Parish Church Of St Botolph

Parish Church of St Botolph

This parish church dates from the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries, with restoration carried out in 1867. It is built of coursed limestone rubble and ashlar with slate and lead roofs featuring raised stone coped gables and crested ridges.

The church comprises a west tower, nave, aisles, south porch, chancel and south chapel, plus a vestry. The tall four-stage early 13th-century west tower has a chamfered plinth and string courses, set-back buttresses, and a plain parapet with angle pinnacles. The belfry contains paired 15th-century trefoil-headed lights with Perpendicular tracery to the heads and pointed chamfered surrounds. A two-light window to the west has crude intersecting tracery and a pointed head. The third stage has single Y-traceried louvered lights with pointed heads.

The west wall of the south aisle contains a 14th-century two-light window with reticulated tracery, cusped ogee heads and a quatrefoil. The 14th-century north aisle features a continuously moulded and pointed doorway and two three-light reticulated windows with cusped ogees, quatrefoils and triangular-headed wave-moulded surrounds. The 19th-century vestry has a pointed doorway and a three-light window with mullions and cusped four-centred arched heads to the lights. A 15th-century two-light window in the east wall displays Perpendicular tracery.

The 13th-century chancel east window has four tall lights with slender intersecting tracery to the pointed head. The 13th-century south chapel has a plain parapet and a two-light reticulated window to the east with cusped ogee arches, trefoils and a triangular-headed surround. To the south are two repositioned 13th-century two-light windows with geometric tracery comprising a trilobe, trefoils and a quatrefoil, all in pointed and chamfered surrounds. The 1867 south aisle has two two-light windows with geometric tracery and pointed chamfered surrounds. The contemporary gabled south porch has a pointed and wave-moulded outer arch with engaged shafted reveals. The inner door retains 13th-century moulded and filleted reveals with 19th-century capitals to the moulded head.

The interior contains three-bay 13th-century nave arcades with octagonal shafts, moulded and splayed capitals and double-chamfered arches. Human heads appear at the label stops, and at the east end of the south arcade the respond bears a human mask. The early 13th-century tower arch has a chamfered and roll-moulded head with single angle shafts, one bearing a cushion capital. The 19th-century chancel arch features clustered and collared shafted reveals and is flanked by single triangular-headed archways dying into the reveals; similar arches appear in the side walls of the chancel.

The south chapel contains a pointed-headed piscina to the south and a matching squint to the north. The chancel has a 13th-century double piscina on the south side, now fitted with 19th-century tracery and shaft but retaining the original dogtoothed triangular surround with three human heads. On the north side is an early 14th-century tomb recess with a moulded ogee arch decorated with ballflowers and a floriate finial. The tapering coffin lid has fleurons to the chamfered sides.

The fittings are 19th-century in date and include a gilded alabaster altar and reredos depicting Christ in Majesty and the four Evangelists. The pulpit is a panelled octagonal oak example with an ashlar base. The font is a plain tapering octagonal design with a chamfered base and the graffito "Thomas" carved to the east.

A monument in the south chapel is an alabaster wall plaque with a broken segmental cornice, paterae and armorial escutcheon commemorating Mary Savile, who died in 1637. It features a bolection-moulded rectangular inscription panel, a moulded base and cherub flanked by scrolls.