Church Of St Martin

Church of St Martin

Parish church on Main Street, Ancaster. The building spans multiple periods from the 11th century through to the 19th century, with major phases in the 12th, 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries, plus a significant alteration in 1713 and 19th-century restoration. It is constructed of coursed limestone rubble and ashlar, with slate and lead roofs. The plan comprises a west tower, nave with north and south aisles, and chancel.

The 14th-century west tower stands in three stages with a recessed spire lit by two tiers of double lucarnes and one tier of single lucarnes on alternating faces. The tower features angle buttresses and a plinth with string courses dividing the stages. The ground floor west wall contains a two-light window with trefoils above. The middle stage has a single trefoil-headed light with ogee hood mould on the west face. The belfry stage has four paired ogee-headed openings with quatrefoils above. A later flat-headed door sits on the south side. The parapet displays gargoyles at the angles, with the buttress tops carrying foliated gables and projecting grotesque figures. A stair in the south-east angle is partly supported on decorated corbels with crouched figures in the angles between buttresses and tower walls, lit by small rectangular barred openings.

The nave's north wall features 15th-century paired clerestorey lights beneath four-centred moulded arches, surmounted by an embattled and pinnacled roof with gargoyles and shield and lozenge friezes. The north aisle contains a 13th-century lancet window in its west wall, a now-blocked Transitional doorway with dogtoothed jambs to the north, and a three-light 15th-century window beneath a flat lintel with hood mould. The east wall of the aisle holds a probably repositioned 14th-century geometric window with three short trefoil-headed lights beneath two circles, each containing paired mouchettes, the whole surmounted by a quatrefoil and contained in a pointed arch with hood mould. This window sits in the blocking of a 13th-century archway, which doubtless led into a now-vanished north chapel.

The chancel's north wall has a 12th-century corbel table reset in the 19th century, with simple rounded pendant corbels, one bearing a castellated design, and most bearing masons' marks. A two-light 19th-century window occupies the north wall. Although principally of ashlar, the north chancel wall and east aisle wall contain short runs of coursed limestone rubble. Built into the later wall sections are nine fragments of a probably Saxon tympanum. A blocked archway in the north wall of the chancel similarly gave access to a vanished chapel, as did the blocked access to the rood loft in the angle between chancel and aisle.

The chancel's east wall is of fine ashlar and fundamentally 12th-century, as evidenced by two nook-shafted Norman lights which were later superseded by the present 14th-century reticulated east window. The 12th-century phase is also represented by a chamfered plinth and shallow pilasters near the angles. Earlier, steeper roof pitches are visible in the east walls of the tower and nave. The south wall of the chancel contains a Norman corbel table and plinth, plus a section of string course at the east end, presumably contemporary. A 14th-century two-light trefoil-headed window with quatrefoil cuts through a Norman window, of which only the western jamb to impost level and part of the sill survive. The impost carries a reeded horizontal moulding, and the stone beneath bears the same mason's mark as the third corbel from the west above, confirming its 12th-century date. This Norman window itself cuts an earlier blocked opening to the west, fragments of whose jambs and sill remain. The blocked window and evidence of a cruciform plan, provided by coarse walling at this and other points, indicate the existence of a Saxon cruciform church, possibly of minster status. The primacy of the rubble walling is further evidenced by a 12th-century buttress with plinth in the angle between the south aisle and chancel, built against an existing wall which, unlike Norman parts, lacks a plinth at existing ground level.

The chancel's south wall also features a 15th-century two-light window with ogee heads and quatrefoil beneath a central trefoil, surmounted by a heavy rounded hood mould, and a 14th-century door with pointed chamfered head and semicircular hood mould. The south nave wall displays elaborate castellated and pinnacled clerestorey with two-light windows arranged in pairs and gargoyles. The south aisle has a 15th-century roof matching that of the nave, with castellations, pinnacles, and gargoyles; both nave and aisle feature cusped lozenge and shield friezes. One 15th-century triple-light window has ogee heads and trefoils beneath a segmental moulded hood mould. Further west is a 14th-century two-light window with ogee heads and quatrefoil.

The south porch is 13th-century with a pointed moulded arch; its label stops have been removed. The top was reconstructed with its present low roof pitch in 1713, a date recorded in a gable plaque. Within the porch are side benches and two 14th-century tomb covers bearing effigies of robed priests, one holding a chalice and the other with clasped hands in prayer. A 1914–18 wall plaque in Gothic taste also appears here. The south door displays a bizarre trefoil head with pointed chamfered hood mould.

Interior

The interior contains a Norman north arcade of four bays: the first is a step; the second a step and a roll; the third a large roll with billet decoration; and the fourth with deep chevrons in two orders. The south arcade has three bays with piers decorated with four angle shafts in the principal directions. The two southern piers stand on the circular base of an earlier 12th-century nave arcade. The piers have octagonal capitals and abaci above double-chamfered arches. The nave roof carries 15th-century figured corbels, and the south aisle has 14th-century corbels, one bearing triple human masks. 14th-century roof fragments repositioned in the 19th-century nave roof are flatish figures in a rustic style; three similar figures appear on the principal trusses of the south aisle roof.

The tower arch is exceptionally tall and 14th-century, with triple shafts connected by continuous hollows with annular capitals and heavily moulded head. A door above the tower arch has a pointed head with a corbel beneath. The chancel arch is double-chamfered, early 13th-century, with collared angle shafts and nailhead-decorated octagonal capitals, with 19th-century label stops to the hood mould. Fifteenth-century square-headed aumbries occupy the north and south walls of the chancel.

All glass and fittings are 19th-century except for the altar rail of circa 1700, which is very chaste with elegant turned balusters, and the font, a 12th-century lead-lined tub with continuous tall intersecting pelleted blank arcading on its sides.

Monuments include a wall plaque to Elizabeth Long, died 1743, in the north aisle featuring a trumpeting angel and scrolly pediment. Nineteenth-century wall plaques to the Allix family of Sudbrook Hall occupy the chancel. A marble plaque depicting a female mourning figure beside a wreathed urn commemorates John Roe, died 1765, by T. King of Bath, on the north chancel wall. Three further 18th-century wall plaques appear in the south aisle, one bearing a heavy broken pediment and flaming urn dated 1756.