Church Heritage Record 619177

The plan comprises a nave with north and south aisles, a west tower with spire and a chancel with a south vestry. The nave and aisles and the lower part of the tower all date from about 1300. The top of the tower was added in the fourteenth century and the nave walls were raised to form a clerestorey in the fifteenth century. The chancel was largely rebuilt and the rest of the church restored in 1863-4 under the supervision of the architect Ewan Christian.

The nave has four clerestorey windows on each side, of three cusped lights with tracery and set in round-headed arches of grey sandstone. The clerestorey walls rise to a plain limestone parapet with a moulded top. In the centre of the south side is a lead rainwater head inscribed JOHN ALSAP/ROBERT HENTON/CHURCH WARDENS/1744. The south aisle has a pointed doorway with triple-moulded surround (rebuilt by Christian) and two three-light traceried windows of c1300 (the tracery much renewed). The east window of the aisle is of the same date and is of four lights with pointed trefoils and foiled circles. The north aisle has three-light traceried windows at each end with two-light windows in the north side wall with Y-tracery and a western door. The chancel has a three-light window in the south wall (a medieval window re-set by Christian, according to Brandwood), and a tall three-light east window with cusped intersecting tracery.

The walls are built of local ironstone with dressings of contrasting white limestone. The nave roof and the shallow-pitched lean-to aisle roofs are covered with lead, while the   chancel roof is covered with Swithland slate. The west tower is of three unequal stages, with corner buttresses and a plain parapet enclosing the base of the stone broach spire.  The top stage of the tower has a two-light window on each face.

Inside, the walls have been stripped of their plaster in Christian’s restoration. The floor covering of the nave and aisle is parquet. In the west end wall is a pointed tower arch, filled by the pipes of the organ installed in the tower space. The north and south arcades are of four bays, with double-chamfered pointed arches on clustered columns of varying patterns. The nave roof has tie beams with purlins and ridge-piece, all unmoulded. The south aisle has a double sedilia with moulded arches under the southeast window, with a small piscina to the east. The timber roof has carved bosses. The north aisle has a late medieval tie-beam roof, much renewed, also with carved bosses and faces. One particular feature of the nave is the seating, which consists mainly of fifteenth century timber benches with carved poppyheads to the ends. Old photographs (see figures 1 and 2) show that at the end of the nineteenth century the nave was seated with benches and the aisles filled with panelled box pews; they were replaced with modern versions of the old benches in 1907-8 (Brandwood).

Structurally the chancel is largely the product of Ewan Christian’s rebuilding and has a piscina on the south wall and a rafter roof with braced collars. The eastern rafters over the altar are richly painted and include a single pair of hammerbeams with angel heads, forming form part of a decorative scheme carried out in the early twentieth century as a memorial to the Beresford family, who were rectors and patrons of the living for almost a century from the mid-nineteenth century. The scheme also includes the elaborate oak chancel screen (1914), tiled chancel floor, choir stalls, high altar (all 1912), commandment boards on the east wall and a painted and lettered frieze on the side walls. A reredos with painted figures was installed in 1905, but this has been removed. The east and southeast chancel windows have stained glass which is part of the same scheme and the northeast aisle window also has similar stained glass. All the other windows in the church are clear glazed with diamond quarries.

Surviving medieval furnishings include:

• A collection of fifteenth century timber benches in the nave with poppy heads
• Plain octagonal stone font on a stone stem, inside the south door
• Memorial brass of c1480 in south aisle with lower half of a knight in armour.

Post medieval, pre-Victorian furnishings include:

• Large royal arms of King George III, painted on canvas and hung above the tower arch
• Marble wall monument to Sarah Standley d.1792 and various other minor wall tablets in the chancel.

Of the Victorian and post-Victorian furnishings, the most conspicuous are the various elements of the early twentieth century decorative scheme in the chancel. The artists and craftsmen responsible have not been identified. The main elements of the scheme comprise:

• The timber high altar with decorative carving and small painted panels on the front
• Small Commandment and Lord’s Prayer boards with decorative cresting flanking the east window
• Timber choir stalls with carved decoration
• Encaustic tiled floor with elaborate patterns in red, yellow and brown
• Painted and lettered friezes at the head of the side walls
• Perpendicular-style chancel screen with painted figures of saints on the lower part, traceried carved open lights to the central part and a coved canopy with painted decoration and lettering.
• Stained glass in the south and east chancel windows.

Other furnishings of this period include

• Carved timber pulpit on a stone base; these and the reading desk and lectern are from 1888 (Brandwood)
• Timber poppyhead benches in the aisles
• The organ housed in the lower part of the tower, with choir benches in front. It was built in 1876 by S. Taylor of Leicester. More information here
• Stained glass memorial window in the north aisle.