Church Of St Thomas A Becket

Church of St Thomas a Becket

This parish church dates from the mid-12th century through to the 19th century, with major building phases in the late 12th, late 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries. The building is constructed of ashlar and squared, coursed limestone rubble with ashlar quoins and dressings, topped with stone-coped slated roofs.

The church consists of a western tower, nave, south aisle, chancel, and south porch.

The tower is a three-stage structure dating to the late 13th century. It has a plinth and two chamfered offsets, and is crowned by an octagonal ashlar broach spire with tiny lucarnes in each principal direction. The 13th-century belfry openings contain two lights with Y tracery, chamfered surrounds, and hood moulds. A single lancet window with hood mould lights the first stage, and a small rectangular opening serves the second stage.

The north wall of the nave features a battlemented parapet with corner pinnacles. A wide buttress stands at the junction with the tower, with two further stepped buttresses beyond. Behind the central buttress, the head of a blocked doorway is visible, possibly leading to the now-vanished Coney chapel. The eastern part of the north wall is in ashlar and contains a 15th-century three-light window with panel tracery and pointed surround, a 19th-century fixed light in a square opening, and a large four-light 16th-century window with cavetto mullions and concave chamfered rectangular surround.

The chancel's north wall shows a moulded string course, a single lancet window, and a 16th-century single light with transom and chamfered surround. The east wall contains a three-light early 14th-century window with geometrical tracery, trilobe heads to the lights, and roundels over. The south wall displays a three-light 15th-century window with cinquefoil heads to the lights and a flat-headed moulded surround, together with a blocked archway to a vanished south chapel.

The south wall of the nave contains a blocked rectangular opening at low level and a wide four-light 16th-century window with chamfered mullions and moulded surround with cornice above. Beyond the porch is a 16th-century single light with moulded surround and hood mould.

The south porch is a 16th-century gabled structure in ashlar. It has a Tudor arched opening with concave chamfer and hood mould, side benches, and a late 13th-century inner doorway that is chamfered and pointed with a hood.

Interior

The interior contains a three-bay late 12th-century south arcade with circular piers and responds, waterleaf capitals, octagonal abaci, and double chamfered round arches with hobnail hoods. A late 13th-century tower arch has octagonal reveals and capitals with a double chamfered arch.

The chancel arch is a wide mid-12th-century example with round shafted reveals, cushion capitals bearing floriate roundels in low relief, square reeded abaci, a round inner order, a chamfer, a step, and a billet-moulded hood.

In the south aisle stands a late 13th-century trefoil-headed piscina, behind which is a reset 12th-century gravestone bearing a low-relief incised cross. Above the south doorway are two reset late 17th-century stones recording churchwardens in 1675 and 1699.

In the chancel, a blocked early 14th-century double chamfered archway with octagonal responds once led to a vanished chapel. Beyond this archway is a reset double piscina, a square aumbry on the north side, and a further blocked opening.

All fittings are 19th century. The octagonal font has panelled traceried sides, recut in the 19th century.

The Coney chapel, which housed monuments to the family of Thomas Coney (builder of the adjacent house), remained in use until the end of the 18th century but has since disappeared entirely.