Church Of St Lawrence

Church of St Lawrence

This is a parish church of 12th-century origins, extended in the late 13th century, with parts rebuilt in the 14th century. It was restored in 1842, 1854, and 1925–26. The building is constructed of coursed rubble with ashlar dressings and a graduated stone tile roof.

The church comprises a 12th-century nave and 13th-century chancel, with 13th-century transepts, a south porch, and a north vestry.

The nave extends three bays along its south wall. The south door features a 19th-century segmental arch and is sheltered by a 14th-century timber-framed porch with open sides, arch braces to the tie-beam at the front, cusped wind-braces, and trusses. Two windows to the east are lancets: the eastern one dates to the 13th century, the other to the 19th century. Between the porch and central window stands a blocked 12th-century window with a semi-circular head. The west wall was rebuilt in the 14th century with diagonal buttresses. A bellcote, added in 1854, features two bell openings over a niche containing a small statue. Below this is a circular trefoiled window. The main window is 14th-century, comprising two ogee trefoiled lights with a trefoil in the head under a two-centred arch, flanked by two small windows with segmental heads. The north wall has a 19th-century vestry at its west end and, to the west of this, two lancets: the eastern one dating to the 13th century, the other to the 19th century. Each transept contains a window of three lights—the outer two lights pointed, the central light triangular-headed—all under a two-centred head.

The 13th-century chancel has a 14th-century window in its south wall of two trefoiled lights with pierced spandrel under a two-centred head, and a 14th-century window in the north wall of two ogee trefoil lights. The east window is 13th-century with three pointed lights under a two-centred head.

Interior features include arches to the transepts of 13th-century date, two-centred with two chamfered orders, the inner order springing from moulded capitals and attached shafts. A 14th-century north door to the nave, leading to the 19th-century vestry, has chamfered jambs and a segmental pointed head. Cinquefoil-headed piscinas occur in the south wall of the south transept and south wall of the chancel. The roof of the south transept is ceiled with exposed ashlar pieces below a brattished cornice. The nave roof features a ribbed barrel vault of timber with foliate bosses and brattished wall-plate. The chancel roof, spanning three bays, is 17th-century (restored in 1842) and comprises pendant king-posts into which the two halves of the tie-beam are morticed. The western truss displays a winged cherub's head at the intersection. All trusses have wall posts rising from grotesque corbels.

The south transept retains early 19th-century box pews incorporating 17th-century panelling, including a carved panel bearing two monsters. A similar carved panel is incorporated in the mid-19th-century pews of the north transept. The hexagonal pulpit comprises 17th-century woodwork in three panels in height, with carved frieze panels and partially enriched framing. The chancel reredos incorporates a late 16th or early 17th-century overmantel with three male figures supporting a moulded cornice and framing two panels bearing early 18th-century carved flowers and cherubs around the initials IHS and alpha and omega. The south window of the chancel contains six figurative panels of Flemish glass dating to the 16th and 17th centuries. An altar tomb in the north transept bears recumbent stone effigies of John Berinton (died 1614) and his wife Joyce.