Church Heritage Record 621694

West tower, nave with north aisle and south porch, clerestory on both sides since there was a south aisle also until 1777; chancel with south vestry.

The church was rebuilt after a fire in 1405 but the tower looks a good deal later. A Faculty of 16th July 1977 allowed the taking down of the south aisle and to repair and beautify the fabric. The church was restored thoroughly in 1854-5 at a cost of just under £1,000.

The tower is of three stages with paired angle buttresses at each corner, very slender in form and with several off-sets. It is divided into three stages, with a doorway in the west face of the lowest stage.

The four-bay nave originally had both north and south aisles, but a Faculty dated 16th July 1777 allowed for the taking down of the south aisle and the repairing and beautifying of the church. The north side of the building therefore represents its mediaeval aspect and will be taken first. Both aisle and clerestory are of four bays, the former with three-light windows in each of the bays save the westernmost where there is a small doorway with continuously moulded jambs set off-centre towards the east. The simply moulded hood has carved heads at the stops. The buttresses which divide the bays have an offset halfway up and die into the wall at the eaves. In the west wall is a further window, this time with two cinquefoil-headed lights. The four clerestory windows are each of two lights with trefoiled heads and depressed spandrels under rectangular hoods.

The south wall of the nave shows the arches of the former south arcade, each with a nineteenth-century window, which have tracery modelled on the two slightly differing designs to be found in the north aisle. The thin buttresses between the bays have two offsets before dying into the wall at the eaves of the clerestory. The clerestory windows are like those in the north nave wall and on the east gable of the nave is a nineteenth century gable cross with a foliated cross whose arms are encompassed by circle. The stops to the hoodmoulds of the windows in the south wall have lively carved heads which are probably nineteenth-century but might, in view of their spirited character, be earlier. The doorway by which the church is normally entered is in the western bay and is sheltered by a porch which seems entirely nineteenth-century in date. The outer doorway has two chamfered orders which reach to the ground and carved heads at the label stops; the outer angles have diagonal buttresses.

The south and east walls of the chancel seem to be almost entirely of 1854, the latter with a vestry under a pent roof added at that date with two-light window in the east wall and the stone base of a chimney on the south chancel wall now finished with a stone cap. The east window is of three lights with ogee heads to the main lights and panel tracery above, which very probably represents what was originally there. The label stops represent a king and a queen. The gable is capped by a cross similar to that on the nave, while at the corners are diagonal buttresses. The north chancel wall is, like the east wall of the aisle which abuts against it, covered in Roman cement so that no stonework can be seen. This stucco seems to be of the same date as a semi-circular niche in the wall with a moulded hood and carved label stops. Further west is a two-light window of a design earlier than anywhere else in the church with cinquefoiled lights and a flattoned pointed quatrefoil above. The east window of the north aisle has three trefoil-headed lights and panel tracery and seems to retain mostly old stonework.

The entrance to the church is the south doorway of the nave which has a two-centred arch with four continuous hollow mouldings which terminate at a plain base just above the ground. The west wall of the nave is mostly occupied by the large tower arch with three chamfers which die into the walls at each end. The arch is crossed at the foot by the former chancel screen and above this is a hardboard partition which fills the arch. The south wall shows no sign of the arcade internally, the windows simply set in plain reveals, and the north arcade is of four bays with double chamfered arches and somewhat clumsy moulded octagonal capitals and braces to the octagonal pillars. Small corbels above each pillar seen to be relatively modern additions which bear no relation to the history of the building, although it is possible that the wall-posts of the roof once rested on them. These are now, however, supported on plain stone corbels at a higher level. The roof, which is entirely nineteenth-century, has tie-beams to each bay with striking geometrical tracery of quatrefoils and daggers in the spandrels. The purlins are moulded and there are cusped windbraces.

The north aisle is usually separated from the nave by curtains, but both it and the nave are furnished with pews with lozenge shaped poppyheads and little doors which are copied from the few remaining bench- ends in the church and doubtless date from 1854. The roof has moulded purlins and rafters and probably incorporates some older timbers. In the east wall is a pretty pillar piscina with an octofoil shaft sunk into the wall below a trefoil-hoaded arch under a crocketted ogee canopy with stops carved as heads (one now offaced) and a foliated finial. The drain is octagonal. 

The chancel arch is of two chamfered orders which die into the wall at each side so that the arch does not form any very definite division between nave and chancel. There is also one step at this point. The floor is tiled like that in the nave and the roof is of three bays, at a steeper pitch than the nave roof but probably of the same date in the nineteenth century. The principals rest on carved corbels and have arch braces below the collar beams. The north window and the south doorway which leads to the vestry both have plain reveals and the east window has the only stained glass in the church. The east wall has panelling round the sanctuary which is of relatively recent date.