Church Heritage Record 628347

3-bay aisled nave, chancel, south porch, and west tower.

Nave c 12m (39 ft) x 5m (15’6 ft), chancel 8m (25ft) long.

An Anglo-Saxon cemetery with 10 sword burials was excavated at North Luffenham 4 miles north-east and there have been other finds in the area (Medbourne, Rutland Water etc).  Oakham was a Royal vill mentioned in Domesday. There is a motte-and-bailey castle on Castle Hill to the east and much ridge-and-furrow, and a Deserted Medieval Village nearby (Snelston).  The Historic Environment Record should be consulted if any development is considered.

The manor is not mentioned in Domesday Book but was probably included amongst the unnamed berewicks attached to Ridlington, later it became attached to the Barony of Oakham.  Sir Henry Murdac presented to the church in 1228, and it seems likely the church is 12th-century in origin, with the aisles added in the 13th and the south widened in the 14th century, when the tower was probably added.  The chancel was rebuilt and much of the church remodelled, including a new porch, in the middle of the 15th century.

After the Reformation the advowson came through several hands to the Fludyer and then the Finch family.  The church was restored c 1800 by the Fludyers, apparently of Huguenot descent, hence perhaps the Flemish glass in the north aisle. Repairs of 1927-30 to the north aisle roof were carried out by Traylen & Lenton with a grant from the ICBS. The chancel was restored in 1937, paid for by James Finch of Ayston Hall (recorded on the chancel screen).  There have been several episodes of conservation work on the stained glass windows, most recently in 2004.

This is a small and quite modest Medieval church, but of considerable complexity and interest in terms of its development. The 3-stage west tower gives it some vertical emphasis, with a stepped embattled parapet over a belfry stage with pointed trefoiled 2-light openings. Each stage is defined by plain string-courses. Clasping buttresses and a vice in the south-west angle, the lower stages blind except for a pointed 2-light in the west face of the lower stage with cusped Y-tracery and above it in the middle stage a single loop. The stone roof and corrugated iron hatch to the boiler chamber can be seen in the angle of tower and north aisle.

The south aisle has two pointed Perpendicular 3-light windows to the east of the simple gabled porch, the west bay blind, and also such s window in the east  end wall, but a 2-light in the west end. The north aisle retains a widely splayed lancet window in the middle of the north wall, and at its west end is a small pointed quatrefoil opening high in the wall, cut in a single stone, with wide internal splay and sloping sill. A square-headed window of two trefoil lights near the east end of the north wall is a 14th-century insertion, and the doorway in the west bay has a plain segmental chamfered head. An old corbel head is set in to the wall above this.  The north aisle is without buttresses, plinth or string. The clearstorey has three 2-light Perpendicular windows to north and south. 

The chancel has buttresses to each bay and angle buttresses. A hollow moulding below the parapet, enriched with four-leaved flowers, is carried round the east wall along the gable, and there are crocketed pinnacles. The 4-centred east window is of five cinquefoiled lights without tracery, and the side windows, two on each side, are of the same character, but of three and two lights. The sill of the westernmost window on each side is lower. 

The porch has a plain coped gable and four-centred doorway with wide continuous chamfer, but no hood-mould. Sundial above, possibly 17th-century. The inner doorway has a four-centred hollow-chamfered head within a moulded square frame and label with returned ends, 17th-century door. The north door opposite has a flat head inside, and an antique door with step up.  Inside, all the walls are plastered internally, and the floors are flagged, with some ledger slabs from the 17th-century, mostly fragmentary. The roofs are Victorian. The interior has a spartan, pre-Ecclesiological feel, despite later changes, particularly to the chancel.

The tower opens into the nave by a sharply pointed arch of two chamfered orders on half-round responds, with moulded octagonal capitals and bases. Pointed doorway to a stone newel staircase. The north arcade has three semicircular arches of two chamfered orders, springing from cylindrical pillars and half-round responds with moulded capitals and water-holding bases. The plaster above the arches covers the hood-moulds, the stops of which alone are exposed; of these three are heads, and one an ornamented disc. There are remains of a rood-loft doorway in the thickened east wall of the north aisle, behind the organ.  In the south arcade the arches are pointed and of two chamfered orders, on cylindrical pillars and responds of slightly greater height and diameter, with plainly moulded capitals and bases.

The nave has very late, plain box pews of deal, perhaps around 1800. Some darker Victorian benches at the west end are signed by the grainer, 1857. There is a chest with beading around the edges, possibly 18th-century. A 14th-century monumental slab in west end of north aisle probably represents a knight and lady, previously kept outside (as recorded in VCH). A vestry is screened off here.

The chancel arch is 4-centred and of two chamfered orders, without hood-mould, springing from moulded and embattled corbels carved on the underside with foliage. Fragmentary painted Royal Arms above, probably Hanoverian, painted over a Doom. Gothic filigree pitch-pine chancel screen of 1937. In the chancel is a trefoil-headed piscina with projecting bowl (the head restored), and in the north wall a rectangular aumbry fitted with a wooden door, part of the wainscotting here.