Church Of St Faith

Church of St Faith

This is a parish church of 13th-century origin with additions extending to the 16th century, together with late 19th-century rebuilding and alterations. It is built in old red sandstone with slate roofs.

The church comprises a west tower, continuous nave and chancel (externally undivided), a south porch, a north organ chamber, and a projection for stairs to the rood loft.

The tower is a two-storey structure of 16th-century date, castellated with weathered angle-buttresses at its junction with the nave, a string-course beneath the battlements, and paired semi-circular headed openings containing louvres to the belfry. It has a central weathercock to its roof and an early 20th-century clock face on its east side.

The nave comprises two bays and the chancel two bays. Windows are of two main types, both apparently of 15th-century date. One type features paired cinque-foil lights with spandrels in moulded chamfered reveals; the other has paired ogee-headed lights. Cinque-foil windows appear on the south side of the nave (either side of the late 19th-century south porch) and on the north wall of the chancel. An ogee-headed window appears to the west of a 15th-century four-centred arch priests' doorway with two concave and two convex continuous mouldings. The west window on the north side of the nave is also of ogee type; the east window is cinque-foiled. The east window of the chancel, probably of 15th-century date but apparently re-set during the late 19th-century rebuilding of the east wall, has beneath its transom three trefoiled lights above each of which are two smaller lights. The projection for the newel stair to the rood loft contains one upright rectangular light. The entrance to the church is through a 15th-century doorway with a four-centred arch, a larger version of the priests' doorway. A slightly pointed doorway from the nave into the tower, of late 12th to early 13th-century date, has very understated keel on the roll-moulding above it and a deeply splayed lancet, indicating that the tower is an addition.

The interior of the nave is unarcaded and has a wagon roof, possibly of 15th-century date, formerly ceiled. It comprises 15 arch-braced collar trusses and sets of rafters with crenellated wall-plates retaining signs of painted crossed dumb-bells or four-leafed shamrock motif near the site of the former rood loft. The chancel roof is probably trussed like the nave but now presents a late 19th-century boarded ceiled wagon roof divided into panels; at the junctions of these panels are square floral bosses. The enriched wall-plate continues from the nave into the chancel, where there are six angels on each side, the eastern ones facing diagonally inwards. Some of these angels appear to be late-medieval; others are of late 19th-century date. A large beam links the north and south wall-plates and marks the liturgical division between nave and chancel. On the north side are two openings to rood loft stairs and rood loft fitted with early 20th-century ledged doors.

The font, probably of 13th-century date, is cylindrical on columnar shafts with a circular plan base and is undecorated. A piscina, probably of late 12th-century date, is formed in a fluted corbelled bracket beneath a chamfered pointed arched recess.

Furnishings include one pair of choir stalls, probably of 15th-century date, with desks having seven panels of blind ogee-headed tracery with poppy-heads at the ends and seats with moulded bench ends with crockets. A late medieval altar-frontal in a frame on the north wall of the nave has a design containing bears, birds, and stags. An oak eagle lectern is dated 1914. Four early 20th-century decorative paraffin roof lamps are positioned in the nave.

Monuments and memorials include a late 16th-century tomb on the north side of the choir of Blanche Parry, maid-of-honour to Elizabeth I, consisting of the deceased kneeling before a diminutive Queen under a coffered arch above a chest tomb with strapwork decoration, all framed by Corinthian columns on pedestals supporting a cornice. On the south side is a wall monument to Elizabeth Morgan, died 1812, aged 21, with winged putti above and fluted obelisks framing an oval inscription plaque. East of the south door of the nave is a wall monument to Alexander Stantar and his wife Rachel, died 1620 and 1663, consisting of a bas-relief of them facing each other with Alexander holding a skull, set in a plaque with three Tuscan columns. The Morgan monument is probably by the same hand as that in the churchyard.

An 1883 organ occupies a contemporary chamber extension on the north side.

All main windows in the side walls of the church are of the two types identified above and appear to be original. The cinque-foil windows are in grey stone; the ogival ones are in red sandstone. The interior lintols of the cinque-foil type are of oak, cambered with broach chamfer stops, whereas those of the ogee type are plain with plain chamfers.