Church Of St Peter

The Church of St Peter comprises a 14th-century tower and a largely 1875 rebuild of the main body, with the tower parapet renewed around 1904. It is constructed in the Perpendicular style, using large dressed stone for the tower and smaller hammer-dressed stone for the church, with a stone slate roof. The church consists of a west tower, a nave, a north aisle, a south porch, and a chancel with a north chapel, covered by a two-span roof.

The two-stage tower features diagonal buttresses with offsets to the west angles, rising to just below the second-stage band. It has a 19th-century west window of three cusped lights with panel tracery. A north-east stair-turret projects from the tower, with a lean-to roof and arrowslits. A small chamfered light is set below the belfry windows, which are of two lights with Y-tracery and cusped lights; corner gargoyles top the tower. The tower is finished with an ashlar embattled parapet and corner crocketed pinnacles. The nave has a south porch featuring a two-centred arched doorway with a stop-chamfered surround, diagonal buttresses, a coped gable and an inner 19th-century arched doorway. The bays to the right of the porch have plinths, three-light windows with cusped lights in square-headed double-chamfered surrounds, and offset buttresses dividing the bays. The chancel is lower and articulated by buttresses, containing a two-light window with a hoodmould and two blind bays. The east windows are of three lights, with a vesica above the chancel window, alongside a grotesque gargoyle reused as a kneeler. The north aisle retains one original buttress featuring a carved figure on its offset.

Inside, the open aisle arcade has columns of clustered colonnettes with quatrefoil sections, moulded capitals decorated with fleurons, and a 19th-century hammer-beam roof over the nave and an arched-brace roof over the chancel. Choir stalls include carved poppy heads by John Wolstenholme (York), and stained glass windows are by Wailes (Newcastle), though fragments of medieval glass remain in some of the nave and aisle windows. An octagonal, cup-shaped font is dated 1718. The church is notable for its collection of 18th-century wall monuments, including the significant Stringer Monument by Guelfi, featuring detached busts on a sarcophagus with straight tapering sides, a background attributed to Kent, and an inscription within a frame of volutes and a segmental pediment displaying a coat of arms with putti. The Smyth chapel contains monuments dating from 1731, including one to John Smyth displaying putti uncovering his portrait on an oval medallion, and another to Lady Georgina Smyth, signed by Flaxman in 1799.