Church Heritage Record 934047

West tower, short nave with aisles which embrace the tower also; north porch, chancel.

The lower part of the tower dates from the Norman period; the chancel is the next earliest part to have survived, being thirteenth-century in the lancet style (although very heavily restored in 1866). The nave may retain some work of this period, but the north and south aisles and north porch were added in the fourteenth century in the Decorated style. The whole church was restored in 1866-67 when the chancel was rebuilt and the present Neo-Norman belfry stage and shingled pyramidal spire were built to replace a stone spire which had been removed in c.1560.

The church is a compact building, this impression being chiefly the result of the short, but tall, nave and the fact that the north and south aisles embrace the west tower. The external appearance of the church is all late Decorated, with three-light cinquefoil-headed windows under drip stones in the north and south aisles (save for the south-east window which is of an earlier form with two ogee-headed lights and incipient panel tracery). 

The clerestory has small two-light windows, also rectangular with cinquefoiled heads to the lights and both the clerestory and the aisle have simple parapets with continuous mouldings. Clerestory and aisle aach have two gargoyles on the north side and one on the south side. 

The lower part of the tower, in the same plane as the west walls of both aisles, is divided from them by pilaster buttresses, which give a Norman date for the original building. The pilaster buttresses are repeated within the church, on the north and south walls, suggesting that before the aisles were built the tower stood free of buildings at the sides. The middle stage is lit by a tiny slit lancet in the north and south walls, and above that on the south is a small sundial canted at an angle to the wall and with an illegible inscription. The upper, belfry, stage has three identical louvred lancets in each face, and above that the angular wooden spire sits directly on the walls without any parapet. The design of the spire is eyecatching in the valley because of its unexpectedness. In Sussex, or perhaps Essex, such constructions are familiar but not often in Wiltshire.

The chancel s it now appears is almost entirely nineteenth-century but seems (by the irregular placing of the windows) to represent what was the before. 

If the tower looks like a fugitive from Sussex, the interior of the church is more reminiscent of Northamptonshire. This is chiefly due to the short nave (with only two bays to the arcades) and the tall effect which results from it.

The arch in the east wall, opening into the nave, is, like the nave arcades, Decorated, but is presumably an enlargement of a Norman arch, the corbels from which have been re-used.

The arcades of the nave are carried on carved corbels at the west and east ends, and on grouped colonettes of quatrefoil section centrally. These piors have moulded bases and capitals, and the arches above are simple, of two chamfered orders enlivened by the use of alternately fawn and buff stones. The corbels mentioned are decorated with small whorls of leaves in the south aisle, but in the north aisle the west corbel is merely moulded.

The nave roof is supported on a series of eight carved stone corbels, representing (in pairs, from the east) a tonsured priest's head and a sombre male head (perhaps the parish clerk) opposite. The next pair are a female head and an angel bearing a blank shield (no doubt originally painted). Then come a bearded man with a pork-pie hat and his hands over his ears, and an angel bearing a scroll, and finally at the west end a female head with bobbed hair and a small figure (full-length) of a man in a kirtle bearing an unidentifiable object. The roof itself is said to be modern, but from the floor of the nave seems to be genuine fifteenth-century work of the date of the clerestory which supports it; there are four moulded tie beams with curved braces springing from the corbels just described, and from these small struts with arcading rise to the low-pitched principal rafters. There are carved bosses at the intersections, mostly carved as foliage but some with grotesque faces.

The north aisle has a small vestry screened off at the west end, and in the middle bay is the doorway sheltered by the north porch; the left of this is a narrow doorway giving access to the stair to the parvise. Between the two doors stands the font, of unpolished Purbeck marble and octagonal shape.

The east end of the south aisle was formerly a chapel, since it has a piscina in the north-east corner . Above this is an arch with four steps, once forming part of the rood stair.

The chancel arch is nineteenth-century, carried on half-round attached responds with semi-octagonal capitals. The arch is of two chamfered orders, outlined by a hood-mould. To the north stands the pulpit, of the samo date; and to the south is a wooden lectern-cum-reading desk. 

The long narrow chancel is almost entirely nineteenth-century in appearance, with simple reveals to the lancet windows and choir-stalls along each side.