Church Of St Edmund

The Church of St Edmund is a parish church dating back to circa 1254, with significant additions and alterations over the centuries. The original structure comprised an aisled nave, followed by transepts and a chancel around 1290, a tower circa 1490, and a 19th-century porch, north vestry, and organ chamber added in 1913. The church's construction utilizes dressed and rubble masonry, topped with graduated green slate roofs.

The tower is Perpendicular in style, diagonally buttressed and composed of three stages, featuring a stair turret on the south wall and a belfry with louvred, three-centred openings. The tower is crowned with an embattled parapet, octagonal turrets, and spirelets. The nave consists of three bays with buttressed aisles and 19th-century Decorated windows. A gabled porch shelters a late 13th-century pointed door with nailhead detailing in the north aisle. The nave roof is steeply pitched, contrasting with the lower-pitched aisle roofs. A buttressed north transept features a five-light north window with replaced curvilinear tracery, a design repeated in the south transept and east end. A three-light plate-tracery window is located on the west return of the transept. The chancel is a lower, three-bay structure with a blocked priest's door and angle buttressing at the east end, where decayed 18th-century wall monuments remain.

Inside, the church presents a spacious interior with pointed three-bay nave arcades supported by quatrefoil piers featuring shaft rings and carved capitals. The west respond capitals are embellished with flanking head corbels, and the arches are double-chamfered, incorporating nailhead hoodmoulds to the nave. A tall, depressed pointed arch leads to the tower. The transverse arches at the east end of the aisles, along with the north and south transept and chancel arches, echo the details of the nave arcade. The north transept contains a piscina and a 15th-century oak roof. The south transept features two piscinae and an aumbry. The inner order of the chancel arch has been removed. Numerous fittings and monuments are present, including medieval grave slabs, brasses, a 14th-century male and female recumbent effigy in the south transept, and several 18th-century wall monuments in the chancel. A font dating to 1707, octagonal in shape with fluted marble, and a Baroque organ case from around the same period are also notable. The chancel woodwork, potentially crafted around 1638 by Robert Barker for Bishop Cosin and further enhanced with choir panelling for Rev. Denis Granville around 1670, displays an eclectic style, characteristically featuring strapwork, rich poppyheads, garlands, and cherubs. An elaborate chancel screen with pinnacled canopies, later altar rails, and a table in a 17th-century style are also present, complemented by pilastered choir panelling. Stained glass includes a 1863 north aisle window depicting the Sacraments, a work by Lavers and Barraud, and an abstract east window designed by L.C. Evetts.