Church Heritage Record 619005

3-bay aisled nave and longer 3-bay chancel, porches, west tower, and large vestry block.

Nave c 12m (40ft) x 5m (16ft), aisles 5m wide, chancel 14m long.

Leicester was the Roman city Ratae Coritanorum, but this village and church is to the north of the modern city, and well outside the Roman and later Medieval town; it is however close to the line of the Fosse Way and near the east bank of the River Soar, and this would always have been a desirable settlement area.  The church is mentioned in Domesday, where it is stated that the church with its tithes and eleven virgates had been granted to the Norman abbey of St Evroul (Orne) by Hugh de Grentemesnil.  Belgrave was one of the wealthier livings in Leicestershire in the Medieval period. There are therefore likely to have been burials from at least the 11th century on the site, and the footprint of the earlier church building(s) is also likely to be preserved within the present one.  The HER should be consulted if development of the building and site is contemplated.

Due to the seizure by the Crown of the possessions of alien monasteries under Edward II and Edward III the patronage of Belgrave repeatedly came into the king’s hands, until in 1414 Henry V granted the advowson to the new Carthusian priory of Sheen (Surrey), which retained possession until the Dissolution.  In 1547 the advowson of the rectory was granted to the Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield.  The church briefly changed hands in the 19th century, but following the establishment of the see of Leicester in 1926 the advowson was transferred to the bishop of the new diocese.  The parish was large, but was gradually reduced in size in the 19th and 20th century as the population grew. It was amalgamated into the Parish of the Resurrection in the 1970s, together with three 20th-century churches.

The two lower stages of the tower and the south doorway are 12th-century, the aisles and the tower arch and lancet in the lower stage date from the 13th century. The chancel was lengthened in the 14th century, when the 13th-century piscina and sedilia were perhaps moved to their present position in the south aisle to make way for the more elaborate 14th-century ones in the chancel. The clearstorey, nave roof and the upper stage of the tower date from the late 15th or early 16th century, probably the latter.  In 1518 the windows of “St Mary’s chapel”, apparently the only mention of such, needed repair, and this might date these features.

In 1826 the south porch was added by William Bradley in a florid Gothick style.  New pews were fitted in 1857, the chancel was restored by Ewan Christian in 1860 and the church was extensively and heavily restored in 1862 by William Gillett, including new aisle roofs, restored nave roof, restoration of tower and other work. The choir vestry was built in 1877 by Sir G G Scott, when the organ and organ chamber were installed, the chancel screen was installed in 1879. It was enlarged in 1908 when the clergy vestry was built. New choir stalls added in 1903, the north porch was added in 1912.  The roofs were repaired in 1924, and the nave was again reseated in 1938.  The interior was redecorated in 1999.

This is a small village church with a west tower, somewhat encroached upon by trees making it difficult to photograph and appreciate in the round.   The tower is of three stages, the two lower ones dating from the 12th, the upper from the 16th century.  Diagonal buttresses with stepped weatherings to the top of the middle stage where there is a string-course, battlemented parapet, now much restored. On the west side is a modern rectangular doorway, with a small 13th-century pointed lancet window above.  

The belfry openings are pointed 2-lights with elongated quatrefoils in the heads. The lack of other openings (there is no internal staircase) gives it a powerful, almost military feel. There is a lozenge-shaped redundant  clock face dated 1760 on the middle stage of the north wall and a working clock with round face obscuring the belfry openings on the east side.

The aisles are gabled with plain parapets.  The windows are of the late 13th-century, pointed 2-light plate tracery with quatrefoils in the heads, the east and west windows of the north aisle have 3-lights with intersecting tracery of c 1300, as is the Ballflower frieze. The clearstorey has 2-lights with Tudor arched heads to each bay (ie round-headed), with hoodmoulds.

The chancel side windows have early 14th-century “spiky” tracery with cinquefoiled lights and complex tracery heads under hoodmoulds with head stops. Pointed east window of five lights, three 2-light windows on the south side and a small doorway in the centre, as well as a small 2-light low-side window in the west bay. The wall here is so thick, one wonders if this bay is part of the Norman church. The projecting gabled vestry on the north side has been built using one of the north windows and the doorway, leaving a 2-light window on each side; the window appears to have been re-used in the porch north gable.  There is a pointed doorway on the west side with a hoodmould and head stops.

The north porch is the main entrance to the church, and is quite impressive with a gabled head “flaring” down into angle buttresses, and a now headless statue of St Peter in a niche in the gable.  Continuously moulded doorway. The redundant south porch is rather odd, its overpowering Gothick gabled and crenellated parapet clashing with the lines of the rest of the building.  Pointed doorway.

Moving inside, the interior is whitewashed, and it is immediately clear that the interior has been heavily restored. The pews across the nave and aisles are light-stained, quite plain and clearly of the early 20th century, which is confirmed by a plaque dating them to 1935; they are somewhat incongruous in appearance here, and many of them have a poor or non-existent sight line to the chancel.

The nave is of four bays with a good arch-braced early 16th-century timber roof, with painted angels springing from the corbels. The arcades are of pointed double-chamfered arches, which are supported on quatrefoil piers with moulded capitals and bases, except for the central pier and responds on the south side which have floriated capitals. The tower and chancel arches are in a similar style, but the capital on the north side of the tower is carved with three heads with ivy leaves issuing from their mouths (“Green Man” motif), that on the south is decorated with vine stems and leaves. Glazed tower arch screen leads to the tower space, which houses an impressive collection of 19th- and 20th-century ringing boards and three 17th-century Benefaction Boards. Excellent oak panelled ceiling.  Royal Arms mounted above the arch.

The south wall of the south aisle contains a 13th-century trefoil piscina and triple sedilia with graduated seats. There is a simple piscina and possible aumbry opposite in the north aisle.  Both aisles have similar roofs to that in the nave. The rere-arches of the east and west windows in the south aisle have broad round heads as has the west window in the north aisle; the VCH suggests these might have been salvaged from the 12th-century building. The west bay has been partitioned off with wooden screens to create a rather makeshift vestry following the conversion of the old vestry into a meeting room. The floors are of stone slabs with some ledger slabs, not in situ.  Blue carpet down the nave.

The heavily restored south doorway, now hidden away within the unused early 19th-century porch, is of the 12th century. The inner order of carving is a plain replacement but the outer one is decorated with interlaced ribbed strapwork and the middle one with interlaced ribbed semicircles. The same decoration appears on the capitals.  The north inner doorway is pointed with moulded head, 13th-century.  The doors are good.

Looking east, within the pointed chamfered chancel arch with grotesque faces to the capitals there is an oak chancel screen with ogee tracery, with brass plaques recording names dated to the 1920s.  Set into the south chancel wall is a piscina with a middle shelf and trefoiled ogee head, crocketed hood and floriated finial. The triple sedilia which adjoin it have cinquefoil ogee heads to the seats, the decoration in general resembles that of the piscina; brass panels to the backs. Keeled shafts to the windows.

There are very good quality Edwardian choir stalls with poppyheads and panelled backs to a dado.  The organ and its pipes take up the middle of the north wall. Arch-braced roof as in the nave and black and white chequer-patterned marble floor with three widely spaced single steps to sanctuary, with marble reredos at the end of this long chancel.  The priest’s stall with misericord is probably late 15th-century work, the survivor from a row of such stalls. Behind this in the north-east corner of the sanctuary is the gabled lid of a perhaps late 12th-century Purbeck monument.  Plastic is draped over the sanctuary furniture to protect it from leaks.