Church Of St. Peter And St. Paul

Church of St. Peter and St. Paul

This is a church of 13th-century origin, substantially modified and rebuilt over subsequent centuries. The building comprises a west tower on the nave, a north transept, and a higher chancel with a north vestry. The nave was largely rebuilt around 1800 and further altered in 1897. The chancel was rebuilt in 1876, and a late 19th-century vestry was added. The church underwent restoration with roof renewal in 1902.

The exterior is built in dressed sandstone with Welsh slate roofs. The west tower dates from the 15th century and features paired cusped, louvred bell openings with stone transoms. It has an embattled parapet with squat ogee-domed finials at the angles. A 1935 three-light west window with cusped heads and a hoodmould with scrolled stops sits above an 18th-century round-headed doorway. The doorway surround is chamfered and roll-moulded beneath a hoodmould, with boarded and studded double doors fitted with scrolled strap hinges.

The nave is three bays wide and retains its original 13th-century chamfered plinth. The 1897 windows display Decorated-style tracery beneath hoodmoulds, with a similar north window. A string course runs below the straight parapet with chamfered and roll-moulded copings.

The north transept, built on a 13th-century or earlier foundation, is stepped-gabled. It contains a late 19th-century panel-tracery north window and a basket-headed west window with two trefoil-headed lights. The hoodmoulds are embellished with carved stops, and a carved mask appears above the west window. The parapet and cross finial match the nave, and an unusual stack with a round shaft stands in the angle between the transept and chancel.

The three-bay chancel features angle buttresses and chevron-moulded steeply-battered buttresses between the bays. A central boarded south door has a roll-moulded surround beneath a hoodmould that continues as a sill string. Windows display plate tracery with hoodmoulds and carved stops. A chevron-moulded band runs below the gable, which is crowned with a cross finial. The north wall incorporates several fragments of medieval and Saxon carved stones, together with two trefoil-headed windows beneath hoodmoulds with mask stops.

The gabled north vestry features plate tracery and contains a large blind medieval plate-tracery quatrefoil with flowers in the spandrels and a beaded hollow-chamfered surround in its gable. Iron square-section downpipes drain the roofs; the chancel hopperheads are ornamented and dated 1899.

Internally, the chancel is entered through an early 13th-century chamfered arch supported on round responds with chamfered capitals and bases. The transept arch is wide and segmental-pointed, rising from renewed corbels. The nave features wainscoting to sill height and is roofed with arched-braced collar-beam trusses incorporating kingposts and four levels of purlins. The trusses rest on stone corbels, with collars strutted to the purlins and bosses between the braces. The embattled and moulded wall plate carries carved bosses. Similar collar-beam trusses with bosses appear in the transept. The chancel roof is ceiled with wood boarding.

A 1907 Caen stone pulpit stands on marble shafts. The font, also from the early 20th century, is carved and painted octagonal stone on similar marble shafts. The reredos of 1876 comprises four panels with paintings of St. Peter, St. Paul, and angels flanking a taller plain centre panel in a gabled aedicule with a cusped head, crockets, and carved capitals; cresting tops the side panels and pinnacles mark the ends. Chancel panelling dates to around 1950 and the organ case to 1958, both by Thompson of Kilburn.

The sanctuary contains marble wall monuments by Robert Taylor. The northern monument, to Mary Pennyman (died 1727), features a shouldered mount with arms in a trefoil-headed crown above a flaming urn enriched with oak leaves, set on a plinth flanked by inverted volutes and a pedestal bearing the epitaph on its die. The southern monument to Sir James Pennyman (1745) is a flat obelisk raised on four spheres and a pedestal. Additional good 18th- and 19th-century wall monuments and tablets occupy the chancel, including one on the north wall dated 1808 by A. Bennison of Hull. A 14th-century effigy of a male priest stands in the south doorway.