Church Heritage Record 633004

West tower, nave without aisles; south porch; chancel.

There was a church here at the time of Domesday in 1096, but of this nothing appears to survive. The earlier features discernible in the present fabric are the south doorway and a blocked lancet in the north chancel wall, both of c.1200. Most of the windows are Perpendicular and the brick uppermost stage of the tower seems to be early sixteenth-century. The church was not restored in the nineteenth century, but a gentle restoration was done in 1926 by William Weir on behalf of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings at a cost of £332.10.0. There have been more recent works of repair, but no alterations.

The walls of the south nave and chancel are rendered, so that little archaeological evidence may be discerned. The nave has three features. First, reading from west to east, is the doorway, sheltered by a timber porch, closed by a hurdle. This has a two-centred outer arch and prettily cusped barge-boards and is built of old oak timbers, It shelters a doorway of c.1200 with plain chamfered jambs and arch and chamfered imposts of a profile repeated in the hood-mould. The door itself, made up of three thick grooved planks, is probably fifteenth-century and has the unusual feature of an iron grille in the upper part of the middle plank. To the west of the doorway the wall is blind; to the east there are two three-light windows of differing design. First a large window with cusped ogee-headed lights and panel tracery under an arch with almost straight sides and outlined by a moulded hood. Secondly there is a small window with simpler ogee-headed lights with brick infilling in the spandrels under a straight moulded head. The jambs are chamfered but there is no label.

In the chancel the south wall has first a two-light window with ogee-headed lights, small pierced panels in the spandrels and a moulded label. To the east of this is a splendid early Georgian wall monument standing under a moulded two-centred hood. This takes the form of a pedimented frame like a fireplace surmounted by an urn and enclosing the sarcophagus; the whole monument is enclosed by an iron railing; it dates from 1728. To the east of it there is the moulded hood of a long blocked window. The nave and chancel walls are continuous and there are no angle buttresses anywhere in the building. The south-east angle of the chancel has stone quoins with a chamfer up the corner, and the upper stones have been replaced with tiles under the rendering. The east wall has a three-light window with cinquefoil-headed main lights and panel tracery in a two-centred arch outlined by a moulded hood. The north wall of the chancel has one small blocked lancet light with a rebate for glass and holes for the stanchions and saddlebars. To the west of it, close to the abutment of the nave, is a three-light window similar to the first described nave window, but less tall.

A Georgian brick buttress supports the eastern part of the north nave wall - and well it might, since the rood stair at this point evidently greatly weakened the wall and the outer face fell away, probably in the eighteenth century, to reveal the brick steps and the inner face of the staircase. The stone arch at the foot may be seen and so may the cruder timber lintel of the upper arch. Further west is a three-light window like that in the south wall opposite. Beyond it is a second brick buttress. The north walls of the nave and chancel are continuous like the south walls, the only difference being a change in the height of the roof ridge the chancel being about two feet lower than the nove and with a roof is slightly shallower pitch. The north wall of the church is unrendered.

The tower is rectangular in plan and of three stages. The lowest is very tall, and in the west wall has a huge five-light Perpendicular window, the largest window in the church. It has five ogee-headed main lights of equal height and panel tracery above within a four-centred arch having a moulded hood. It was evidently a later insertion, and to butiross the tower the north and south walls were doubled in thickness under tied weatherings at a slightly lower level than the nave roof. The spiral stair case for access to the bell-chamber is on the north side, semi-hexagonal in plan with a stone cap and one small rectangular light. The silence chamber is not exposed externally except that it has a small trefoil headed light with a moulded label in the south wall. The upper stage of the tower is of Tudor brick, with a four centred recessed arch in each face containing a pair of four-centred openings closed by wooden grilles. The severely plain parapet appears to have been rebuilt.

The interior of the church retains a rare unrestored atmosphere. The simple yellow-washed plaster walls and ochre quarry tiles on the floor provide the perfect setting for an assembly of black marble ledger slabs of the Poley family (who lived at Badley for many generations from the late fourteenth century) and for the characteristic assembly of woodwork of several different dates which, partly because of its beautiful silvery grey colouring, remains the most memorable feature of the church.

The plastered walls are continuous in nave and chancel, with a dado lined out to resemble ashlar masonry. Although there is no chancel arch, the change is distinguished both by the lower part of the mediaeval screen set amongst the later pews and by the change of the roof structure. The chancel has no visible timbers and is simply covered by a plaster vault of five faces above the ashlar pieces. The nave roof, on the other hand, has three moulded and cambered tie-beams with octagonal king-posts and four-way struts. The easternmost of these is at the point where a chancel arch would have been, had one been built. The ridge piece is left unplastered along the apex of the plaster nave vault. There are moulded wall-plates in nave and chancel.

The tall tower arch at the west end of the nave has three hollow-chamfered orders on the east face and two on the west, the innermost carried on simple corbels and the others dying into the walls. High above the floor on the north side is the small doorway giving access to the tower stair. There is a small organ in the tower space and in front of this stands the early thirteenth-century font on an octagonal step. In the south wall of the nave, close to the south door, is a chamfered recess which probably held a holy water stoup, and in the north wall further east the upper part of the blocked doorway to the rood stair forms a niche. The red quarry tiles on the floor have a series of fine ledger slabs down the central alley, and in the chancel they are almost completely replaced by ledgers. There are two monuments on the chancel walls, and on each side of the brightly coloured east window there are boards painted with the usual texts. The Communion table stands on a raised platform two steps above the level of the rest of the church floor, and the reredos is simply a panel painted with a text.

The arrangement of pews is of considerable interest, and presumablyrepresents a mid-eighteenth century liturgical plan, even though almost all the woodwork is of a much earlier date. The key is the base of the mediaeval chancel screen, which survives up to dado level. To the east of this there are two box pews on each side of the chancel for the important families of the parish. West of the screen the alley broadens and there are single pews facing inwards in collegiate fashion, again for important families. To the west of these the alley narrows again, and on the north side there are five mediaeval benches, on the south the pulpit and reading desk and then four mediaeval benches. Finally, at the back of the church are smaller benches made up of fragments of old woodwork: four on the north and three on the south, leaving an alley for the doorway. These are less wide than the benches further forward in order to leave a decent space round the font.