Church Of St. Andrew

Church of St. Andrew

Parish church on the east side of Main Street in Boothby Pagnell. The building dates from the early 12th century with substantial work in the late 12th, 13th, 14th and 15th centuries. It was comprehensively restored in 1896 by J. L. Pearson. The church is constructed in ashlar and coursed limestone rubble with lead and slate roofs.

The structure comprises a western tower, nave with clerestory, chancel, north and south aisles, vestry and south porch.

The late 12th-century west tower rises in three stages with a plinth and moulded offsets. It is topped by a 15th-century embattled parapet with pinnacles and gargoyles. The belfry stage contains four two-light windows with round-headed lights and octagonal mid-wall shafts. The ground stage on the south side has a single round-headed light. A round-headed west door, recut in the 19th century, features paired angle shafts with waterleaf capitals, a double roll-moulded head and chamfered inner arch. The tower's west wall is built in ashlar, with a single light opening to the second stage.

The north aisle is separately gabled with stepped angle buttresses. It contains four three-light windows of 14th-century date with reticulated tracery, positioned to the west, east and twice on the north side.

A gabled 19th-century vestry with a pointed door stands to the north.

The early 14th-century chancel features four three-light windows with flowing tracery (one to the north, three to the south), all substantially recut in the 19th century. The fine east window is similar but contains four lights. The south wall includes a low two-light side window with square moulded head and hood.

The south aisle contains three 15th-century triangular-headed three-light windows with cusped ogee heads, positioned one in each direction.

Tall north and south clerestories contain pairs of two-light windows with cusped ogee heads and moulded surrounds.

A gabled 19th-century south porch in 14th-century style features a moulded outer arch and trefoil side lights, containing reset fragments of medieval glass.

Interior

The interior retains a two-bay early 12th-century nave arcade with circular piers and responds, cushion and scalloped capitals, and double stepped arches. The late 12th-century tower arch comprises two semi-circular stepped orders with an inner chamfer and facetted corbels. Above this is a 19th-century opening to an upper gallery.

In the south aisle stands an ogee-headed aumbry and two 19th-century stone statues.

A 13th-century pointed double-chamfered arch with facetted corbels is present.

The chancel north wall has two 14th-century double-chamfered pointed arches with octagonal pier and responds, decorated with human head label stops. Further east stands a blocked four-centred arched doorway, an aumbry, and to the south a 13th-century trefoil-headed piscina. The floor is richly tiled and marbled. The windows contain fine 19th-century glass.

Fittings and Monuments

The church contains a fine panelled organ case by J. L. Pearson which complements the screens, a gilded reredos, brass sanctuary gates, a panelled pulpit with perpendicular carvings and a brass lectern. A tapering-sided tub font features blank arcaded intersecting decoration with an ornate domed 19th-century wooden cover.

In the north aisle is a marble wall monument to Elizabeth Litchford (died 1698), featuring a bust of the deceased and her husband above a rectangular memorial plaque set in a classical aedicule with segmental pediment adorned with obelisks, swags and putti. Also in the north aisle are late 18th-century and early 19th-century wall plaques commemorating members of the Litchford family. On the south wall of the north aisle is a brass in a moulded surround to Katherine Harrington (died 1623) of Boothby, inscribed with the arms of the deceased's family.

The church was restored to commemorate Cecil Thorold, who died in 1895.