Church Of St Peter

SE32SE WARMFIELD-CUM-HEATH KIRKTHORPE LANE (west side), Kirkthorpe

1/98 Church of St. Peter

22.11.66 GV II*

Church. C14 tower, body of church rebuilt c1875, tower parapet renewed c1904. Perpendicular style. Large dressed stone to tower, smaller hammer-dressed stone to body of church, stone slate roof. West tower, nave, north aisle, south porch, chancel with north chapel. 2-span roof. 2-stage tower has diagonal buttresses, with offsets to west angles only, rising to just below 2nd-stage band. C19 west window of 3 cusped lights with panel tracery. North-east stair-turret has lean-to roof and arrowslits. South face has inserted C19 window. 2-light belfry window to each face has Y-tracery and cusped lights. Set just below is small chamfered light. Corner gargoyles. Ashlar embattled parapet with corner crocketed pinnacles. Nave: 4 bays. Porch, set in 1st bay, has 2-centred-arched doorway with stop-chamfered surround, diagonal buttresses, coped gable and inner C19 arched doorway. Bays to right hand: plinth, 3-light windows with cusped lights set in a square-headed double-chamfered surrounds, and offset buttresses dividing bays. Larger buttress at division between nave and chancel. Coped gable. North aisle has one original buttress with carved figure on offset. Chancel: lower. 3 bays articulated by buttresses. 2-light window with hoodmould, 2 blind bays. Two 3-light east windows with vesica above chancel window. Grotesque gargoyle reused as kneeler to right.

Interior: open aisle arcade has columns of clustered colonnettes, quatrefoil in section, with moulded capitals decorated with fleurons. C19 hammer-beam roof, arched-brace roof to chancel. Choir stalls with carved poppy heads by John Wolstenholme (York). Stained glass windows by Wailes (Newcastle), some fragments of medieval glass remain in nave and aisle windows. Octagonal cup-shaped font dated 1718. The chief merit of the church is a fine collection of C18 wall monuments. The most important of these is the Stringer Monument by Guelfi: 2 detached busts on a sarcophagus with straight tapering sides; background by Kent with inscription, a frame starting from 2 big volutes and crowned by an open-segmental pediment carved coat-or-arms with putti. The Smyth chapel has numerous monuments dating from 1731; including that to John Smyth of 2 putti uncovering his portrait on an oval medallion, that to Lady Georgina Smyth and others signed by Flaxman; 1799.

N. Pevsner, Yorkshire West Riding, (1974) p294.

Listing NGR: SE3613720975