Church Of St Leonard

The Church of St Leonard is a building of the 13th century, with possible earlier origins, and significant alterations in the 15th century, including the addition of aisles, a south porch, and a west tower. A vestry was added in the 19th century. The building is constructed of ashlar, coursed rubble, and cobbles, with brick, roughcast, and slate roofs.

The church comprises a west tower, a three-bay aisled nave with a south porch, and a three-bay chancel with a north chapel and vestry. The three-stage west tower features a chamfered plinth, string courses, and pinnacled diagonal buttresses. A quatrefoil window is situated on the first floor, and the belfry openings have a two-light design with transoms and Perpendicular tracery beneath pointed heads, including hood-moulds. The pierced parapet is distinguished by eight diagonally-set, crocketed pinnacles. The west window is a three-light design with brattished transoms and Perpendicular tracery, topped by a pointed arch with a hood-mould featuring grotesque stops. Above this window is a niche containing a figure of St Leonard, displayed on a raised base underneath a nodding ogee canopy with a foliated finial.

The nave has two three-light windows with 19th-century tracery in pointed, flat-headed openings. The pointed south door features a continuous hollow-chamfer and roll-mouldings beneath a hood-mould with human face stops. The structure exhibits a stepped brick eaves cornice and a raised, coped parapet. The south porch has a low, chamfered plinth, diagonal buttresses, and a pointed, four-centred arch framing the doorway, together with continuous mouldings. A hollow-chamfered cornice and a battlemented parapet with a gable finial complete the porch, and a quatrefoil opening is visible on the west wall.

The chancel windows include a three-light window to the west with Perpendicular tracery in a pointed arch beneath a hood-mould with human head stops, a two-light window to the centre with Decorated tracery within a chamfered, square-headed surround, and paired trefoil-headed lancets to the east. An elliptical-headed priest’s door has a continuous chamfer. The three-light east window features 19th-century tracery in a Perpendicular style, within a pointed arch beneath a hood-mould with human head stops, and a raised coped gable with a cross finial.

The interior features 15th-century arcades leading to the nave, with octagonal piers on chamfered bases and moulded capitals supporting pointed, double-chamfered arches. The chancel contains the west jamb of a rear-arch to a blocked lancet window in the north wall, a 13th-century trefoil-headed sedilium, and a piscina with a roll-moulded pointed head on the south wall. A 15th-century octagonal font rests on an octagonal pier with a moulded cap and a hollow-chamfered base. A 14th-century effigy of a priest, sheltered by an ogee canopy, is located at the west end of the nave. A monumental brass memorial to Thomas Tonge, Rector, 1472, is situated at the east end of the chancel.