Church of St Dennis

The Church of St Dennis is a parish church largely dating to the 14th century, with a rebuilt chancel and south porch added in 1877-8 as part of a wider restoration. It is constructed of sandstone rubble with sandstone dressings, and has a tiled roof. The church consists of a nave, a west tower, a chancel, and a north porch.

The west tower has a battered base and three stages, topped with a projecting parapet. It features a single loop window on the west side to the lower two stages, and a single ogee-headed opening on each face of the top stage. The nave’s south wall contains two reset ogeed one-light windows, one to the west and one centrally placed, alongside a two-light ogeed and trefoiled window with a square head to the east. The north wall incorporates a two-light ogeed light to the east of the porch and a single ogeed light to the west of the chancel. The chancel, which has been rebuilt, has a single ogeed window with a square head on its south wall and a two-light trefoiled window under a 2-centred head on the east, set between buttresses with offset details. The timber-framed north porch has a quatrefoiled gable with pyramidal chamfer-stops to the bases of the front posts, angle struts, and an ogee tie-beam. The porch’s internal roof is a scissor truss design; it incorporates three-bay panels on each side with trefoil-headed openings above, supported by cusped angle struts. The north doorway features a 2-centred head with a label.

Inside, the opening between the tower and nave is chamfered and 2-centred. The nave’s roof has 16th-century braced collar beam trusses, mostly intact, though three to the east are restored, and one is cambered and chamfered. The chancel arch is 2-centred and chamfered, with head stops to the label. The chancel has a wagon roof and a late 19th-century trefoiled and ogee-headed piscina with a partly octagonal drain. There is a trefoiled and ogeed niche on the north wall, under a gabled label with a finial at the apex. A font, possibly dating to the 13th century, has a plain cylindrical bowl and stem on a late 19th-century base. A 13th-century tomb slab with circles and fleur-de-lis motifs has been reused as a lintel above the south-west nave window. The tower houses three bells; the two eastern bells appear to be medieval with Lombardic lettering, while the western bell is likely 17th century.