Church Of Saint Maurice

The Church of Saint Maurice is a parish church located on the east side of Main Street in Horkstow. The building represents work spanning from the 13th to 20th centuries, with major construction and alterations occurring at different periods.

The church comprises a west tower, a three-bay aisled nave with north and south porches (the latter now functioning as a vestry), and a three-bay chancel. The tower, which dates to the 13th century, has two stages. The first stage features buttresses with re-set moulded caps, a keyhole slit on the west side, and a 19th-century window to the south. The second stage shows the line of a former steeply-pitched gable on its east face, and contains twin lancet belfry openings beneath a pointed hoodmould with carved stops. The tower is topped with a stepped and cogged brick eaves cornice and a pyramidal roof covered with pantiles.

The nave arcades, north aisle, and chancel date to the 13th century. The south aisle and clerestory were added in the 14th to 15th centuries. The 17th century saw repairs to the nave and north aisle roofs, whilst the chancel underwent repairs in the 18th and early 19th centuries. The interior was re-seated and restored in 1868, with further restorations in 1898 by R H Fowler, which included re-facing the aisles.

The church is built primarily of chalk rubble with limestone ashlar, with the chancel incorporating brick. The tower and north aisle are of chalk rubble and limestone ashlar, whilst the south aisle is ashlar. The roof coverings vary: pantiles cover the tower, whilst slates cover the south aisle, chancel, porch and vestry. The nave and north aisle have lead roofs, with 20th-century stainless steel additions to the north aisle.

Externally, the nave features two two-light cinquefoiled clerestory windows. The south aisle has two 19th-century pointed two-light windows with Geometric tracery, a three-light east window with a 19th-century head, and a 14th to 15th-century square-headed two-light west window with crude Perpendicular tracery. The adjoining vestry has twin 19th-century lancets. The north aisle contains a plinth to the east of the porch, two two-light pointed windows with 19th-century heads and Geometric tracery, and late 13th-century pointed two-light windows to the west and east, the latter with a hoodmould and carved headstops.

The chancel has a rendered plinth and ashlar quoins, with considerable brick patching in the walls. It features single blocked lancets and 19th to 20th-century square-headed three-light trefoiled windows in chamfered brick reveals to north and south, and two restored east lancets. The north porch displays rock-faced rustication with smooth-faced ashlar quoins, and has a shafted outer door with a pointed double-chamfered arch and hoodmould, together with a foiled opening to the west side.

The interior contains a pointed chamfered tower doorway. The north and south arcades have pointed double-chamfered arches with hoodmoulds and fine carved headstops. The north arcade has 13th-century cylindrical piers with plain moulded capitals and bases, whilst the south arcade has early 14th-century octagonal piers with similar moulded details. Both arcades feature semicircular responds to the east and keeled responds to the west (those on the south side being obscured by plaster). The south door in the vestry is pointed and double-chamfered, retaining remains of crude outer shafts.

The chancel arch is pointed and double-chamfered, springing from moulded corbels that are semicircular to the south and octagonal to the north. The chancel floor is raised six steps, with two further sections towards the east, each raised two steps and spanning pointed double-chamfered transverse arches above. These arches spring from 19th-century responds and capitals, those to the central arch possibly being re-cut. The chancel has an encaustic tile floor and a 19th-century roof.

The nave roof is of plain, heavy oak dated 1609, and probably represents a lowering of an earlier 15th-century crown-post roof. The central jowelled posts have broad down-braces to the tie-beams and up-braces to the ridge purlin, with short struts braced to the tie beam and tenoned into the principals carrying purlins. The tie-beams are braced to later wall-posts on ashlar corbels. The north aisle roof has butt-purlins with curved wind-braces; the principals, which are tenoned through the nave wall, terminate in pegged brackets, one of which is dated 1659. The south aisle has a 18th to 19th-century staggered butt-purlin roof.

The church contains several monuments. These include a pair of marble wall tablets at the east end of the nave to Rear Admiral Thomas Shirley of 1814 and Colonel John Tufnell of 1838, both with carved ornament on grey obelisk-shaped bases. A finely-inscribed oval marble wall tablet to Catherine Ayers of 1759 is located in the north aisle.