Church Heritage Record 618150

The main timber structure of the belfry is square but is surrounded at the lowest level by an octagonal stone wall.

There is no mention of a church at Pembridge in the Domesday survey, but a Norman church is thought to have existed by 1140. The earliest part of the present building are in the chancel, which incorporates blocked openings formerly leading to side chapels, dating from c. 1220–30. The font also dates from about this time. Most of the rest of the building (nave, aisles and transepts) appears to have been built over a relatively short period in the 1320s or 30s, possibly under the auspices of the Mortimer family. A north porch was added in the second half of the fourteenth century. The detached timber bell tower is also usually dated to the fourteenth century, although the timbers within it have been dendrochronologically dated to between 1207 and 1214; they may be reused from elsewhere. 

In the eighteenth century the church was provided with box pews and plaster ceilings. In the 1840s it was further refitted by Josiah Griffiths, architect of Quatford, Shropshire, but judging from the plans (figures 2 and 3) and an illustration of 1843 (figure 4) his scheme was of a decidedly old-fashioned, pre-ecclesiological flavour. Griffiths took out the box pews and a western gallery, and relocated the pulpit, but fitted new box pews and retained the plaster ceilings. His drawings also show that the Gour tombs were moved at this time from the north wall of the north transept to their present position in the chancel. New seating in the chancel was provided for children rather than for a choir, and a new vestry is shown giving off the south side of the chancel. In the event this was built on the north side, but whether by Griffiths or in the later restoration of the chancel carried out by County Surveyor William Chick in 1871 is not clear. Details of the latter scheme are not certain; presumably it involved the removal of the children’s seating and the installation of choir stalls, and probably the addition of the present boarded ceiling. 

In 1899 the bell tower was restored by Jethro Cossins of Birmingham (The Builder, p. 198, 1898), and three of the five bells were recast. The rest of the church was restored in 1903-9 by Roland W. Paul, perhaps best known as an architectural illustrator. He replaced the pews with chairs and probably added the draught lobby at the north door. The pulpit was moved to the north side of the nave, near the organ (which had been installed in the north transept in 1878). The south chapel, previously known as the Byletts Chapel, became a Lady Chapel; medieval wall paintings were uncovered here. It was presumably at this time that the remaining wall plaster was removed (apart from the areas of wall paintings, and later painted texts in the south aisle and north transept), and possibly the Georgian ceilings too.

This is a large parish church, consisting of an aisled nave with north porch, north and south transepts (the south transept known as the Lady Chapel) and a chancel with north vestry. The building is faced with local sandstone with ashlar dressings and the roofs are covered with tiles, replacing stone slates.

The main approach to the church is from the north and west. The west front of the nave has a central doorway with two-centred arch, label and head stops. The door, with strap hinges, is probably of seventeenth century date. Above it is a tall early fourteenth century window with five trefoiled ogee-headed lights and reticulated tracery. Smaller three-light windows of similar pattern light the west end of the aisles. The nave has a clerestory on both sides, of four circular windows with quatrefoils. The north and south aisles have fourteenth century windows of varying patterns, described in greater detail in the list entry. The south door has strap hinges, and also appears to be of seventeenth century date. Projecting from the north aisle towards the west end, the late fourteenth century north porch has windows with flowing tracery and a fine tierceron stone vault. Its outer timber gates have swept top rails and are inscribed ‘Benbough and Jo Badham, Wardens Ano Dmi 1678’. Within the porch, the inner doorway retains its fourteenth century door, with ornamental iron hinges and a seventeenth century lock. The north transept has a tall north window of three lights with reticulated tracery, and smaller two-light windows at the sides. The windows in the south transept are similar. The chancel has one fourteenth century window on the north side, to the west of the vestry, which is a stone-built nineteenth century addition, Gothic, with a tall stone stack. To the left of the vestry the north chancel wall is blank and presumably refaced, for there is no evidence (inside or out) of the window shown on Josiah Griffiths’ survey of 1842. The east window is of four trefoiled lights with reticulated tracery. The south side of the chancel has a three-light window similar to that on the north side and a mid-thirteenth century window of two trefoil-headed lights and pierced quatrefoil. At the angle with the south transept is a projection for the rood stair, with a short pinnacle.  

The lowest stage of the tower has a stone wall roughly octagonal in plan and of varying thickness with the entrance door placed in the south-west wall. This is provided with moulded stone jambs and a wooden lintel. In the east wall are two rough rectangular openings, the north and north-west sides each have a small loop light and the west wall has a window originally of two lights. Within this stage is the square base of the timber framework which supports the upper parts of the structure, and round this therefore is a wide passage under a pent roof with one small window opened towards the east which lights the ladder to the next stage. The centre of the square is accessible and is partly taken up by the works of the clock. The next stage appears square roughly with weatherboraded facings in each side broken in places by louvres close to the top and with a clock face set off centre in the west side. This stage has a pyramidal tiled of through which a yet smaller square weatherboarded stage breaks. This is capped by a pyramidal shingled roof terminating in a slender iron cross surmounted by a weathercock.

Inside, the walls have been largely stripped of their plaster, and the roof structures once again exposed. The tall nave and the transepts have trussed rafter roofs with moulded wall plates, with one tie beam towards the east end provided with cusped braces below; two tie beams are modern replacements. The pent roofs of the aisles have moulded wall plates. The nave arcade is of six bays with two-centred arches supported on octagonal piers. In the east wall of the south transept is an ogee-headed doorway giving access to the rood stair, which emerges as a high-level square-headed opening to the former rood loft to the right of the chancel, angled and supported on a cinquefoiled squinch. The chancel arch is of two moulded orders, and above it are two high-level circular windows, similarly detailed to the nave clerestory. The south wall of the chancel retains traces of the previous building: a blocked thirteenth century arch with semi-circular shaft and stiff-leaf capital.

The church is rich in furnishings and fittings. Surviving medieval furnishings and features include (in broadly chronological order):

• Built into the east wall of the north porch is a small scalloped capital, twelfth century.
• Near the west end of the nave, the large and impressive thirteenth century font is square with deep half-round lobed projections to the bowl, stem and base to make a quatrefoil form.
• Fourteenth century piscinae in the chancel, with cusped head, north transept (east wall) and south transept (south wall).
• In the chancel, two fourteenth century chest tombs, each with a pair of effigies. Each has a moulded top slab and trefoil-headed front panels, with the short ends built up in nineteenth century brickwork. The eastern pair are possibly Nicholas Gour, Serjeant-at-law, and his wife; he in his robes of office and feet resting on a lion, she in veil and wimple and a long cloak, feet on a dog. The western pair are thought to be John Gour, son of Nicholas, and his wife; he in a turban headdress, with a dagger at his side and his feet on lion; she with a square head-dress, buttoned cloak with hanging sleeves, and feet on a dog.
• There are fragments of fourteenth century stained glass in the upper lights of second window from the east end of the north aisle, and in the upper lights of the west windows of the north aisle (censing angel) and south aisle (St Christopher and angels bearing symbols).  
• Against the responds of the chancel arch are three panels with cusped and traceried heads and moulded rails, fifteenth century, incorporated in modern work. There are some further similar panels lying loose in the north transept.
• In the south transept, there are traces of medieval wall paintings, white circles on a red ground, date uncertain.
• There are numerous medieval masons’ marks, to be found on stonework throughout the church, which have informed study of the building chronology.

Post-medieval, pre-Victorian furnishings of note include are, working broadly from east to west:

• Early seventeenth century communion rail, with splat balusters and moulded rail.
• Seventeenth century octagonal pulpit and lectern, robustly carved with blank arcading and dragons and monsters on the sides.
• The reading desk is Jacobean and partially reconstructed; it incorporates an allegorical or possibly heraldic medieval carving of a Talbot attacking a Wyvern.
• Brass chandelier in the chancel, dated 1722.
• Post-medieval wall paintings include: in the north transept, east wall, two panels with round heads and defaced black-letter inscription (Commandments?), painted over earlier panels, both seventeenth century; in the south transept, on the face of the turret-staircase, a similar rectangular panel with inscription, painted over an earlier panel and, lower, down a similar panel with scroll ornament and the Apostles’ Creed; on the south wall, remains of an enriched panel with the Creed and a smaller panel below with defaced inscription, seventeenth century; on the south wall of the south aisle, painted texts, including the Lord's Prayer, seventeenth or eighteenth century.
• In the north aisle, three eighteenth century framed oil paintings, two showing Miracles and Christ and one the Holy Family, artist(s) unknown.
• In the nave, over the south arcade, is a large plaster achievement-of-arms, of the Coningsby family, seventeenth or eighteenth century.
• Late seventeenth century wooden font cover, with twisted central shaft with knob at top.
• Towards the west end of the north aisle, a charities board dated 1794.   

The church has a large number of good post-medieval monuments. These include, in the chancel:

• Jane (Sherborne), wife of Robert Breton, rector of Pembridge, 1656, tablet with moulded alabaster frame.
• Alice (Davenant), d.1660 wife of William Sherborne, rector, the inscription panel flanked by draped allegorical female figures, entablature with segmental pediment, putti and cartouches of arms.
• Similar monument to Anne Sherborne (d. 1668).
• Larger tablets to William Sherborne (d.1671) and Thomas Trafford (d.1685), both rectors of Pembridge, with twisted columns and putti.
• A brass (inscription plate only) to Alice Sherborne (d.1709), widow of Dr Thomas Trafford.
• Ledger slabs to Dorothy (Case) Baner, mother of Thomas Trafford, d.1621 (so probably the oldest post-medieval memorial in the church); Mary, daughter of Edward Lloyd, d.1658; Richard Shepard, d.1630; Adrian Metcalf, 1693–4 and Davenant (Sherborne) his widow, 1717, with shield-of-arms.

In the south transept:

• East wall, a brass (inscription only) to Walter, son of Thomas Smith, 1661–2.
• Ledger slab to John Badham, 1687.

• Also on east wall, a tablet to Walter Carwardine (d.1706), tablet with scrolls and half-round head.
• On the south wall, a white marble neoclassical tablet to members of the Evans family, former lords of the manor, by Sir Richard Westmacott, 1799.

In the north transept:

• On the north wall, tablet to Thomas Hopwood (d. 1679) with twisted columns, broken pediment and putti.

In the south aisle:

• Seventeenth century ledger slabs with partially lost inscriptions.

Nineteenth century and later furnishings include:

• Stained glass. In the north transept (east side), and largely hidden by the organ, a fine two-light window to Urania Parke, with depictions of the Transfiguration and the Ascension, 1840s, in the style of William Wailes. The four-light west window of the nave depicts fourteen New Testament scenes; it is by Heaton, Butler & Bayne, 1871. The three-light west window of the south aisle is similar in style, and was erected in 1873 by the widow of John Samuel Bannister of Weston (d.1869). A two-light window in the south transept (Lady Chapel), east side, depicts St Cecilia, St George, St Catherine of Alexandria and St Catherine of Siena; it is in memory of Susan Catherine Gornall, 1952, and is by Powell & Son (Whitefriars).
• Choir stalls, Gothic, possibly 1871.
• Organ, by Brindley & Foster, 1878 (restored by Ingram & Co. in 1956).
• Chairs in the nave, c.1908.
• Altar and riddel posts in chancel (1924, the posts, topped by gilded angels bearing shields with the instruments of the Passion, have been straightened out from their original English altar arrangement).
• Embroidered altar frontal (the communion table itself has not been inspected).
• English altar and riddel posts in Lady Chapel.
• The Pembridge tapestries: Thirteen framed tapestries embroidered in 2012-15 by ladies of the parish, depicting the history of Pembridge from the Domesday survey to the present day.

The freestanding bell tower contains five bells: The fourth was cast by John Martin of Worcester in 1658 and the treble by Abraham Rudhall of Gloucester in 1735. The first, second and tenor bells were cast or recast by James Barwell of Birmingham when the tower was restored in 1898. There is also a Sanctus bell, date unknown but recorded in churchwardens’ accounts of 1692.