Church Of St Peter

Church of St Peter

This parish church at Scotter consists of coursed limestone rubble with plaster patches and lead roofs. It comprises a western tower, nave, north aisle, vestry, chancel, and south porch, built and rebuilt over many centuries from the 12th century through to the 20th century, with major phases of work in the 12th, 13th, 15th, and 16th centuries, and further alterations in 1820, 1831, and the 20th century.

The three-stage tower features a moulded plinth and string courses, with added ashlar angled buttresses and a battlemented parapet carrying two chute heads on the north side. The 16th-century west door has a two-centred arched head with double concave moulded reveals and a hood mould, retaining its original decorative stile and hinges with floral patterns at the top. The first-floor window is a three-light 16th-century opening with panel tracery and quatrefoils, double concave moulded reveals, a hood mould, and added label stops. The belfry stage displays paired lights in each direction with cusped ogee heads, mouchettes, and single chamfered reveals with hood moulds. Black enamelled clock faces are positioned between the first and second stages on the west and north sides.

The north aisle is partly plastered and divided into five structural bays by stepped buttresses. It contains a four-centred arched doorway near the west end with moulded reveals, a hood mould, and label stops. Four three-light windows with four-centred arched heads and hood moulds with label stops are positioned further east. The west and east walls of the north aisle have restored 16th-century two-centred three-light windows.

The nave clerestorey has six paired lights with trefoil heads, possibly contained within earlier round-headed openings, beneath a later plain parapet. The south wall of the nave displays work from several periods: two 12th-century pilasters appear to be additions, while at the east end sits a single late 13th-century three-light Y-tracery window with a hood mould. Further west, five three-light 16th-century windows with four-centred arches and concave reveals are positioned at a high level; the easternmost of these cuts through an earlier blocked window beneath. Immediately east of the porch is a second blocked opening with a four-centred arched head, visible from the interior. The nave's late 12th-century south doorway features a flat head and weathered tympanum with a single square order comprising a roll, a lesser roll, and a chamfered hood mould (originally decorated), all supported on debased Corinthian nook shafts with moulded and chamfered imposts.

The chancel's north wall contains a 19th-century tall two-light window which cuts through an earlier blocked window to the east. The east wall was rebuilt in 1820 with a two-light Y-tracery window and ashlar quoins. The chancel's south wall includes a late 13th-century two-light pointed window with quatrefoil in single chamfered reveals and a hood mould, together with a heavily restored priest's door of triangular head with a hood mould and label stops; a quoin is dated 1831. A blocked window and door appear at the west end of the chancel.

The south porch is ashlar-fronted and dated 1820, with iron gates ramped upwards toward the centre.

Interior: A 13th-century double-chamfered tower arch dies away to the reveals. The north nave arcade comprises five bays of early 13th-century work with impressive quatrefoil piers carrying annular and stiff-leaf capitals, and double-chamfered arches with chamfered hood moulds and 19th-century label stops. Two of the piers have statue brackets on their west sides, and two further statue brackets stand in the aisle. The easternmost pair of arches are separated by a section of blank wall, and the easternmost arch is lower than the rest, probably because it opened into a transept; similar evidence is visible on the south side at the same point. At the east end of the nave is an angled doorway into the vestry (formerly a chapel), with a blocked access to the rood loft above.

The chancel arch is 13th-century, double-chamfered with corbels, probably recut in the 19th century. The chancel's south wall contains a 13th-century piscina with a reset round head and an aumbry. The north side displays an ogee-headed aumbry with a reset late medieval corbel carved as a human head.

Fittings include fine altar rails with turned balusters dating to circa 1720; the upper part of a 15th-century rood screen with pierced panel decoration (the lower part being 18th-century panels); an 18th-century octagonal panelled pulpit; panelled box pews on the north side of the nave; a 15th-century octagonal font with shields and roses in the upper panels; and a nearly 19th-century wooden gallery at the west end of the nave with an arched balustrade.

Monuments include the matrix of a late medieval brass in the chancel's north wall. In the nave's south wall is a fine inscribed and decorated brass plate to Sir Marmaduke Tyrwhitt (died 1599), depicting the deceased and his wife praying before an altar with their children and armorials, contained in a panelled ashlar surround with traces of paint. On the nave's east wall is an unusual inscribed copper plate to Mrs Sarah Ashton (died 1739) with a coat of arms in a Purbeck marble architrave supported on two brackets.