St Martin of Tours Church and boundary walls

St Martin of Tours Church and boundary walls

St Martin of Tours is a 14th-century church with a mid-15th-century tower. It was first restored in 1833, then underwent more substantial restoration work in 1887–89 by J E Newberry. The church received extensive additions to the north in 1972 by Colin Shewring (these extensions are not listed), and a further programme of restoration works was carried out in 2010–14.

The church walls are constructed from a mix of red limestone rubble and ashlar blocks brought to course, with ashlar dressings. The tower is largely built in sandstone ashlar blocks. The roofs are covered with slate tiles.

The church is orientated north-east to south-west, with a porch to the south-east and the tower at the south-west end. The plan is roughly rectangular, though the chancel is narrower than the nave, with their south-eastern walls in line. The north-western wall of the chancel is indented inwards from that of the nave.

Both nave and chancel have pitched roofs with coped parapet gables to their north-east ends, each topped with a stone Greek cross finial at the apex. The nave is higher and wider than the chancel, with the ridge of the chancel set south-east of the nave's ridge. Two horizontal courses of dressed, chamfered stones run around the nave and chancel below the window cills, continuous except where broken by sealed doorways: one in the east end of the south-east elevation of the chancel, and one at the west end of the nave in the north-west elevation.

The nave has three windows to each side; the chancel has two windows in its south-eastern elevation, though those in the north-west have been removed by the 1972 extension. Windows generally have square heads with two lights divided by a single central mullion, some with a transom just below the centre. The two chancel windows display a more flowing style of tracery than those in the nave, with a pair of horizontally aligned mouchettes either side of the mullions below the heads, in contrast to the nave's vertical mouchettes. The westernmost windows in the nave are shorter than the others, with higher cills. The heads of the south-eastern windows in the chancel drop slightly from those in the nave, mirroring the lower ridge height of the chancel.

The tower is square in plan and located at the south-west end of the church. At the bell stage level, each elevation has a two-light, flat-headed window, above which runs a string course and then a crenelated top. The south-west elevation displays a large pointed-arched two-light window with a transom and tracery. Simple narrow loop openings appear below the upper windows on all elevations except the north-east, which has none. The south-east elevation has a second smaller loop to the east, and the south-west elevation a second loop south of the large lower pointed arch window. The tower has buttresses set diagonally at its north and south corners, and at right-angles where it meets the nave.

The south porch is situated at the west end of the nave. It has a pitched roof with its gable to the south-east, where a 21st-century glass door is installed. The apex of the gable is topped with a Greek cross finial. Above the door is an ogee arch surround decorated with crockets and sprung from corbels carved with king and queen heads. Each side wall contains an ogee-headed two-light window.

The south-east elevation has buttresses between the central and eastern window of the nave, at the junction between nave and chancel, and centrally in the chancel. A blocked doorway lies east of the chancel buttress. The north-west elevation of the nave has a buttress between the central and eastern windows. At its east end is a blocked arch, before the junction with the 1972 work, followed by a blocked doorway between the central and western nave windows. The north-east elevation is formed by the end of the chancel and is dominated by a pointed-arch 19th-century three-light window with a high transom running through its upper tracery. The north and east corner buttresses are set diagonally.

Internally, the walls are rendered. The nave has a 19th-century arch-braced roof, whilst the chancel features a 19th-century barrel-vaulted ceiling with carved floral bosses. The floors were replaced in 2014 with stone flags.

The south-east wall of the chancel contains a 19th-century cusped ogee piscina at its eastern end and a blocked doorway between its two windows. Window glazing is plain, set in leaded lights. The arch dividing the nave from the chancel is equilateral and springs from plain ashlar columns, decorated with simple mouldings with a hood mould on the nave side. The arched opening between the nave and tower has an inner arch sprung from imposts with chamfers to each side. The tower is accessed by a small door in the western corner of the nave and houses a bell made in 1887 by John Taylor & Company of Loughborough.

The panelled oak pulpit and pews date from the 19th century. Pews are open benches, plain except for a circular floral motif on the armrests at the pew ends. Oak benches in the porch are 21st-century installations. The font is 17th-century stone, plain and octagonal, mounted on a re-used older base.

A monument to Edmund Helwys (died 1590), father of Thomas Helwys, an early Baptist, occupies the south-eastern wall of the chancel at its east end. It comprises an inscribed alabaster tablet framed by columns holding a pediment beneath a crest, flanked by scrolled brackets.

The Gibbs Annunciation mural is in two parts, with one life-sized figure either side of the east window in the chancel: Gabriel to the south and Mary to the north. The scene is depicted not in Nazareth but in a stylised Bilborough. Behind Gabriel, the south side of St Martin's Church is shown with the distinctive outline of Grade I listed Wollaton Hall in the background, though Wollaton Hall actually lies some distance to the south, not north. Behind Mary is a courtyard of farm buildings, dominated by the tall tithe barn with its unusual tower, which before its demolition in the 1950s stood north of Church Farm, around 200 metres north-east of the church.

The churchyard boundary to the north is a stone rubble wall with roughly shaped coping stones. It is interrupted by the 1972 extension and continues curving around the west side of the extension to meet the boundary with the new rectory. This section is broken by a five-bar gate to the north-west and further north-west by a smaller pedestrian gate over the path to the churchyard. The wall then continues south along the boundary with the new rectory past the church to the graveyard in the south, where it is supplemented by a hedge until it tapers down to its end around 20 metres south of the church. To the east of the 1972 extension, the stone wall runs east to the path into the churchyard, where it is broken by a small gate and then terminates.