Church Heritage Record id19598

Simply a rectangle with nave and chancel under one roof; a short tower stands on stone piers within the west wall and the church is entered by a west door. A small vestry projects under a gable on the south sido of the chancel.

The present building dates from c.1700 although there seems to be no printed evidence of a precise date. It incorporates late twelfth-century fragments from Aunby Chapel which formerly stood one mile to the south-east. The windows were altered in 1863-4.

The west front faces the lawn and has bold stone quoins at the angles. The doorway is Early English of c.1300 and is the first of the fragments from Aunby to be noticed. It has shafts at each side with knobbly leaves on the capitals and a simply moulded arch with a moulded hood ending in uncarved square blocks. The oak door is nineteenth-century, presumably of the 1863 work. Above the door is a horizontal stringcourse upon which rests a small Royal Arms of Queen Anne carved in stone, the unicorn having an iron horn. Above this level, the wall of the church narrows to become the small west tower and on the angles of the nave are urns which are in fact spherical with draped swags and a flame issuing from the top of each. The tower also has prominent quoins at the angles and oval openings with four keystones in each face. The parapet has ho battlements but is instead decorated with four sunk quatre foils in circles on each face and stone urns at the angles, similar to those on the corners of the nave but oval rather than spherical and slighly smaller. The wooden lattices to the oval belfry openings are a pretty conceit. From the centre of the roof rises an iron weathervane with scrolling brackets and embellishments of a simple type.

The north and south walls of the nave each have three windows of 1863 with cusped Y- tracery which are perfectly presentable examples of the type but it is impossible not to regret what they replace. The wall continues up without a break to a plain parapet which hides the roof from the ground. On the south side towards the east end is a small chimney and near it projects the vestry with a single lancet in the south wall. The east window may possibly be another fragment from Aunby, but the crispness of the stonework suggests a later date. If it is of 1700 then it is a remarkably accurate reproduction of a typical Decorated design with three main lights and reticulated tracery. The stops of the hood mould are carved as heads. There are urns on the eastern angles like those on the west nave wall.

As marked by the bays of the roof and the windows in the side walls the interior of the church divides into three bays, without any arch or other features to mark the chancel from the nave. The roof appears to be of 1863 and has arch braces to the principlals which are carried on stone corbels, the rather disjointed florets of which suggest that they may belong to c.1700. Each side of the king-post in each bay the small spandrels are filled with differing designs of tracery. At the west end the tower is supported within the nave on two free-standing piers and two responds against the west wall which seem to have been pillars from aisle arcades and from the most striking parts brought from Aunby Chapel. The cylindrical piers have moulded bases and simple transitional capitals with scrolls which lie between Norman work and the Early English stiff-leaf. The simply chamfered arches have obviously been reset, and the way in which half arches reach from the substructure of the tower to the the nave walls is rather awkward because they end above the western windows instead of against a blind area of wall. The organ stands under the arch on the north side. The floor is paved with stone flags, set diagonally in the chancel.

The chancel seems to have been remodelled in 1863 and is now raised three steps above the level of the nave. Because of the steps, the east window now comes rather low in the chancel and there is no reredos. To make up for this, there are large panelled niches each side with crocketted canopies, and similar canopies on the north and south walls of the sanctuary frame a tablet on the north side and the doorway to the vestry on the south. The tiny vestry has a tiled floor and the lancet in the south wall is supplemented by a skylight in the west slope of the roof. The room seems to have been added in 1863 and has a boiler room below.