Church Of St Peter

MARKET BOSWORTH SK4003 CHURCH STREET (east side) 9/18 Church of St. Peter 7.11.66

GV II*

Parish church. Exterior largely Decorated (early C14) but some earlier internal features. Coursed and squared limestone with ashlar dressings. West tower and spire, nave with two aisles and clerestory, chancel. West tower of three stages with clasping buttresses and tall paired foiled bell chamber lights in deep embrasures. Embattled parapet with tiny angle pinnacles. Recessed spire with two tiers of lucarnes. Embattled parapet to aisle and clerestory. Wide coped gabled porch to south door. Windows of aisle and clerestory are in the Decorated style of three lights with slightly trefoiled heads. Chancel windows are high and short. One is incorporated above the priest's door. Plain parapet with gargoyles to cornice. Wide C.15 east window of five lights. Stair turret in north east angle of nave and chancel. Inside, restored in the "scrape' tradition. C13 tower arch, steep and narrow and deeply moulded. Nave arcade of four bays to north and south: slender clustered cylindrical shafts and hollow and roll moulded arches: the central shaft continuing to articulate the clerestory. On the aisle side, this central shaft is of wood, forming part of the former roof structure. Angel corbelheads to C15 roof with shallow cambered ties. Wide chancel arch with slim cylindrical shafts and outer hollow chamfer. Paired lights in the east nave wall above it. In the south east angle of the north aisle is a projecting angled stair turret to former rood with ogee arched doorway. Openwork wood Victorian screen, richly wrought. Mosaic floor to chancel. 5-light east window is flanked by empty statue niches. Sedilia with fan vaulting. North and south windows are high and low but contained in full height in braziers. Monuments: in the north aisle a marble black and white sarcophagus wall tablet surmounted by a single column, commemorating Sir Wolstan Dixie d.1767. In the chancel in a north window recess a reclininq female figure is the wife of John Dixie d.1846. Stained glass: simple emblems in the clerestory. Gaudy narrative in the south aisle of 1904. Stained glass saints in the windows above the chancel arch. In the chancel east window undated glass by Kempe, darkly coloured, depicting the Annuniciation of the Birth of Christ in a landscape, with architectural niches and saints in towers above. Font is an octagonal basin with ornate recessed traceried panels where traces of paint linger on the shields: four filletted shafts support it, probably C14. Wrought iron font cover of the C19.

Listing NGR: SK4065503250