Church Of St Bartholomew

Church of St. Bartholomew

Parish church with pre-13th-century fabric possibly surviving in the nave walls. The building comprises four eastern bays of arcades from the early 13th century, two western bays and west tower from the late 13th century, a chancel rebuilt around 1300, and a spire from the 14th century. The aisles were demolished and the chancel became a roofless ruin during the 18th century. The nave and chancel underwent restoration in 1845, with further restoration in 1898 by W.S. Hicks including a new chancel arch and organ chamber. The north aisle was rebuilt in 1912. The building is constructed of squared stone, rough-faced in the 19th and early 20th-century parts, with a roof of mixed purple and green slate.

The south wall of the nave has six bays. A porch near the west end, probably from the 19th century, features boarded double doors beneath a double-chamfered arch and a coped gable with moulded kneelers. Small lancets in the porch returns are probably re-set medieval work. The 1845 nave windows each contain two pointed lights with a quatrefoil above. The east gable is coped with moulded kneelers and a cross finial. The north aisle has a chamfered plinth, stepped buttresses, and a hollow-chamfered cornice below a moulded parapet. It contains two-light windows on the north and a three-light west window with cinquefoil-headed lights in 15th-century style. The unbuttressed west tower has a small 19th-century west door within a larger blocked opening, with a blocked trefoil-headed window and a trefoiled round window above. The north and south walls each have a trefoiled spheric triangle light with a lancet over. A string course runs below the belfry, which opens with two lights and a quatrefoil in the spandrel. An octagonal stone spire with small slatted openings and a weathercock finial crowns the tower.

The chancel has two three-light windows on the south—the western with lancet lights and the eastern with intersecting tracery—and an east window of five stepped lancets under one arch. A lancet on the north (re-sited from the west end of the wall in 1898) and a blocked doorway are also present. The east gable is coped with moulded kneelers. An organ chamber with a boarded door and two two-light windows adjoins the chancel.

The interior contains arcades of double-chamfered pointed arches with broach stops to the chamfers and head stops to the hoodmoulds, supported on octagonal piers with moulded capitals and bases. The western arches are broader and differ in detail. The south wall of the nave is built outside the arcade; at the east end of the arcade, within a length of medieval wall, is a blocked lancet with a square-headed piscina below. A blocked pointed arch to the tower with a set-back and a blocked doorway above are visible. The nave roof has arch-braced principal-rafter trusses with collars; the north aisle has a flat panelled ceiling.

A tall double-chamfered chancel arch opens to the chancel. The 1845 chancel arch, with grotesque head stops, has been re-set as the organ chamber arch. The chancel contains a piscina with a moulded bowl, and the sill of an adjacent window has been lowered to form a sedile. Blocked doorways exist at the west end of the south wall and to the east of the 1912 vestry door on the north. A 12th-century carved capital has been re-set as a corbel on the south of the east window.

The interior of the tower, now used as a boiler house, shows an inserted segmental barrel vault with a newel stair cutting across the tower arch.

Most fittings and furnishings date from the 20th century, except for 18th-century Pater, Creed, and Commandment boards in the nave. An important collection of 12th and 13th-century cross slab grave covers includes eight complete examples re-set in the walls of the north aisle.

The dramatic headland site, away from the village, suggests early origins. The unusual length of the nave, even allowing for its 1845 extension into the old chancel, and the apparent insertion of the 13th-century tower arch in an earlier west wall may indicate the survival of Pre-Conquest fabric. Re-used 12th-century architectural fragments suggest a predecessor to the present building.