Church Of St Peter

Church of Saint Peter, Ashby cum Fenby

This parish church combines work from multiple periods, with a 12th-century nave and 13th-century tower as its core. The nave arcade, north aisle and chancel were rebuilt in the 17th century, though the chancel incorporates 14th-century windows. The building has undergone several major restorations: in 1845, the tower was repaired in 1886, the west end was restored in 1910, and the tower was restored again in 1959.

The church is constructed of squared ironstone and chalk rubble with flint, with brick used for the chancel and limestone and ironstone ashlar dressings throughout. The roofs are slate. The plan comprises a west tower with west entrance, a three-bay nave with a four-bay north arcade, and a two-bay chancel.

The west tower is in two stages, with a moulded plinth, a restored pointed chamfered door, and a restored 14th-century pointed two-light traceried window. A line marking the former nave gable is visible to the east, with a stringcourse below. The belfry stage contains tall pointed two-light openings with Y-tracery on a shaft, dogtooth decoration and plain hoodmoulds; those to north and south are partly restored. The tower has weathered angle gargoyles and a restored coped ashlar parapet.

The nave includes a section of blocked 12th-century round-headed south door, a 14th-century pointed three-light window with reticulated tracery, a similar window with 19th-century tracery, and a 14th to 15th-century square-headed three-light trefoiled window. The north aisle has single-light and three-light mullioned windows beneath timber lintels, and a 20th-century brick-mullioned three-light west window. The chancel has rubble to its lower sections with brick above, and buttresses to the east. It contains a re-set pointed chamfered south door and pointed two-light windows with good reticulated tracery, hoodmoulds and headstops.

Interior features include a pointed double-chamfered tower arch with inner orders supported by fine carved head corbels. The arcade comprises one pointed double-chamfered arch and three plain round arches of two orders, probably rebuilt in the 17th century, rising from 13th-century keeled quatrefoil piers, one with moulded capital and circular abacus, the others plainer and possibly contemporary with the arches. A 17th-century chancel arch displays continuous double chamfering.

The church contains several notable monuments. In the tower stands a good early 14th-century knight effigy with legs crossed and a lion at its feet. The chancel houses a fine ashlar standing wall monument to Suzanna Dury of 1606, featuring a surround of fluted Corinthian pilasters carrying a bold cornice, a round-headed niche with putti in the spandrels, carved intrados and an inscribed tablet, over a later 17th-century two-thirds life-size figure of a reclining woman on a sarcophagus lid supported by two hounds. Another fine mid-17th-century standing ashlar monument, bearing traces of painting, commemorates Sir William Wray (died 1616) and Lady Frances Wray (died 1647). This monument is three by two bays with Corinthian columns supporting an inscribed entablature and canopy with elaborate carved arms above, over full-size reclining figures of Wray and his wife, with a kneeling daughter beside them, an infant at their feet, and two small kneeling figures of sons in armour beside the base to the north. A black marble floor slab to Sir William Wray of 1669 has an inscribed white marble border.

Other interior furnishings include a 14th to 15th-century font with an octagonal bowl carved with mouchettes and quatrefoils in circles, a shafted column and moulded base. An 11th to 12th-century pillar piscina at the west end features a quatrefoil shaft, scalloped capital and square top containing a 20th-century alms box. A central section of 14th-century oak rood screen survives under the tower arch, comprising a central opening flanked by two and a half panels on each side, with octagonal columns and cusped trefoiled ogee arches in two ranks, plain panels below and a later frieze above. Fragments of 14th-century glass, including portions of a dragon, survive in the chancel south windows. Two bells in the nave are dated 1699 and 1725.