Church Of St Hilary

Church of St Hilary, Spridlington

Parish church built in 1875 by James Fowler of Louth. The building is constructed in coursed limestone rubble with ashlar dressings and features a plain tiled roof with stone coped gables and crosses fleury. The church is designed throughout in the late 13th century style, with a plinth, moulded string courses and stepped buttresses. The nave and chancel are undivided.

The west end of the nave contains 3 pairs of 2-light windows with quatrefoils over and a continuous hood mould. Above is a large circular window with 8 quatrefoils arranged around a central cusped light, with a small trefoil-headed light in the gable. At the north-west angle of the nave stands an entrance tower in the form of a campanile, arranged in 4 stages with a gabled roof featuring gargoyles at the angles. The west elevation of the tower has single windows to ground and first floor levels. The belfry stage contains tall paired louvred lights with blank arches beneath and quatrefoils over, with single pointed lights to the gables and a low relief cross above.

The north side of the tower has a door in 13th century style with triple shafts to the reveals, a moulded head and flanking single narrow blank arches. The outer reveals are wall shafts springing from corbels bearing grotesque beasts on their undersides. Above the door is a trefoil-headed niche containing a carving of the Good Shepherd with side shafts supporting a canopy bearing the Sacred Monogram with a floriated top, and an open-face clock above. The east side of the tower mirrors the west elevation but also includes a faceted projecting stair turret. The north side of the nave has 2 paired windows with quatrefoils, hood moulds and label stops. The chancel contains a priests' door with single nook shafts, moulded head and hood mould, with a half-length carving of St Hilary as a Bishop holding a bible in the tympanum and a Greek inscription. Single trefoil-headed lights appear on either side above. The east window is 3-light with trilobed heads, a central sexfoil with cusped margins within a circular frame, flanked by single trefoils, with a single trefoil-beaded light in the gable above. The south side matches the north except for an additional 2-light window and an organ projection. A foundation stone dated 1874 is set in the plinth.

Interior

The tower contains a vestibule with a panelled ceiling, housing the stair door and a pointed-headed inner doorway with moulded head and pierced geometric decoration featuring stained glass panels in the tympanum. The chancel is divided from the nave by a low stone cancellum screen with fine wrought iron gates featuring scrolls and leafed terminals at its centre. The nave roof is of open arch braced type; as it enters the chancel it is boarded in with painted panels bearing the Sacred Monogram in Latin and Greek. The moulded wall plate is interrupted by carved human head corbels at the feet of the principals.

Fittings

The vestry screen, organ screen, pulpit, choir stalls and readers desk all feature intersecting arcades, foliage and angels in 13th century style. The reredos and altar are fashioned in painted and gilded wood with ogee arches, as is the painted organ. An octagonal font displays quatrefoils and triangles in its upper panels, with a wooden lid bearing elaborate wrought iron mountings.

Monuments and Memorials

On the south wall of the nave is a wall tablet with cross and sabre commemorating F. Hutton (died 1864). At the west end is a cast bronze portrait plaque to Michael Hutton (killed 1941), and a square brass plaque recording the consecration of the church in 1875 to the memory of Reverend Henry Hutton.