Church of St Giles

Church of St Giles, Langton-by-Wragby

Parish church dating from the early 14th century, with substantial restoration and rebuilding carried out in 1866 by Atkinson of York. The building is constructed of ironstone and limestone in coursed rubble with limestone ashlar dressings. The roofs are slate with decorative ridge tiles, and the gables are stone-coped with cross finials.

The church comprises a west tower, nave with south porch, and chancel with north vestry. A plinth runs around the entire building.

The west tower is of four stages, built in ironstone with three-stage angle buttresses. The western doorway is pointed with head and jambs in one, featuring an inner chamfered order and outer moulded order, with a plank door. Above this is a large pointed window with 19th-century tracery of three pointed cusped lights with three trefoils, a hood mould with large head label stops, and a slit light above. The south side has two slit lights. Bell openings on all four sides are pointed, each with two pointed cusped lights running up into vertical mullions with mouchettes and hood mould. Battlements crown the tower with corner gargoyles and a weathervane.

The north side of the nave features four two-stage buttresses alternating with four pointed two-light windows, each with an oculus above, hood moulds and label stops. The north vestry has a gable broken through by a stack supported on an angel corbel, with two tall angle shafts and two narrow pointed cusped lights below the corbel. The east doorway to the vestry is pointed with hood mould and label stop heads, with a plank door.

The east end of the chancel has a large pointed window with two pointed cusped lights flanking a single light with irregularly shaped head, an oculus above, hood mould and head label stops. The south side of the chancel has two pointed cusped windows with hood moulds running into a string course on either side.

The south side of the nave contains three two-stage buttresses alternating with three pointed windows, each with two pointed cusped lights and an oculus above, hood moulds and label stops. The south porch is steeply gabled with a large pointed doorway flanked by single shafts with plain moulded capitals, a moulded head with cusped inner order, hood mould and head label stops. The inner south doorway is pointed with plain surround and plank door.

The interior tower arch has an early 14th-century double chamfered pointed head dying into chamfered jambs. The 19th-century chancel arch is pointed with three filleted rolls and responds featuring a cluster of three rolls with fillet on the central roll, foliate capitals, filleted hood mould and head label stops. The 19th-century timber roofs feature ornate ashlar corbels. The chancel has ball flower corbelling and a plain pointed vestry doorway with plank door.

A pointed piscina to the east has an inner open work cusping, hood mould and ornate label stops. The reredos has a lower tiled area decorated with grape and vine leaf motifs, and upper ashlar panels with the Evangelists and crucifix picked out in gold. The church contains 19th-century pews, an altar rail, lectern and stone panelled pulpit.

The font is 19th-century, cruciform in ashlar with red and green marble detailing and four marble shafts with crocket capitals.

Two marble monuments survive: a black and grey marble monument to Ann Marwood, died 1660, with upper cartouche bearing a coat of arms, fruit and festoons; and a slate monument with pink streaked marble surround to Barbara Evre of Washingbrooke, died 1657, featuring a broken segmental pediment and cartouche painted in gold, red and black.