Church Heritage Record 612247

Cruciform, with tower over the crossing; the addition of a north chapel to the nave and a north vestry to the chancel in 1906-13 are the only features outside the basic cruciform shape.

the first documented reference to a church at Kedleston is in 1189, and the Norman south doorway is the earliest feature visible in the fabric. The majority of the building, however, is essentially late thirteenth-century with some Perpendicular windows and the top of the tower also rebuilt in the Perpendicular style. The east front was decorated with urns and a sundial during the lifetime of Sir Nathaniel Curzon, the second Baronet (at Kedleston 1686-1719) who also employed Smith of Warwick to rebuild the house. This, together with considerable additions to the furnishings, seems to have been done by the time that Bassano visited Kedleston in 1710. Between 1760 and 1763 the first Lord Scarsdale, who built the present house, made a family vault under the north transept and re-seated the space with box-pews elevated on the vault.

In 1856 new tracery designed by G.E. Street was placed in the east window, and in 1884-5 the fourth Lord Scarsdale undertook the first major restoration of the building, for which his architect was John Oldrid Scott. In 1906 the first Lord Curzon of Kedleston obtained designs from George Frederick Bodley for a memorial chapel in the position of a north nave aisle to commemorate his first wife who died in that year. The north wall of the nave was taken down and the new chapel constructed over a large vault. A new vestry was also added to the north of the chancel at this time, and other works were put in hand which affected the furnishings of the building.

Though somewhat overshadowed by the Hall, Kedleston church is a building of great interest and considerable architectural ambition, being a rare example of a relatively small church built on a cruciform plan. Of the early history of the building there is little evidence, but the south nave doorway, of Norman character, is testimony to the earliest building date at present visible. It has plain inner jambs, and outer jambs in the form of a shaft which is bitten by seven beakheads on each side, of unequal size and spacing. A chevron roll-moulding outlines the semi-circular arch above, enclosing a tympanum on which are carved in low relief the figures of a horseman and wild beasts. Along the lower edge is a border of scrolled palmettes.

Other features of the nave are comparatively few. In the south wall, east of the doorway, where Norman masonry still survives, there are two square-headed Perpendicular windows with double chamfered reveals and without labels (one moved from the north wall in 1907). A plain parapet hides the gutter above. The upper part of this wall was rebuilt in 1885. The west window is also of this date, replacing one with debased seventeenth-century mullions. Even so, it had to be heightened to give it better proportions in 1909, although the elegant three-light design with ogee heads to the lights and cusped intersecting tracery above is of 1885, re-used. There is a small vent in the shape of a lancet with an ogival head in the gable above, the stonework of which is all of 1885. The roof itself was raised in pitch at this time to meet the weathering which was still visible on the west face of the tower. The west gable is supported by two diagonal buttresses of simple design. The nave north wall was entirely removed to built the north memorial chapel.

This chapel, which is the first part of the church to be seen from the churchyard gate, is of three bays, abutting the nave on the south side and the north transept on the east. It is typical of Bodley's latest and most refined style, with three-light windows with intersecting tracery, and finely moulded plinth, hoodmoulds and parapet, the latter embellished with repetitions of the text "QUIA MULTUM AMAVIT" in late gothic lettering. The buttresses on the north side have two tiers of gablets, and at the north-west corner there is a small projecting turret which houses the spiral stair to the burial vault below. The roof is of low pitch concealed by the parapets.

The north and south transepts are of symmetrical design, each roughly square in plan with stout buttresses with two tiers of gablets with fleur-de-lys finials at each angle except the north-west where the chapel adjoins. The east walls are both blind, but in the north and south walls are three-light windows under two-centred arches with uncusped heads to the lights and moulded hoods terminating in stops carved as heads (one missing on the south). Below the window of the south transept are the remains of a small sundial. Both transepts now have low-pitched roofs, but the weatherings for the earlier steeper roofs are visible against the tower. The north transept has a straight parapet all round but that on the south rises slightly to a very shallow gable.

The chancel walls are of coursed squared rubble and the plinth surrounding the south transept continues along the south chancel wall. In the south walls there is a priest's doorway under a moulded two-centred arch, and to the west of this is a small trefoil-headed lancet with a moulded hood. The door is marked in nails "J.C.M.C. 1613". The largest window is a two-light Decorated insertion, with two quatrefoils in roundels above the trefoiled main lights and a square head outlined by a moulded label. High in the wall there are two two-light windows with square heads, but no labels. The lights have circular heads typical of Derbyshire and Staffordshire. The north wall is for the most part symmetrical with the south, but the doorway here leads into a vestry added in 1912 with two windows in the north wall. There is also no sign of a lancet light to match that on the south.

The east gable of the chancel faces the house, and was classicised in about 1700 to make it conform with the style of the house which then existed. A straight parapet was provided with big urns at the corners, garlanded with flowers and issuing flames at the top, and between these, in the centre, rather like a headstone, was placed a sundial (renewed in Mansfield stone in 1912) with the inscription "WE SHAL", leaving the observer to complete the aphorism with the pun on "dial/die all". Above the sundial is a pediment enclosing a winged cherub's head, and on each side small stone hourglasses bear out the sombre message. A skull in the centre labours the point.

The tower is of two stages, of which the lower bears on all four faces the earlier high-pitched weatherings to which only the nave gable has been re-aligned. The weatherings reach up to the moulded stringcourse which separates this stage from that above, and there are small trefoil-headed lancets to the south of the nave gable and to the north of the chancel gable to light the intermediate chamber. The uppermost storey houses the bells and has a bell-opening with Y tracery in each face. It is set back from the stage below, and is unbuttressed. At the head of the wall a moulding forms the base of the parapet and is strengthened by a carved stone waterspout at each corner. The embattled parapet has moulded heads to the merlons, and there are small crocketted pinnacles at each corner.

Although the interest of the interior of the church derives chiefly from the fine series of monuments and other furnishings which it contains, there are several points of interest about the architecture also. The nave has exposed ashlar walls of 1885 above a dado of oak fielded panelling. Some traces of painting were found when the plaster was removed from the old wall surface, but this has all vanished. The floor is paved in the alley with squares of black and white stone with wood blocks under the chairs laid in 1885 and the roof is made of Kedleston oak.

The three-bay arcade on the north opens into the memorial chapel and has pillars of quatrefoil section and moulded arches decorated with fleurons. The north nave wall which it replaces was relatively featureless, with only a two-light window near the east end and a blocked Decorated doorway of simple design.

The windows of the chapel are set within recessed which reach to the floor and are outlined by slender shafts and moulded arches. The floor itself is of green marble from Belgium laid by Farmer and Brindley. and incorporates at the west end a hoist to transfer coffins to the vault below. The low-pitched oak roof has angels carved on the corbels and cresting and cusping on the braces and purlins. The chapel is richly furnished with an altar embellished with various foreign ornaments, and the principal object is the large white marble monument to the first Viscountess Curzon.

The crossing has paving like that in the nave alley and chancel, and is rather constricted by the massive piers of the tower, each facing inwards with a row of six uniform attached shafts. Since these, if detached, would be octagonal, they give the impression simply of a row of grooves of triangular profile channelledin the wall surface. The oak ribbed vault is of 1885 replacing a plaster vault of c.1700.

The north and south transepts have few architectural features, and retain eighteenth-century plaster on the walls and shallowly vaulted plaster ceilings (although that in the north transept is a reconstruction of 1910 to match the other). The north transept is furnished as the "choir" of the church and houses the organ cleverly fitted into a divided case on each side of the window. There is a disused burial vault under the floor which houses the organ blower. In the south-east corner is a piscina with a plain arch outlined by a roll-moulding. On the walls are two eighteenth-century monuments moved here from the chancel. The south transept contains some of the earliest monuments in the church. and also some of the eighteenth and nineteenth-centuries, giving it the character of a family mortuary chapel. The stone floor was relaid and the tomb chest moved to the centre and restored in 1909. There is dado panelling of fielded oak panels from box pews like that in the nave. In the south-east corner is a simple piscina made from the head of a lancet window.

The chancel contains in the western part two large series of box pews with an iron gate between which block the view of the altar from the nave. The floor is paved with black and white stone squares of 1909, and there are three steps at the east end leading up to the communion table within its original seventeenth century three-sided rails.

The small vestry on the north side is stone faced internally and has a flat panelled oak ceiling. It has two two-light north windows with ogival arched heads.