Church Of St Bartholomew

Church of St Bartholomew

This is a parish church built largely in the late 12th and 14th centuries, with substantial restorations and additions carried out in 1866 and 1867. The building is constructed of sandstone, with a nave roof of plain tiles and a slate roof to the tower.

The church comprises a 12th-century west tower, a two-bay nave (part 14th century and part mid-19th century), a large 14th-century south aisle, a two-bay mid-19th-century chancel, a south porch, and a vestry.

The west tower is squat and plain, rising in three stages with a pyramidal roof crowned by a large central weathercock. Small central lancet windows light the second and third stages on each face. The east side features buttresses with offsets. The nave has two mid-19th-century two-light windows to the north, each with trefoiled heads and quatrefoil tracery above. The south aisle contains a large 14th-century east window with three lights, trefoil and ogee heads, set under a moulded hood. The south and west windows are similar but smaller, with two lights. Angle buttresses project from the south-west and south-east corners. A blocked doorway with 14th-century moulding and a two-centred arch remains in the west wall next to the tower. The chancel has a three-light mid-19th-century east window with cinquefoil heads, and a re-set 14th-century two-light ogee and trefoil-headed window in the north wall. The south wall carries one trefoil-headed lancet to the west and an ogee lancet to the east, the latter restored. The south porch contains a late 13th-century coffin lid on its east side, incised with a cross and foliated enrichments. The south doorway features a two-centred, deeply moulded arch with a roughly cut and mutilated stoup in its north jamb.

Inside, the two bays of the nave are separated from the south aisle by a single 14th-century octagonal column supporting two two-centred arches. The chancel arch is off-centre. The tower arch dates to the late 12th or early 13th century and is two-centred with trumpet capitals. The nave roof was formerly ceiled and is supported by a brattished wall plate on the north side and trussed collar beams of probable 14th or 15th-century date, some now restored. A late 19th-century waggon roof covers the south aisle and chancel. The chancel displays two 14th-century re-set corbel heads on the north and south sides of the east wall—a man's head to the north and a woman's to the south. Two circa-1900 hinged wrought-iron candle brackets bearing the initials SB are mounted on the north and south walls, each fitted with five detachable brass sconces. The nave contains a mid-19th-century pulpit of rectangular plan with Romanesque-style capitals and marble columns to the west; its south side features a marble bas-relief of St Bartholomew set in a recess. A dwarf wall south of the chancel arch incorporates stonework supporting a pine lectern. The south aisle holds a probably 13th-century font with a round bowl on a columnar shaft. The soffit of the east window displays 14th-century ox-blood-coloured scrolls, and a similar paint treatment appears on the arch over a recess in the south wall containing a recumbent 14th-century male effigy with its feet resting on a dog. Corbel heads of a bishop and a queen flank the east window on either side of the effigy. A 14th-century piscina with a trefoiled head occupies the south wall; its drain is foiled with two inward-angled sockets from the east jamb. Beneath it rests a 17th-century slab, placed on its side, bearing two decapitated effigies in female dress and male armour. An inscribed alabaster slab attached to the west wall commemorates Richard Monyngton, died 1524, and his wife Alice. Richard is shown in armour with 16 weepers beneath—eight sons and eight daughters.