Church Of St Leonard

The Church of St Leonard is a church dating from 1857-9, designed by J L Pearson for Lord Hotham. It is constructed of gritstone ashlar with a clay tile roof and is executed in the Geometrical style. The building comprises a two-stage west tower with a broach spire, a four-bay aisled nave and chancel under a single roof, a south porch, and a north vestry.

The west tower features a moulded plinth, pilaster buttresses, and a band with blank quatrefoils beneath a cornice decorated with stiff leaf. A clock is carved in shallow relief. The west window is of two lights with nook-shafts beneath a sexfoil, all under a hoodmould with foliage stops. A small lancet window is situated on the first floor, beneath a gablet with a poppy-head finial. Belfry openings are of two lights with elaborate shafting and mid-wall shafts, under gablets with pierced sexfoil sound-holes. Hexagonal buttresses with pyramidal caps and broaches of the spire exhibit a variety of blank arcading and blank trefoil-headed openings. A cross finial tops the spire. The nave and chancel display a moulded plinth, buttresses with offsets (the chancel buttresses featuring blank geometric arcading under trefoils), and paired lancets in each bay with quatrefoils to the spandrels. An impost band of sunk blank quatrefoils is present, as is a decorated eaves cornice with stiff leaf. Coped gables feature gablets to the kneelers, topped with a cross finial.

The south porch has a moulded plinth and buttresses with offsets. Its pointed arch of two orders is set on nook-shafts with capitals carved with foliage beneath a blank quatrefoil. It is topped with a coped gable and a cross finial. The south door is a pointed arch of two orders with carved foliage under a hoodmould with foliage stops, on marble nook-shafts, with a double-leaf boarded door.

The interior is characterized by the elaborate use of marble shafting to all windows and behind-arches. The pointed tower arch is under a hoodmould on deeply carved foliate capitals to detached marble shafts with rings, and moulded bases. A division marks the nave and chancel, with paired marble shafts and rings supporting capitals to double curved principal rafters. Clustered shafts with rings support the lancets of the east window, below a double-traceried sexfoil window. The principal rafter roof has double side purlins and wind braces, heavily cusped and pierced to the bottom tier. In the north-east corner of the chancel is a grave slab to Henry de Middleton, a priest from the early 16th century, featuring a slightly sunk panel with a figure in low relief bearing a chalice under a round cusped arch. A frieze of quatrefoils bearing Christian symbols and flowers is located behind the main altar.