Church Heritage Record 619151

The Domesday Survey records a priest here but the earliest fabric is of c.1200, when the two-bay aisled nave arcades and chancel arch (and possibly the present chancel) were built. The two south door hood stops show St John the Baptist with his camel coat (W) and possibly St John the Evangelist with a palm (E). The small detail differences between the arcades no doubt indicate a gradual rebuilding of the old church. The narrower north aisle retains a west wall lancet, but the east window is an early twentieth century creation for the Clayton & Bell stained glass.

In the early fourteenth century the south aisle was expensively rebuilt, wider and given a west bay (suggesting that there was already a western tower). The late twelfth century south door was re-used and internally the chapel was highly decorated, with big three-light windows (just a few fragments of stained glass survive in the east window), a decorated dropped stone cill to the east window to support an altar reredos and ranges of wall painting to the east and southeast walls. A Nativity, the Funeral of the Virgin (an uncommon scene), St John the Baptist and St Catherine have been identified.

The chancel was also at least refaced in the same campaign (see continuous plinth with the south aisle) and given new windows, if not entirely rebuilt. Only the existence of the early thirteenth century sedilia and piscina suggests the chancel walls might be thirteenth century. However, their strangely crude hood stops (crude for any period) which are also present on the north chancel door (blocked 1911) and the poor construction of the arches of the sedilia suggest this feature has been re-assembled. It was ‘filled up with plaster’ when Schnebblie visited in September 1791. 

Although the two-centred tower arch has a thirteenth century capital to the south and thirteenth century chamfered mouldings, the north capital is very odd. Swags of foliage or feathers sit over possibly fifteenth century mouldings, but the polygonal abacus above is like that on the south. Externally, the tower and spire are of one build, most likely of around 1400, with much grotesque sculptural embellishment by a local school of masons, apparently based in Oakham (Spenswick).

The internal tower buttresses are added to the tower arch and nave arcade responds, but the roofline visible over the arch is clearly part of those buttresses. Its steep pitch shows the clerestorey was added to the tower and from the surviving stone corbels for the roof this was a late fifteenth century improvement. Nichols does not show any clerestorey windows in his 1792 engraving and the odd tracery could suggest they were opened or re-made c.1800. The rood stair was built into the southeast corner of the north nave aisle about this time, but its lower door blocked with a fireplace in the early nineteenth century, heating the Frewin-Turner family pew at this end of the aisle (their coat of arms is on the fireplace).

A north chancel vestry was pulled down in the late-seventeenth century (Spenswick) and a west gallery erected. The round arches and coursed ashlar of the north aisle wall suggests it was rebuilt about then (or possibly when the north rainwater goods were renewed in 1804). In the 1780s the western bay of the south aisle became the burial vault for the Frewin-Turner family and the west window was re-made, using a fourteenth century cross shaft for the cill and two crude vertical mullions. In the 1790s all the rainwater goods were renewed (the lead hopper heads remain) and at some point the south porch was rebuilt, perhaps only when the roof was renewed (except the moulded medieval central tie beam) in the later nineteenth century.

The tower is of pale grey limestone ashlars, the church mainly of (iron) sandstone rubble, some coursed, with limestone dressings.

There are a number of pre-nineteenth century headstones, some of slate.

In 1889 J.T. Micklethwaite began a two-year restoration programme by removing the west gallery, re-opening the tower arch and refurnishing the church. He was possibly responsible for renewing all the roofs and the resurfacing (if not replastering) of the nave walls (though both seem unlikely as he was an early conservation architect). The chancel was restored in 1893, including a handsome replacement roof and the south low side window was re-opened.

James Montagu of Cold Overton Hall refurnished the chancel in 1926 (his name is recorded in the east window by Clayton & Bell), as ‘a thanks offering for safe return from the Great War and recovery from recent illness’. The good woodwork was made by Bowmans of Stamford to the designs of Wilfrid Bond of Grantham.

Internally, the chapel in the south aisle was highly decorated, with big three-light windows (just a few fragments of stained glass survive in the east window), a decorated dropped stone cill to the east window to support the altar reredos and ranges of wall painting to the east and southeast walls (now in a parlous state). The stone baluster font with fitted lid was said to be new in 1842, while the 1880s Thomas Lane organ was acquired from Arnesby church in 1920.

The Frewin-Turner chapel has a few large but simple marble wall memorials, the best on the north wall to John Frewen Turner, d.1826 signed by W.G. Nicholl, London. At the east end of the south aisle is a framed slate memorial to Rowland St John d.1723. Further St John family headstone memorials line the