Church Heritage Record id18797

Two-bay nave with north and south aisles, the latter extending along part of the south chancel wall also; south porch, west boll cote, chancel.

The proportions of the nave suggest a Saxon origin, and this is borne out by the survival of a Saxon carving now set in the wall of the south aisle (although it is possible that this originated elsewhere). There are now no Saxon details of architectural features surviving, although the thinness of the walls of the nave (about 26 inches) and its proportions support the theory. The south arcade and south aisle seem to date from soon after 1200 and the north arcade and aisle (and the chancel arch) from slighly later in view of the more progressive style there employed. The chancel was rebuilt in the second quarter of the thirteenth century and extended in the latter part of the same century. The windows were renewed and the south porch added in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, at which time also the walls were buttressed. The latest addition was the east bay of the south aisle, flanking the chancel, which appears to be early sixteenth-century. The fabric of the church has suffered no great change since. It was restored in the early days of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings at the instigation of William Morris who lived at Kelmscott nearby. A brass plate says that this was in 1888-9, and the church was reported upon by Micklethwaite in 1886 (report dated August 25th), but there are two beams in the roofs which suggest that the staving off of decay by daily care continued over several years since they are dated 1892 and 1899. A further gentle restoration was carried out in the 1930's by P. Hartland Thomas of Bristol.

The church is approached from the east, along a lane which leads no further than the church and its two attendant houses. Thus the first view of it is a silhouette against the sky of the pointed chancel gable with the sharp gabled bell-cote on the nave wall rising beyond it and to each side the shallower pitches of the aisle roofs within their plain parapets.

The first church on the site seems to have been Saxon and to have occupied the site of the present nave and, possibly, the western part of chancel. In the second quarter of the thirteenth century the original chancel (possibly about twelve feet square) was replaced by one of greater dimensions (especially in length and height). Both the north and east walls have a chamfered base externally and a stringcourse at sill level. In the third quarter of the thirteenth century, the south chancel wall was rebuilt in line with the south nave arcade, increasing the width of the chancel by about a foot. The east gable was restored and the diagonal buttress at the south-east corner added. The east window was renewed in its present form as three lancets with trefoiled heads. During the fourteenth-century the church was further improved by the insertion of larger traceried windows, that at the east end of the north aisle with two ogee cinquefoil-cusped lights with a pointed quatrefoil above and a hoodmould on the exterior. A similar window, perhaps slightly later in date, was probably inserted in the complementary position in the south aisle but when that aisle was extended eastward was moved to the position in the south wall which it now occupies.

The fifteenth century brought more alterations to the external aspect of the church, when windows of sophisticated design were placed in the west walls of the nave and aisles. The nave window is of three cinquofoiled lights with panel tracery above with trefoil cusping, while the surrounding hood mould returns along the wall ench side to the buttresses. The aisle windows are of two lights under a square head with cinquefciled cusping and a hood which returns at the ends. The late fifteenth century saw the addition of the south porch, although it has since been somewhat altered. The outer doorway has a lintel of one stone with a flat four-centred soffit and in the gable is an ogee-headed niche with trefoil cusping and a moulded hood. Finally, the building reached its present form with the extension of the south aisle eastwards along half the length of the chancel, which took place probably in the early sixteenth century.

The uneven stone floor is evidently of great age, its texture attractively varied by the insertion here and there of the huge matrix for a knight's brass, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century ledger stones and one brass inscription plate.

The chancel has the most complete scheme of decoration at present visible, with a pattern of stars in golden yellow on a red background each side of the altar and at the back of a recess a rosutte pattern in bright red on a grey ground. 

Like the building and its furnishings, the wallpaintings do not appear to represent the remains of comprehensive schemes but have rather grown as time passed, with various areas being replaced by new figures or texts as seemed right. In this cumulative progression, the paintings complement both the architecture and the furnishings.