Church Of St Andrew

Church of St Andrew

Parish church dating from around 1200, with major work in the late 13th and 14th centuries, 17th-century additions, and restoration in 1891. Built in limestone ashlar with lead and slate roofs.

The church comprises a west tower, aisles, clerestoried nave, chancel, and south porch.

The three-stage 14th-century west tower features moulded string courses and stepped setback buttresses, a plain parapet and angle pinnacles. The crocketted setback spire has flying buttresses at its base and two tiers of gabled lucarnes with trefoiled lights in alternating directions. The belfry stage contains large paired louvred lights with roll moulding, annular imposts, ogee heads and quatrefoils. The west face has a doorway with four orders of moulding to the head, supported on filleted angle shafts with annular imposts. Above this is a three-light window with curvilinear tracery forming mouchettes and daggers.

The aisles contain single two-light windows with curvilinear tracery. The north aisle's north wall has a pointed doorway with two orders of filleted moulding and annular imposts, with a gablet above containing a trefoil. This wall also has four three-light windows with cusped intersecting tracery and quatrefoils. The clerestory on both sides has four three-light windows with trefoil-headed lights and pointed wave-moulded surrounds. The nave has an embattled parapet.

The north aisle's east wall contains a three-light window matching those elsewhere. The chancel's north wall has a lower lancet window and two Y-traceried two-light windows with moulded heads and human head label stops. The rebuilt east wall contains a three-light 19th-century Y-traceried window with 14th-century annular imposts. The chancel's south wall has two two-light windows and a lancet matching those to the north, plus a pointed priest's doorway with moulded head.

The south aisle features three-light reticulated windows in hollow-chamfered pointed surrounds—one to the east and four to the south. The south porch is gabled, with a pointed outer doorway with moulded octagonal imposts and a pointed and moulded inner doorway of two filleted orders supported on angle shafts with annular capitals.

Interior

The four-bay nave arcades have filleted quatrefoil piers, annular capitals, and double wave-moulded arches with hoods and human head label stops. The tower arch has three chamfered orders supported on triple wave-moulded piers with annular capitals; matching side arches flank it. The chancel arch is double-chamfered and stilted.

The north aisle contains a trefoil-headed piscina with trefoiled gablet and floriated finial, and a statue bracket supported by a grotesque figure. The south aisle has another piscina with trefoil head, crocketted gablet, seaweed carving and floriate knop. A pointed chamfered doorway to the rood loft is set in the north-east angle of the aisle.

The chancel's south wall features triple sedilia with trilobed arched heads supported on round shafts with moulded annular capitals, and beyond these a trilobed piscina. All have moulded hoods and floriate stops.

Fittings

A 14th-century wooden chancel screen has cusped panel tracery to the upper lights and matching blank tracery in the lower panels, with a brattished top beam. A 17th-century oak octagonal pulpit has panelled sides and a moulded tester. The nave contains a complete set of 17th-century oak pews with panelled and moulded top rails and finials. An early 13th-century round tub font has octagonal angle shafts and blank pointed tracery to the sides featuring crude Agnus Dei and foliage. An iron-bound 16th-century chest with three lock plates is housed in the tower.