is explained by the odd arrangment of drainage of the valley gutter between the naves, the western half of which directs water through a channel in the tower to emerge at this point. The uppermost stage has bell openings in the south, west and north sides and an access door above the valley gutter of the naves on the east side. The bell openings are of two trefoil-headed lights and a plain spandrel within a pointed head outlined by a hood with round volute stops enclosing grinning faces. The jambs and heads have continuous hollow mouldings and the lights are filled with pierced stone slabs rather than louvres. The parapet is embattled with continuous moulded copings to the merlons and the stringcourse has large decorative gargoyles at the angles and intermediate grotesque carvings through which water drains off the roof. Below the stringcourse is a band of decoration in shallow relief taking the form of a series of stylised Ms with hooked ends.

The body of the church is rectangular, four bays in length and set under two parallel gabled roofs of extremely steep pitch. The basic features are symmetrical, but the south wall which faces the house is more decoratively treated. Windows are few in number, and in the side walls are placed in the two central bays. Each window is of four lights, the trefoil-headed lights of equal height. The two windows on the north are divided by a later wedge shaped buttress. In the two east gables are two more windows, these being taller and each of three trefoil-headed lights under segmental heads with transoms also in the shape of trefoiled arches. The external hoodmoulds have diamond shaped volute stops enclosing small carved grinning faces. The wall is of ashlar and the twin gables have moulded copings and bases for crosses at the apex. The diagonal buttresses at the angles appear to be original work of 1665 but the additional three against the east wall on each side of the windows are later. A rainwater head above the central buttress which drains the eastern half of the valley gutter is inscribed like that on the tower.

While the north wall of the nave is plain, the south wall has several enrichments which, unlike the basically gothic forms of the windows, are classical in origin. To begin with it is divided into four bays of shallow pilaster strips, and the upper courses are given some simple mouldings to create the impression of an entablature. The applied decoration is less orthodox. The pilasters are embellished with lozenges just below the first moulding, which contain in two cases smiling faces of rather sunlike character, while in the middle one there are two cherubs heads, one in the upper corner and the other in the lower. Above the lozenges are cartouches flanked by scrolling ornament of just the sort rediscovered in Edwardian architecture and used on banks and department stores about the turn of the century. The left-hand window has rather Mannerist faces carved on the stops of the label and the right hand window has more idiotically grinning faces. There are stylised leaves in the spandrels of the trefoiled window arches. 

The south doorway is in the western bay of this wall and has a round head and rather broad proportions. The jambs and arch are rusticated without imposts, and the keystone has a small cartouche and a pendant drop below, with a short length of egg-and-dart between it and the keystone proper. On the wall at each side of the doorway are single stylised Ms like those below the tower parapet, suggesting that there must be some symbolic reference in their use.

The floor of the church is paved with stone and the walls are plastered and whitewashed. Each nave has a barrel-vault, also of plaster, and these were originally painted with representations of Night (in the south nave) and Day (in the north nave) until their removal in 1911 as being too decayed to restore. The walls of the north and south naves have moulded wooden cornices along the length of the church. The naves are divided by a four-bay arcade which, like the windows, is predominantly Gothic in feeling with quatrefoil pillars and a semi-quatrefoil impost against the east wall behind the communion table. Most of the capitals are moulded, but one has rather simplified egg-and-dart enrichment. The arches have double chamfers and are outlined by moulded hoods. At the west end the arcade meets the tower doorway, and the west half of this arch is therefore supported on a boss which interrupts the moulded surround of the doorway. The boss has a cross on the convex underside with two different leaf patterns in relief in the four quarters. The arms of the cross have scrolling ends.

Within the tower there is a seventeenth-century oak staircase rising round the four walls, beginning with the north where there is a plain newel post at the foot with a flat circle finial. Access from the bell-chamber to the roof is by a stone spiral stair within the thickness of the north-west angle.