Church Heritage Record 628403

West tower, aisled nave of three bays with clerestory; chancel with south chantry chapel and north vestry.

Evidence of a thirteenth-century building survives in the chancel arch and the piers of the south arcade. The north arcade is slightly later, perhaps fourteenth-century, and the plate-traceried windows of the chancel (the east and one on the north side) also show the thirteenth century. The tower, north vestry and south chapel are of the fifteenth-century; the chapel latest of all, arising from a foundation by will dated 1489. There is very little sign of later work, save that the roofs are twice dated in the seventeenth century (presumably repairs) and the east window (and a few other details) was renewed in the nineteenth century. The south porch was rebuilt on a smaller scale about 1950.

The church is built of local limestone, and roofed with lead save for the chancel which is covered with Collyweston stone slates.

The tower is of four unequal storeys of which the topmost is much the tallest. The angles are supported by clasping buttresses which at the level of the parapet become octagonal pinnacles with crocketted caps. The stringcourses which mark each stage are enriched by figures of lively beasts and men at the corners, three to each buttress and at four levels, making the tower seem alive with movement although the overall shape is outly square and static. The north and south walls have no openings until the belfry stage is reached, but the west face has a doorway, of Perpendicular Cesign with a square hood-mould and quatrefoils in the spandrels. The crocketted arch breaks through the horizontal moulding to a small finial.

The heavy battlements are also characteristic of the nave and aisles, again giving a grand and weighty impression to the building. The south aisle has three-light windows in the two eastern bays with cinquefoiled heads under four centred arches. The north wall of the nave is similar to the south save that there is no porch to the western doorway. As on the south side, there are buttresses at the corners only and the battlements, continue up the slope of the end walls.

The south side of the chancel is hidden by the Chambre chantry chapel. Small though this is, it is a sumptuous piece of its period, and the large three-light window in each of the two bays facing south, have panel tracery above the cinquefoiled main lights. The reveals are hollow moulded. The western window is shorter than the other to allow for a small doorway beneath.

Something of the richness of the chapel has been lost by the removal, many years ago, of the pinnacles above the buttresses at each corner and in the middle of the south wall. By replacing them with straight-topped morlons, the effect has been to make the chapel more uniform with the nave of the church.

The chancel is earlier than the nave, and has a more steeply pitched roof covered with Collyweston slates. The east wall retains its plate-traceried window of four lights, although in its present form this is all nineteenth-century. At the north-east corner of the chancel and aligned with the east wall is a small vestry, of much the same date as the nave. It has a small two-light window in the north and east walls.

The interior walls are plastered. 

The floor area of the nave taken with the aisles is virtually square, covered with relatively modern concrete slabs interrupted only by one ledger in the middle of the nave, two in front of the tower arch, and four square fragments of earlier inscribed stones towards the east end of the north aisle. There are no pews, and indeed no furnishings in the nave, save the font, and the result is that the architecture of the church can be well appreciated with the clarity which it deserves.

The four piers of the nave arcades are round, the south being slightly earlier than the north. The former are on square plinths which may have formed part of the wall of an earlier church and which, by the wear on them, have been much used as seats. Their closeness to the floor suggests that the floor level has risen. The south-east pier is the oldest and has a band of nailhead ornament round the capital where the others have moulding. The piers of the north arcade rest upon round plinths and are noticably more slender than those on the south.

The arches of the arcades are of two orders, both chamfered, with surrounding hood-moulds to the nave but not to the aisles. On the north is one label-stop of foliage, and another of a human head with wrinklod brow putting out its tongue.

At one time the north aisle has been used as a chapel, for there is a piscina in the wall by the respond of the north arcade which has a trefoiled head and, although the bowl is broken off, a drain remaining within the wall. 

There seem to have been intermediate floors in the tower space at one time, for there are recesses for beams in each side wall. The ground floor is a step above the nave and is paved with stone flags. The arch opening into the space is carried on half-round piers and is of thre orders, the outer two running down to the ground without interruption.

The nave roof is crudely made with heavy gnarled cross-beams, one of which has the date 1676 and the initials ID. There are no corbels and the beams simply rest on the walls of the clerestory. The small windows of the clerestory give little light to the nave, but enough seems to enter through the aisle windows and from the west window of the tower.

The chancel arch consists of two chamfered orders, the outer dying into the responds while the inner is carried on conical corbels with moulded capitals. On the west face of the south respond is an attached shaft with its own capital which continues the moulding and nail-head from the corbel of the main arch. This suggests that there may at one time who have been a chancel arch decorated with a roll-moulding which came down upon this shaft.

The chancel, earlier than the nave as proved by the plate tracery in the east and north windows, has received more nineteenth-century attention. The tracery in the east window and the roof were renewed in this period. The altar and priest's stall are also of this date, but the seventeenth-century communion rails survive intact. The east window has the only stained glass, a representation of Christ preaching by Galilee dating from about 1891. The floor of the chancel is paved with stone in which are set several interestinginscribed slabs, and one brass. There is one step at the chancel arch, and a second at the rails.

The south chantry chapel, entered by a narrow arch from the south nave aisle and from the chancel through a wider version of the same, is of two small bays. Each has a big window in the south wall and there is a four-light window in the east wall. The arches which give access have moulded semi-octagonal capitals upon half-round shafts.