Church Heritage Record id19001

West tower with short spire, the ground floor forming the main entrance to the church; four-bay nave and three-bay chancel with continuous aisles; sanctuary projecting a little to the east; south chantry chapel.

Records state that the church was dedicated by the Bishop of St. Asaph on 18th December, 1295, but nothing remains of that date in the present building. The church now is Perpendicular, where mediaeval work remains, and of particular note is the south chantry chapel built by Abbot Clement Lichfield in c.1520. The church became ruinous during the early eighteenth century, and in 1730 the north arcade collapsed. The remains, together with the walls of the aisle and a chantry chapel similar to that on the south, were demolished; a now wall was built on the line of the outer wall of the north aisle to the height of the south clerestory and the resulting area (of nave and north aisle) roofed in one span. This proved disastrously over-ambitious and before long, owing to the weakness of the timbers used, the roof fell in. Until 1836 the church lay abandoned in ruins, and in that year it was restored by Harvey Eginton of Worcester, following the pattern of the surviving southern parts (save for the chantry chapel) to produce a symmetrical building. Eginton's other works soon for the most part to be churches in the Commissioners' idiom, and are St.Michael, Broadway (in the lancet style, with west tower), of 1839, Catshill (also in the lancet style) of 1838 and the later church at Trimpley (an excursion into Neo-Norman) built in 1844. The work at Eveshan in 1836 cost £2,500, most of which was raised by voluntary contributions.

The church is best approached from the west, from which point its setting in relationship to All Saints and the bell tower may be appreciated, and the tower of the church may be best studied. Four unequal stages with a short stone spire are set back behind a low parapet. The stages are marked externally by moulded string-courses and the angles have set-back buttresses of slender proportions, the angles of the tower between being chamfered up to a point about three feet below the parapet, where the chanfors terminate with pretty trefoiled coving. The vice which gives access to the upper floors is placed at the south-east angle and is entered from the churchyard through a doorway with a four-centred arched head.

Whether Eginton left the church as closely representative of its mediaeval aspect as he found it, there is no way of knowing. It is worth noticing, however, that in its present form it is, apart from the south chantry chapel, built on a plan not unlike that of Eginton's own churches for the Commissioners, with a rectangular outline, wide aisles, sanctuary projecting only a short way beyond the east walls of the aisles, on three gabled roofs running continuously in an unbroken line from west to east. In any case, the external features of the aisle walls are almost entirely of Eginton's time. These consist of wide three-light windows within hollow-moulded surrounds, the main lights with cusped ogee hoads and the tracery of Perpenlicular inspiration with small paired panels. The bays are marked by thin buttresses which perform no structural function and contribute little aesthetically apart from articulating the wall-surface at regular intervals. The second bay from the east on the north side has a priest's doorway with a crocketted ogee head which breaks irto the lights of the window in a way more Gothick than Gothic.

The east walls of the aisles have three-light windows of exactly the same design as those used by Eginton in the north and south walls. 

The special glory of the exterior of the church is the east facade of the chancel , projecting slightly forward from the flanking aisles, their somewhat mal-proportioned plainness enhancing the frontispiece by contrast. Almost the whole area of the gabled east wall is taken up by the great six-light window, with transoms in the form of delicate tracery providing cinquefoiled heads to the lower lights and ogee bases to the upper lights. The tracery in the four-centred head of the window consists of panels above the three pairs of lights with the two main mullions rising straight to the head of the window, tributary bars breaking off to left and right into intersecting figures.

What little is left to wall surface to each side of the window and below it is covered (including the diagonal buttresses) with panelling. On the moulded plinth below the window are two tiers of panelling, the lower a continuous frieze of quatrefoils with florets in the centre of each and the upper a similar frieze of trefoiled arches, both friezes continuing uninterrupted round the buttresses and along the north and south return walls until the aisle walls halt them. The buttresses are of two stages separated by a castellated off-set; the lower stage has paired arches under crocketted canopies and the upper more uniform panelling comparable (on a much smaller scale) with that on the walls of the great bell tower. The gable above the moulded arch of the window is set back about a foot, which suggests an unfinished scheme, perhaps intended to terminate in a less sharply pitched gable with pierced parapet to complement that on the south chapel. In the north and south return walls are tall paired lights of a height equivalent to the main lights of the east window, making even more airy the whole concept, the wall being reduced merely to slender piers supported by buttresses at each angle of the chancel.

Entering by the west door, and passing through the dark tower-space roofed by the underside of a gallery, the visitor first sees the nave as a surprisingly narrow chamber running unbroken into the chancel and so, still without a break, to the sanctuary and the colourful Willement glass in the east window, quite without any wall surrounding it. On each hand are aisles rather wider than the nave, with flat plaster ceilings; towards the east end of the north aisle stands the organ case, originally built in 1836 in the west gallery, and slightly closer on the south side may be caught glimpses of the richly decorated panelled walls of the south chantry chapel. At the west end, the outer wall of the tower is pierced by a four-light window which also takes up virtually the whole of the wall space in which it is set, and the general effect of the church is thus that of a long gallery closed at each end by transparent, or at least translucent, screens.

Although this impression is today re-inforced by the continuous panelled ceiling of four-centred section, it was not always so, as sections of flat wall undecorated by panelling dividing nave from chancel show. At this point stood the screen, and the rood loft was entered by a stir on the south side, of which all trace has disappeared save the doorway at the foot. The four bays of the nave arcades and the three of the chancel arcades are of identical design, said to be original on the south and imitative on the north. The piers are of quatrefoil section with attached shafts towards the arches and towards the aisles terminating at an equal height while those towards the nave continue upwards to the moulded wall-plate. The hollow mouldings between continue round the four-centred arches, and the attached shafts have moulded semi-octagonal capitals from which spring further mouldings. Each bays is thus framed by shafts rising from the moulded bases of the piers right through the clerestory to the wall plate, the vertical emphasis of the building emphasised by uniting the clerestory with the arcades. The clerestory has two ways to each bay of the arcades, with ogee arches in panelling below, four to each great bay, and then pairs of small cinquefoiled lights above, two pairs to each great bay.

The ceiling is panelled with moulded ribs painted dark brown, the panels between plastered and painted white. The ribs are alternately large and small, corresponding to the half-bays below (the wall at the place of the screen fits exactly one half-bay). The aisles are paved with stone flags and roofed with flat plaster ceilings without cornices. The wall surfaces are faced with stucco incised to resemble ashlar masonry and the windows stand within plain undecorated reveals.

At the west end of the nave a panelled arch opens into the tower space; the lower part is screened by a stone screen in imitation of that which formerly closed the arch to the south chantry chapel, doubtless dating from Eginton's restoration and simply composed of three tiers of trefoiled arches, three of those in the lowest and middle tiers absent to form the doorway. The tower-space has a tierceron vault with stone ribs and a central circular bell-way.

The chancel is screened from the aisles by timber parclose screens dating from c.1895, that on the north serving to conceal the organ and a choir vestry in the three eastern bays of the north aisle, while in the east bay of the south aisle is a clergy vestry. The chancel is one step above the floor level of the nave, with a further step east of the choirstalls, one more at the communion rails and then a final step and footpace for the altar. The eastern part of the chancel and the sanctuary are paved with excellent tiles of various patterns, and the reredos seems, with the font, to be almost the only furnishing provided by Eginton which survives. 

The south chantry chapel is virtually square and is as lavishly decorated within as it is externally. It communicates with the south aisle through a deep arch with attached shafts at the edges enclosing panelled surfaces which cover the soffit up to the apex of the arch. Three steps lead down into the chapel, to a floor paved with unpleasantlycoloured tiles.