Church Of St Andrew

Church of St Andrew, Aylestone

Parish church mostly built in the 13th to 15th centuries, with restoration work undertaken in 1894 and 1902, and the porch rebuilt in 1926.

The church is constructed in local random rubble with freestone dressings. The porch is built in ashlar. The chancel has a graded-slate roof, while the nave and aisles are covered in copper sheet.

The building comprises an aisled nave with a higher chancel, a west tower, a south porch, and a north-west vestry.

The broad 3-stage tower has angle buttresses in its lower stage and a restored west doorway with 4 orders of shafts. Lancet windows appear in both the lower stage and the middle stage of the south wall, below a clock. The bell stage has simple 2-light openings with louvres. Behind a coped parapet rises a broach spire topped by 2 tiers of lucarnes. The 3-bay aisles contain mainly 3-light windows with intersecting or reticulated tracery. Two-light clerestorey windows feature 4-centred arches. The 20th-century south porch is rib vaulted but retains 17th-century brick paving. Within it, the south aisle preserves a 14th-century doorway with continuous chamfer. The long, tall chancel extends 4 bays, with 5-light east and 3-light south windows displaying intersecting tracery, together with a south priest's doorway. The vestry is positioned against the north wall of the tower and the first bay of the north aisle.

Inside, the tower arch dates to the 14th century with triple-chamfering on polygonal responds. In the north wall of the tower is a lower blind triple-chamfered arch, which either opened to a north aisle longer than the present one or represents the re-set original 13th-century tower arch. Within it is a blocked triangular-headed window that may be a re-set Saxon window. The lofty interior contains 3-bay arcades: the north side has 13th-century round piers, while the south side has taller 14th-century octagonal piers. The nave retains a fine late medieval king-post roof on corbelled posts, decorated with a castellated tie beam and bosses that were repainted and gilded in 1999. The chancel has a 19th-century cradle roof. In its south wall are cusped sedilia with carved spandrels and an ogee-headed piscina. Walls have been stripped of plaster to expose stonework. The floors are late 19th-century parquet with plainer floorboards beneath the benches.

Among the principal fixtures is a restored 13th-century font with a round bowl and stem fitted with 4 detached shafts. Inside the south entrance stands a screen base of freestone and plaster across the south aisle, castellated with buttresses at either end, an entrance into the aisle, and incorporated benches on the east side. 20th-century benches have simple shaped ends. 16th-century bench ends with poppy heads are incorporated into a reading desk fixed against the nave west wall. Choir stalls brought here in 1927 from Leicester St Martin (when that church became the cathedral) have square-headed ends and frontals with open arcading and fleurons to a cornice. A brass memorial with effigy to William Heathcott (died 1594) is fixed in the chancel north wall. A 13th-century sepulchral slab is attached to the west wall. A fragment of 15th-century glass from Rouen is located in the south aisle. The east Ascension window dates to 1932 and is by Harry Payne of the Birmingham School of Art. Other stained glass includes a Nativity window by Burlison and Grylls (circa 1923) in the north aisle; Christ as the Light of the World by Lavers, Barraud & Westlake (circa 1862) in the south aisle; and a Victorian Golden Jubilee window by Herbert Gardner of Leicester (1887).

The core of the church dates to the 13th century and includes the tower, spire, nave, and north aisle. A re-set triangular-headed window in the tower has been interpreted as Anglo-Saxon, and a fragment of 12th-century masonry exists in the south wall. The south aisle was added in the 14th century. The early-14th-century chancel is unusually large, although large enough to have accommodated a secular college of priests, there is no documentary evidence for such a use. The nave clerestorey was added in the 15th century. Restoration in 1894 included new floors, new seating, and some renewal of tracery, except for the new east window and south aisle west window. Further window tracery was renewed in 1902 at a cost of £470. The nave and aisle roofs were repaired in 1923–24 and the porch was rebuilt in 1926. A vestry was added in the early 21st century.

Aylestone was a village that became absorbed into Leicester's expansion in the late 19th century.