Church Heritage Record 634473

Aisleless nave with south tower (forming also the porch) and north east transeptal chapel ; chancel with small north vestry alongside the chapel.

The church has a Norman font and there are fragments of chevron moulding built into the walls. The chancel arch is thirteenth century on twelfth-century responds and the chancel itself is thirteenth century although somewhat restored. The church was restored at the expense of John Davis (d . 1840) in 1833 when the wooden belfry of the tower (which Buckler illustrates) was replaced by a stone belfry. The chancel was restored at the expense of John Davis Junior (d.1878) in 1862 when W. Hardwick of Warminster was employed as surveyor. F.C. Eden repaired the church and installed the chancel screen in 1912.

The nave is broad, without aisles, and gives the impression of having been rebuilt completely in 1833 with some old features incorporated. These include the three-light Decorated west window with pointed quatrefoils in the tracery and a moulded hood, and the two two-light windows in the north wall. The way in which the bays of the north wall are regularly articulated by low buttresses (one of which has a re-set scratch dial) is, however, entirely characteristic of 1833 and the two-centred arched doorway under the west window is not present in Buckler's drawing of c.1804, where its place is taken by a buttress. There is one window in the south wall to the west of the tower and another two to the east, all similar in design to those in the north wall but of slightly different dimensions. Near the windows east of the tower obviously old stonework re-used several fragments of Norman chevron mouldings are built into the wall as decorative features.

The tower is placed to the west of the midpoint of the south nave wall. It is square, of three stages and has diagonal buttresses to the lowest stage. This stage indeed is shown by Buckler to have looked in 1804 very much as it does now, with a two-centred arched doorway in the south wall with mouldings dying into the canted jambs, and a rectangular window above. The recess is now filled by a cast-iron plate recording that "This Church was Rebuilt in 1833 by John Davis Esq.". The side walls are blind except that they also have rectangular openings in the upper part of this stage. A moulded stringcourse then marks the belfry stage which was added in 1833. It has two-light openings of Decorated character in each face and only the rather tall merlons of the embattled parapet and the slightly oversize crocketted pinnacles give any suggestion that it might not be part of the original design. Its predecessor as shown by Buckler was a wooden weather-boarded stage with a low-pitched gabled roof.

The north transeptal chapel has a gabled roof as tall as the nave ridge. Its west wall is blind, and its east wall is obscured by a vestry under a low pent roof with a re-used cusped ogee light in the north wall. The north wall of the transept also contains a re-used window, of two ogee-headed lights under a moulded label which does not appear to belong to it.

The chancel in its present form, though restored, is thirteenth century, with lancets windows, and is a design of some dignity. The east wall has two lancets above a moulded stringcourse at sill level, and there is a small quatrefoil within a moulded roundel above. The lancets are linked by a moulding which forms the return for their hoods. At the eastern angles there are clasping buttresses, and all these features, together with a shallow buttress at the midpoint, appear in Buckler's drawing. The north and south walls each have three similar lancets irregularly spaced, again linked by a string between the moulded hoods and by a string at sill level. Both walls retain their corbel tables. The chequer pattern is more precise here than on the nave walls.

The lowest stage of the tower forms the porch to the south doorway, and is paved with stone flags amongst which are set two ledgers. The outer doorway has two chamfers and the inner has a single continuous chamfer and a door of 1833.

The nave is broad, with a low-pitched plaster ceiling typical of 1833. The floor is paved with stone flags and there is a gallery across the west end approached by a stair in the north-west corner. The walls are plastered and painted white. Architecturally there is little to record except that the chancel arch has paired shafts attached to the responds with Norman capitals, one with interpenetrating trumpets decorated with nailhead and the other an interesting design representing a leather strap pulled through a loop. The arch is awkwardly proportioned because it is a thirteenth-century (or possibly later) alteration, too tall for the twelfth-century responds, with two chamfers which die into the wall at each side. This was skilfully concealed by the screen erected by F.C. Eden, for the gallery which he provided distracts the eye from the awkward proportions of the arch. There is one step just in front of the screen, and the space against the east wall south of the chancel arch was clearly originally occupied by a small altar, instead of the present rather over-large priest's stall.

The chancel is a well proportioned and handsome piece of thirteenth-century work, and it is clear from Buckler's drawings that the eastern lancet in each of the side walls had been replaced later by two-light Decorated windows and that these were once more replaced with lancets in 1862, bringing the chancel back to something like its original appearance. The three lancets in each side wall have broadly spreading splays outlined by continuous roll-mouldings, and there is a small doorway in the north-west corner giving access to the vestry. The floor is paved with red and black quarry tiles and the roof is boarded with panels divided by moulded ribs. There is a piscina in the south wall of the sanctuary. The east wall has two lancets of larger dimensions than those in the side wall, and more richly treated, with moulded arches carried on shafts with moulded bases and capitals. The sills, also, are sloping, not flat. The recess of the small quatrefoil above has no decorative surround.