Parish Church Of St Peter

Parish Church of St Peter, Belgrave

The Parish Church of St Peter is a substantial parish church dating from the 12th to 15th centuries, with major restorations undertaken by Ewan Christian (1860), William Gillett (1861-67) and Sir George Gilbert Scott (1877).

The church is constructed of local rubble stone, including sandstone and red granite, with lead roofs except for a sheet-steel chancel roof and tile roof to the north transept. The plan comprises an aisled nave with a west tower, north and south porches, a north vestry (now a parish room) and a long chancel.

The three-stage tower is 12th century in its lower stages, featuring large diagonal buttresses and an upper stage added in the 15th century. An inserted west doorway has brick jambs and a wooden lintel with a ribbed door. The second stage contains a small round-headed south window and a north clock face set in a lozenge slate panel dated 1760, though the clock hands are missing. The bell stage has two-light Perpendicular openings with louvres, beneath an embattled parapet.

The nave extends four bays, with segmental-headed two-light clerestorey windows featuring Y-tracery. The aisles have plain 19th-century parapets. The south aisle has two-light plate tracery windows which are copies of medieval windows. The embattled south porch is castellated in style, with turret-like clasping polygonal buttresses panelled above impost level, and a four-centred entrance with a carved spandrel and angel corbel to a central polygonal turret. Inside the porch is the re-set 12th-century south doorway, which has two orders of nook-shafts and striated decoration to capitals and arches: the outer order features interlace whilst the inner order displays intersecting arches. The north aisle has 19th-century Y-tracery windows and a three-light west window with intersecting tracery. The north porch has large diagonal buttresses and a segmental-pointed entrance with a niche above. The Decorated-style three-bay chancel incorporates a cornice decorated with a frieze of ballflower and heads. It has 19th-century two-light south and north windows, and a five-light east window. There is a segmental-headed south doorway and a small, low two-light square-headed window further to the left. The vestry has a two-light north window, a blocked east window and an added clergy vestry on its east side.

The interior features four-bay arcades with piers of quatrefoil section and double-chamfered arches, although the north arcade is slightly earlier in date. Capitals are moulded, except for one south capital and a respond with foliage decoration. The tower arch dates from around 1200, as evidenced by nook-shafts and tentative stiff-leaf capitals, but was modified in the 14th century with an inner order on foliage corbels, on one side sprouting from naturalistic heads. The taller chancel arch is double-chamfered. The nave retains a late medieval king-post roof with painted shield-bearing figures on the corbelled brackets and tracery above the beams. The 19th-century chancel roof is also king-post, mounted on plainer corbels but with richer tracery above the beams. Arched-brace aisle roofs date from 1861. Restored piscina and sedilia have crocketed ogee heads, with the sedilia featuring detached shafts and small vaults. There are also three stepped sedilia under cusped heads and a piscina with similar detail in the south aisle, perhaps moved from the chancel when the chancel was enlarged in the 14th century. Walls are plastered. The chancel has black and white stone paving, whilst plain tiles cover the nave, with parquet floors beneath seating.

The 13th-century font has a round bowl and a stem with attached shafts and a vertical band of dog-tooth ornament, surmounted by a tall 19th-century canopy with pinnacles. Benches of 1938 have simple curved tops. The pulpit and chancel screen are by E. Turner, dating from 1883. The polygonal pulpit features blind tracery; the screen has a conventional design of blind panelled dado, open tracery to the main lights, a cornice and brattishing. In the chancel, stalls of 1903 have poppy heads and a tall back to the upper tier with blind tracery. One late 15th-century priest's stall, taken from a larger set, retains a misericord. A panelled dado surrounds the sanctuary, and a reredos of 1872 by Scott shows Christ in a central gabled niche, flanked by symbols of the Evangelists in quatrefoils, though its quality is obscured by 20th-century painting. An early 19th-century Hanoverian Royal Arms is present. Three memorials are of special interest: a late 12th-century coped tomb slab in the chancel; a Renaissance wall monument framed by Ionic pilasters with strapwork, harshly painted and much restored, commemorating Ambrose Belgrave (died 1571); and a 1914-18 war memorial with a roll call over four panels, flanked by sculpted infantrymen in niches. The east window is by Mayer of Munich (1881), a chancel south window is by H. Hughes (1866) and the north aisle east window is by Kempe (1890).

Belgrave was a small village that was subsumed by the expansion of Leicester in the late 19th century. The lower stages of the tower and the re-set south doorway survive from the original 12th-century church. It was enlarged in two phases: in the 13th century when aisles were added, and again in the 14th century when the chancel was enlarged. The clerestorey was added in the 15th century, possibly at the same time as the tower was heightened. The tower retained a wooden spire until at least 1824. The south porch was built in 1826 by William Bradley, and the north porch was constructed in 1911. Restoration work from 1861-67 was undertaken by William Gillett, who restored the tower and nave roof, constructed new aisle roofs and renewed the window tracery. The chancel was substantially restored in 1860 by Ewan Christian, who inserted the present east window and probably the other windows, raised the roof pitch, and again in 1877 by Sir George Gilbert Scott, who added the north vestry. This was extended by the addition of a clergy vestry in 1908.