Church Of St Botolph

A parish church, now redundant, dating from the early 13th century with significant additions and alterations in the 14th and 15th centuries, plus Victorian and 20th-century restoration work. The building is constructed in coursed limestone rubble and ashlar with limestone ashlar dressings, some red brick, and some render. The roofs, dating from 1854, are slate with stone coped gables and cross finials. Ashlar coped brick parapets sit on the aisles and east gable of the nave, with red brick patched eaves on the clerestory.

The church comprises a west tower, a nave with north and south aisles, a south porch, and a chancel. The mid-14th-century west tower has a lower 13th-century east wall. It features a moulded plinth and string course with six-stage angle buttresses. The pointed west doorway has a richly moulded head and jambs worked in one, with a hood mould and a medieval door featuring cusping on a pointed head, ribs with studs, and a rectangular opening with grille positioned three-quarters of the way up. Above sits a pointed window with three cusped ogee-headed lights, panel tracery, hood mould, and weathered head label stops. A moulded string course runs above, with pointed windows on the west, north, and south sides—these have two cusped pointed lights each, three mouchettes, hood moulds, and weathered head label stops. The hood mould is only visible on the east side. Bell openings on all four sides feature pointed heads, each with two cusped ogee-headed lights, panel tracery, hood moulds, and weathered head label stops. Moulded eaves project above with corner gargoyles, and the structure is topped with battlements with weathered plain corner pinnacles.

The west end of the north aisle contains a pointed 13th-century window with lower sections of two damaged mullions and an upper 20th-century wooden cross-mullion window inserted. It has a hood mould and weathered head label stops. The north aisle is divided into three bays by four two-stage buttresses with cusped and gabled upper terminations. A moulded plinth runs along the aisle. A rectangular window to the west has three pointed cusped lights with a hood mould. To the east is a 13th-century doorway with a pointed double-chamfered head and jambs, hood mould, and plank doors. A rectangular window to the east has three cusped ogee-headed lights with reticulated tracery and hood mould. Some brick patching appears on the east and west walls. The east end of the north aisle features a plinth and a rectangular window with four pointed lights with restored heads, flanked by two-stage buttresses. Above the left buttress, remnants of a blocked 13th-century pointed window or archway survive. A 15th-century clerestory of limestone ashlar contains four windows partially restored in the 19th century, each with flattened triangular heads, three cusped and pointed lights, and a hood mould.

The north side of the chancel has a rectangular 15th-century window to the west with three pointed lights. A brick two-stage buttress stands to the east with a plain corbel set in the wall immediately beyond. The east end features two-stage angle buttresses flanking a large pointed late-15th-century window with bowtell-moulded surround, five pointed cusped lights, rich panel tracery with transom, hood mould with weathered head label stops, and restored mullions.

The south side of the chancel has two-stage buttresses flanking a rectangular window to the east with three triangular-headed lights, hood mould, and a 13th-century blocked pointed doorway to the west with chamfered head and jambs partially exposed. A rectangular window to the west has three pointed lights. The east end of the south aisle has a plinth and a single two-stage buttress flanking a rectangular window with three pointed lights, hood mould, and weathered head label stops. Immediately above the right-hand buttress remain two voussoirs of a 13th-century window or archway with a pointed head. The south side of the aisle features three-stage buttresses alternating with two rectangular windows with undeveloped ogee heads with cusping.

A gabled porch to the west was restored in 1871. Its south doorway has a pointed double-chamfered head dying into rectangular jambs, double openwork doors with pointed tracery, and above sits a corbel and inscribed plaque. The porch interior contains an early 13th-century pointed south doorway with double-chamfered head and jambs, moulded imposts, hood mould with bold dogtooth decoration, head label stops, and a plank door. A rectangular 14th-century window to the west of the porch has three cusped ogee-headed lights.

The west end of the south aisle contains a pointed early 13th-century window with 14th-century cusped tracery inserted, restored in the 19th century, with hood mould and weathered head label stops. The 15th-century clerestory has four windows with flattened triangular heads and three lights with irregularly shaped cusped heads. Moulded eaves run along the south side with fragmentary gargoyles.

In the interior, a mid-14th-century tower arch has a double-chamfered pointed head dying into rectangular jambs. Large rectangular sections of 13th-century west end wall predate the arcades and are set in the corners between the tower arch and north and south arcades. Fragmentary moulded string courses appear on the north and south faces of the 13th-century masonry.

The early 13th-century north and south arcades each comprise four bays. Both feature tall octagonal plinths with broaches, moulded octagonal bases, octagonal piers, and polygonal responds. The north arcade capitals are plain, while the south arcade capitals (except for the western respond) feature crocket capitals of various designs. Both arcades have double-chamfered pointed heads with remnants of painted decoration adhering.

The early 13th-century chancel arch has keeled responds and a pointed head with a chamfered outer order and roll-moulded inner order. It retains damaged plain capitals and moulded abaci to the east. The arch is flanked by the outline of pointed 13th-century openings, possibly to eastern aisles, and a faint gable outline predating the aisles appears above the chancel arch.

The north wall of the chancel contains a rectangular aumbry to the east and a carved stone with triangular head reset to the west. The south side of the chancel has a blocked 13th-century piscina with pointed head to the east and damaged sedilia with Caernarvon head to the west. A stone inscribed IHS is set inside the sedilia. The east window is flanked by a single large grotesque corbel head painted white. A 19th-century altar rail stands before the window.

A gravestone set in the chancel floor commemorates a vicar of the parish who died in 1413, with a nearly illegible inscription running around its edge. Two gravestones set in the nave before the chancel arch commemorate members of the Wheddale family, who died in 1737 and 1799.

The south aisle of the nave has a grotesque corbel head set into the east wall. Below it sits a fragment with carved decoration and a deeply moulded edge. On the floor lies a crudely inscribed upper section of a gravestone depicting the tonsured head and shoulders of a priest with hands in prayer. Another medieval gravestone to the south features an inscribed cross with crude fleur-de-lys-type terminations. A slab beyond shows the indentation of brasses now removed.

An early 13th-century octagonal font rests on an octagonal base. Several 19th and early 20th-century monuments are present. The 19th and 20th-century roofs include a nave roof with cusped tie beams.