Church Heritage Record 633362

West tower, nave of five bays with co-terminous south aisle, south porch and chancel.

The tower is fourteenth-century and the nave has a fifteenth-century north doorway. By 1768, however, the roof was ruinous and the floor below the level of the churchyard.

The parish wished to raise the roof and re-pave the church at a higher level, and these works were carried out under a faculty dated 25th May 1768, which allowed the sale of three bells to raise money for the repairs. The work was done and the south porch built in 1769, at the expense of Sir Thomas Gooch.

The pronounced verticality of the tower and the strongly contrasting horizontality of the nave, chancel and south aisle is more familiar in Devon churches than those of East Anglia, and it seems that the Georgian remodelling of the building, has somewhat altered the building's proportions. The west tower is of three stages with moulded plinth only to the bases of the diagonal buttresses which rise to the parapet. The west wall is pierced at the lowest level by a window of two cinquefoiled lights with panel tracery above, still retaining much old weathered masonry. The middle stage, undemarcated by a stringcourse, has only a small rectangular slit in the west wall and otherwise, like the lowest stage, is blind north and south. The uppermost stage, which is uncommonly tall, is slightly set back and has a very small single cinquefoil-headed light in the east and west walls and paired lights with cusped Y tracery in the north and south walls, none being really large enough to make much impression in the considerable area of wall at this level. The parapet which crowns the walls has single battlements and three panels of flushwork in each face which appear to be nineteenth-century. At the corners are the stumps of crocketted pinnacles. The eastern angles have no buttresses, and rise shoor above the west gable of the nave.

The body of the church incorporates clear evidence of the unusual work of 1769 in the four-foot section of yellow brickwork added to the top of all the walls. Otherwise the walls are faced with flint, so that the extent of mediaeval work is clearly visible. All the window openings now are Georgian, although all except those in the north and south walls of the chancel have had Victorian tracery of lifeless rectitude inserted in them. There are three windows of two lights in the south wall of the south aisle and four in the north wall of the nave. The chancel windows still retain timber framing for the glazing, of three vaguely gothic lights in the two south windows but simple rectangular design in the northern two. The east window is a three- light Perpendicular design of nineteenth century date, as is the similar three-light window in the east wall of the south aisle. The west window of this aisle, which seems to have been also of three lights, has been blocked with red Georgian bricks but the moulded hood remains externally.

The south porch has a round arch in the outer wall with a plain keystone and imposts and benches along each side. The floor is of square flags and the inner doorway is mediaeval, with a hollow moulding between filletted mouldings and a moulded hood returning at each end. The door itself is of 1769 with a simple design of Gothic intersecting tracery executed in beading flush with the surface of the door. There is a door also of this date in the south wall of the chancel, and in this wall the remains of the jamb of one window and the head of another suggest that the chancel is Early English in origin and had three lancets in the south wall. Some fragmentary outlines of lancets can also be discerned in the north wall. One stone high in the south wall appears to be carved with a chevron and may indicate the presence of a Norman church on this site (although it may equally well have been brought from elsewhere). The entry to the Gooch family vault is by a flight of steps under protective stones which lead to an iron door below the east wall of the south aisle. In the north wall of the nave, towards the west end, is a blocked fifteenth-century doorway with mouldings decorated with fleurons all of one pattern and shield with the symbol of the Trinity and instruments of the Passion carved in the spandrels. It must presumably have been reset four feet higher during the Georgian remodelling of the building since it seems to retain its original proportions.

The interior of the churchis architecturally very simple, and the striking atmosphere of a virtualy unaltered Georgian building is chiefly the result of the furnishing. The floors are paved with rectangular stone flags and with pements within the box pews, the walls are plastered as are the ceilings (five- faced profile) and walls and ceilings are painted white, thus showing off admirably the complete set of fine box pews, the pulpit and the numerous wall tablets and hatchments to the Gooch family. The east end of the south aisle is raised one step above the level of the rest, showing the extent of the Gooch vault below, an both here and in the chancel are set a considerable number of black ledger slabs with good lettering. At the west end of the aisle is a recess showing the dimensions of the blocked window, and the tower arch at the west end of the nave was also blocked by brickwork in 1769 in which is set the octagonal tablet commemorating the work carried out at that time. Below this is the door to the tower space which is used as a vestry, concealed by an interesting early nineteenth-century arrangement of pews for the singers incorporating a small castellated organ-case. All the windows stand within plain reveals. The nave pillars are octagonal, on moulded bases and with moulded capitals. The stonework shows clearly how the pillars were raised about four feet, and the double-chamfered arches seem to have been constructed with the old stores.

The chancel is marked off from the nave not by a chancel arch but by a timber fretwork screen above an ogee-shaped timber arch which evidently is part of the 1769 work, and the floor level and side walls continue into the chancel without interruption. Above the timber arch is a small square panel painted with the Royal Arms and this, together with the east window of 1932, is the only colourful object in the church. The eastern part of the chancel was re-arranged in 1933 with advice from Dr. Francis Eeles of the Central Council for the Care of Churches, and is now furnished according to the "English" principles which the Council then favoured. The parish employed F.E. Howard who had recently done similar work at Wrentham Although becauseof the Georgian heightening of the floor the east window now comes too low to allow a reredos, the new altar was made the width of the window and provided with curtains at each side hung on iron riddels, the lower part of the window itself designed to perform the function of a reredos. One step was provided at the communion rails and another for a footpace. The grey-blue colouring on the inner face of the south coor is highly attractive and may form a valuable link with the original scheme of decoration after 1769.