• Home
• News
• About
• Searching and Browsing
  • Find a Location
  • Find a Feature
  • Find a Word
  • Browse
  • Progress Status
• Resources
• Contact Us

I Location

II General Description

A big church with a six-bay aisled nave with clerestory and S porch, aisleless chancel with N sacristy chapel and W tower with spire. The earliest fabric is dated by a blocked 13thc. lancet in the N wall, but the nave arcades, the W tower with its octagonal spire on broaches supported by flying buttresses linked to the pinnacles, and the chancel with its sacristy all date from a campaign begun in the 1330s. The sacristy is a unique feature of unknown purpose. It is essentially a separate building with three slender arches inside to carry a stone roof. The nave clerestory is Perpendicular. The exterior is of stone rubble, the ashlar is Barnack. There was a major restoration in the 1890s, and it was in the course of this that 12thc. carved stones were discovered in the chancel S wall. These are now built into the N and S walls of the S porch. The tower was restored in 1990, and in 1999 a new church hall, the Octagon, was added to the N side of the nave.

IV Interior Features

5. Interior Decoration

c. Miscellaneous

(i) Carved fragments

Stones built into the N and S walls of the S porch. Measurements are given where stones were within reach.

Dimensions

S wall:

i) To L of entrance at level of arch apex: fragment of chamfered string course with sawtooth on face and chamfer.

ii) To R of (i): centrifugal chevron voussoir with three rolls of face chevron inside a fatter outer roll.

iii) To R of (ii): damaged centrifugal chevron voussoir. Two rolls of face chevron inside a double quirk.

iv) Below and between (i) and (ii): a badly damaged section of shaft decorated with a spiral of nailhead. Above it is a double shaft ring and below it a single one.

v) Alongside the L springing of the entrance arch: fragment carved with interlace in low relief, probably part of an Anglo-Saxon grave slab.

vi) Cushion capital with angle volutes and plain necking carved on two faces only. The capital sits on three sections of a shaft carved with chevron, which in turn rests on a base with three narrow rolls above a fatter one.

vii) To R of entrance arch and alongside it, approximately 0.5 m above springing. A fragment of spiral nailhead from a colonnette (see iv).

viii) To R of (vii): part of a 13–14thc. impost — not illustrated.

ix) To R of (viii): section of label or voussoir with two rows of billet.

x) Immediately below (viii): A double scallop capital carved on two faces only with a cable necking. The capital sits on two sections of a shaft carved with chevron, which in turn rests on an attic nook shaft base.

xi) To R of R jamb of entrance: a niche containing four similar chevron voussoirs, all centrifugal with four rows of staggered chevron on the face, roll, fillet, fillet, hollow. The voussoirs are numbered a-d from L-R.

xii) Within niche (xi): a cushion capital with plain necking carved on all four faces.

N wall:

xiii) Just below apex of doorway to R: fragment of centrifugal chevron voussoir showing a quirked roll.

xiv) Immediately below (xiii): badly damaged nook shaft capital, possible double scallop.

xv) To R of and below (xiv): cushion capital with plain necking and part of an integral shaft.

VII History

VIII Comments/Opinions

Pevsner describes the fragments as pieces of an ornate doorway, and the dimensions of capitals and the fact that nook shafts were clearly involved supports this view for many of the pieces. The cushion capitals numbered (xii) and (xv) were not part of this ensemble.

IX Bibliography