Church Of St Bartholomew

Church of St Bartholomew

Parish church dating from the 14th century, restored in 1866. The building is constructed of coursed sandstone rubble with sandstone dressings and tiled roofs. It comprises a west tower, two-bay nave, one-bay chancel, and a timber-framed south porch with stone slate roof.

The tower is embattled with three externally undivided stages. The top stage features two trefoiled ogee lights with quatrefoil tracery under a 2-centred head on each cardinal face. The west wall has a square-headed loop to the second stage and a narrower loop to the ground stage.

The nave has a 2-light trefoiled ogee window with quatrefoil tracery and no label at the west end of the north wall. To its east is a 4-centred 15th-century blocked north doorway with chamfered jambs, followed by another trefoiled 2-light window without ogees under a 2-centred label. The west window of the south side is similar to the north window. Beyond the porch, the east window is a 2-light trefoiled ogee window with inverted ogee tracery under a square head.

The chancel has a traceried trefoiled and ogeed 3-light window with a 2-centred head. A single buttress with offsets separates the north and south walls from the nave. The north window has two lights, each trefoiled and ogeed with a quatrefoil above, under a 2-centred head on a label. The south window is chamfered with a 2-centred head and two recessed trefoiled and ogeed lights under quatrefoil tracery. To the west of this window is a blocked priests' door with chamfered jambs and a 4-centred head. Both nave and chancel have chamfered plinths, and the east verges of the nave and chancel each carry crosses.

The porch is partly restored with a sandstone plinth. It has two bays with jowled corner posts (the front ones having scotches) carrying cambered and chamfered ties supported by arch-braces. Scalloped bargeboards are formed by two subsidiary cusps to each lobe of the main trefoil. Trefoiled wind-braces appear in each bay beneath single purlins. The wall-plates and five-bay side-panels have been restored and are open at the top. The south doorway has a 2-centred head and chamfered jambs running down to pyramidical stops above a chamfered plinth. It retains a restored 17th-century studded ledged door with strap hinges, circular escutcheon plate, and handle.

Interior

The rear arch of the south doorway has a segmental head. The nave has a 14th-century wagon roof with straight braces supporting collars and scissor-struts continuing the line of the braces above the collars. The chancel roof is also 14th-century but lacks scissor-struts and instead has curved braces to collars. The chancel has two re-tooled corbelled brackets on the east wall, positioned at different levels. The east window contains stained glass depicting the Good Shepherd with the inscription "FEED MY LAMBS / IN MEMORY OF: ARCHDEACON: HENRY WETHERELL / BY BEQUEST OF: HIS WIDOW: MDCCCLXV". The south window contains 14th-century stained glass, mainly fragments, though the tracery light of the Crucifixion has a green cross, brown loin cloth, vine-leaf ground, and a margin with red beads. A late 19th or early 20th-century harmonium, labelled "Chancel Organ", stands in the chancel. The chancel arch is 2-centred with continuous double chamfers to east and west.

The nave contains a font with a square to octagonal chamfered base inscribed "BAPTISMUS EST ABLVTIO PECCATORUM". The octagonal stem has moulded necking supporting an octagonal bowl with a curved bottom bearing the inscription "THIS: FONT: WAS: MADE: MARC (sic): THE: 16TH: 1677". A consecration cross is set in a round panel in the soffit of the top of the blocked north doorway. A mutilated stoup stands to the east of the south doorway. A coffin lid with an incised cross is re-used as the lintel of the east window in the south wall of the nave.

A mid-19th-century stove near the south door bears raised lettering: "SMITH & WELLSTOOD LTD / COLUMBIAN / STOVE WORKS / BONNY BRIDGE / SCOTLAND".

The tower contains several wall monuments: one to Richard Davies (died 1797), one to Chrysogen Vaughan (died 1789), one to Hugh Russell (died 1722), and one to Aristarcus Merrick (died 1794) by J Prichd. An early 19th-century Benefactions board is also mounted here. A 17th-century communion table with moulded rails and stretchers and chamfered legs is present.

Two drawings of the church before restoration hang in the nave. The first, near the south door, is inscribed "Thruxton Church Interior / July 26 1865 / copied from a sketch done on the last day of its / existence by the Rev E Jacson" and shows the early 18th-century communion rails to the altar, two wall monuments (one now recognisable in the tower), box pews, a two-decker pulpit, and a stove in the centre of the nave with a chimney pipe crossing the nave and passing through the head of the tracery of the east window of the south side. The second drawing, near the tower doorway, similarly inscribed, shows the west end of the church with the former west gallery and a detailed view of one of its cast-iron supporting pillars.

A brass memorial plaque on the north wall of the nave commemorates Reverend Edward Jacson, Rector of Thruxton and Kingstone from 1858 to 1870, who died at Thruxton on 18 July 1870, aged 43.

This modest medieval church is graded I for its generally unrestored appearance and its surviving medieval roofs to the nave and chancel.