Church Of St Peter And St Paul

Church of St Peter and St Paul, Stoke Lacey

A parish church of 1863 designed by F.R. Kempson, incorporating fittings from its predecessor.

The building is constructed of rock-faced red-grey sandstone with buff dressings and quoins, although the chancel uses different grey sandstone. The roofs are slate. The plan comprises a nave, lower and narrower chancel, south porch, west tower and spire, and north vestry.

The church is designed in the Early-English style. The heavy three-stage west tower is a prominent feature, with clasping buttresses and a semi-circular north-east turret that becomes polygonal in the second stage. The west window is a single cusped light. The bell stage has paired windows with a central column, superimposed by an arch with solid tympanum. An arcaded frieze runs at eaves level beneath a splay-foot shingled spire. The nave has two-light windows and a corbel table supporting cast-iron rainwater goods. A chimney stack on the east verge has a round shaft. The porch has a simple pointed entrance, mirrored by the south nave doorway. The chancel has a single-light south window and an east window of three stepped lancets.

Internally, the broad tower arch features a continuous chamfer. The chancel arch, reconstructed from the original Norman-style arch of the earlier church, has semi-circular responds, scalloped capitals, and a stepped arch. The nave is roofed with trussed rafters, whilst the chancel has a plastered barrel ceiling on corbelled shafts. The walls are plastered and the floors are nineteenth-century tiles with wood flooring beneath the pews.

The chancel screen incorporates parts of a sixteenth-century screen, retaining delicate openwork tracery and a foliage cornice. The octagonal tapering tub font is medieval. The round stone pulpit displays rich diaper work. The benches are simple, while the choir stalls feature Gothic panels to their ends and fronts. An elaborate cinquefoil piscina is located in the chancel.

Several stained-glass windows of varying dates are present. The east window depicts the life of Christ (post 1886), the nave includes a window showing Christ preaching (post 1887) and the Marriage at Cana by Kempe & Co (post 1929). Late eighteenth and nineteenth-century wall monuments include a sarcophagus to John Lilly (died 1825) in the nave and an oval tablet to Thomas Griffith (died 1800) in the chancel, featuring an awkwardly posed mourning putto leaning on an urn. The tower base contains a benefaction board dated 1837.

The church was designed by Frederick R. Kempson (1837 or 1838 to 1923), whose father had been rector of the parish. Kempson began his practice in London but relocated to Hereford in 1861, where he received numerous commissions throughout the county. For this commission, Kempson reconstructed the chancel arch of the previous church, and several medieval and later fittings—the screen, font, and wall monuments—were reinstated in the new building.