Church Heritage Record 628238

The church consists of a large four-bay nave with north and south aisles, a chancel with north and south chapels (the south chapel is the Brudenell chapel and has a transeptal extension on the south), a west tower and spire and a south porch.

The west tower is thirteenth-century; the rest of the church was virtually rebuilt in 1868-9 to designs by Thomas Henry Wyatt for the Countess of Cardigan in memory of her husband at a cost of about £5,000. But the north aisle was fourteenth-century and the south aisle fifteenth-century and evidence of these works, especially in parts of the nave arcades, still remains.

The most important feature of the church surviving from the Middle Ages is the thirteenth-century west tower and broach spire. The tower is of three stages, the uppermost being slightly narrower than the two below. The west front has a doorway with a moulded label decorated with dogtooth supported on two orders of nook-shafts with foliated capitals. The doorway may have been re-set since it seems to have lost a hoodmould. Above the west doorway in the tall lowest stage of the tower is a single broad lancet window which appears to have been renewed: indeed, the amount of disturbed masonry around and below it suggests that it probably replaces an earlier and smaller opening. In the three exposed walls of the middle stage of the tower is a narrow lancet opening which is probably original and in all four walls of the top stage is a characteristic thirteenth-century bell-opening consisting of two trefoiled lights divided by a central column above which is a quatrefoil. The whole window is beneath a plain moulded label with rudimentary heads for label stops and the inner arch of the window is supported on colonettes with circular capitals. The spire is probably a little later than the tower, and both spire and parapet are of well-coursed ashlar in contrast to the small- scale rubble stonework of the body of the tower. The parapet is plain, with a corbel table of ball-flower but no battlements. The spire has two tiers of lucarnes, the lower series having two-light openings with trefoils in their heads under a gablet and, beneath them, an unusual trefoiled opening on all four sides. The upper lucarnes are in the intermediate faces of the spite and consist simply of small lancet openings enclosed by gablets. The roll-mouldings up the edges of the spire lend it considerable elegance.

The church was almost entirely rebuilt by Thomas Henry Wyatt in 1868-9. However, a good deal of the masonry in the nave and aisles appear to be mediaeval and although Wyatt lengthened the nave it is only the eastern parts of the church (chancel, chapels and extensions to the Brudenel chapel) which are his work entirely. The west wall of the south aisle is clearly of mediacval masonry and the two-light Perpendicular window (though itself probably renewed) has a label with two grinning monsters as label stops.

The west window of the north aisle, which has flowing Decorated tracery, also has a label-moulding with grotesque stops. The north aisle has five two-light windows with quatrefoils in their heads and flowing Decorated tracery; the first and third from the west appear entirely original; the second and fourth appear partly original; and some of the eastern window may also be partly original in other words there is probably more mediaeval masonry here than some suppose. On the south side, west of the porch, is a two-light Perpendicular window of late (i.e. early sixteenth-century) form; east of the porch is a similar window, and then towards the east end of the south aisle is a three-light Perpendicular window. The three-light window looks as though it may have been Wyatt's own invention but the other two could well reproduce what he found there. The clerestory has four flat-headed two light Perpendicular openings on both the north and south sides.

The best view of the church from which to appreciate Wyatt's achievementis from the south-east, where the south chapel and its transept and the lefty chancel are seen to their best advantage. They all have diagonal buttresses and the ashlar masonry is of the highest quality. The chancel east window is, as one would expect, very large, of five principal lights with a cusped six-pointed star at the top and flowing cusped tracery below. The east window of the south chapel has reticulated tracery and the south window of the transeptal section is of three lights with cusped heads and a group of three trefoils in the head. The north chapel although expressed architecturally as a chapel, is in fact an organ chamber and vestry. It has a small doorway, three three-light windows all with Decorated tracery. The east window has flowing tracery with two quatrefoils and two elongated quatrefoils, while the two north windows hove reticulated tracery.

The south porch is entirely of Wyatt's time, with a striking external archway, the label moulding of which terminates in carved angels with hands clasped. Above the entrance is a roundel with the crossed keys of St. Peter.

The nave is extremely wide and the aisles are also not narrow. The nave has a roof by Wyatt, with hammer beams alternately supported on angel corbels over the clerstory windows. and on wall-posts, the latter resting on corbel heads which co-incide with a stringcourse running the entire length of the wall. Some of the piers of the arcades (for instance the first and second from the west on the north side) seem to be original, others not. In general, the internal appearance of the nave is very much of Wyatt's work, especially on account of the profusion of carved detail - the corbels mentioned already and the foliate stops at the junctions of the labels over the arches of the arcades.

The chancel arch is carried on groups of marble colonettes supported by corbels carved, surely, as portraits and to the north and south are paired arches opening into the side chapels with capitals carved with exuberant foliage. On the south side the labels have at their terminations an angel playing a harp, a pelican vulning its breasts and an angel playing a cittern; on the north side are angels playing the cymbals and trumpet respectively and the Agnus Dei. In the north wall of the sanctuary is an aumbry with a ogival head decorated with crockets and with angels bearing a chalice and paten respectively for label stops. On the south side triple sedilia have the heads of two bishops as stops with a priest and angels at each end. The whole is richly polychrome, part of the decoration carried out by G.F. Bodley in 1890. A painted inscription on the north side of the chancel reads "Pray for the Soul of Edward T. Silvester , Rector , who caused this chancel to be decorated in colour in the Year of Salvation 1890 in loving memory of Harriet Jane his wife who deceased May 28 1888". The large scale diapered decoration in red and green is highly characteristic of Bodley, and the chancel (as opposed to the sanctuary) has the sacred monogram IHS and repeated texts. Within the sanctuary the walls are decorated in green, red and gold.

The richness of effect in the chancel is enhanced by the encaustic tiles by Maw, the many-branched standard candlesticks standing to north and south of the altar and the cross and candlesticks and vases and five branched altar candesticks. There is a low chancel screen of stone with an iron superstructure and there are parclose screens, similar in design but taller, on the south side separating the chancel from the Brudenell chapel. On the north side, in the eastern bay, is a wooden parclose screen and in the western bay on this side is the organ case, also decorated by Bodley and painted the muted red of which he was so fond. The organ case is decorated simply but delightfully with tendril-like hinges on the doors on the console and the text "Lauda Sion Salvatorem in Hymnis et Conticis" in a frieze above the console.