Church Of St Peter And St Paul

Church of St Peter and St Paul, Tasley

An Anglican church built in 1840-41 by Josiah Griffiths of Quatford. It is constructed of yellow brick with slate roofs and replaces a medieval church, said to have been timber-framed with a thatched roof. The building was erected largely at the expense of the incumbent, Reverend William Moore.

The church follows a simple plan consisting of a nave with a lower and narrower chancel, and a west bellcote. The exterior displays simple Gothic style with consistent use of coped gables, angle buttresses and stone hood moulds. The four-bay buttressed nave has each bay slightly recessed beneath a plain corbel table, with pointed windows under stone hood moulds. A brick chimney has been added to the north side. The west front contains the entrance, with its central bay brought forward slightly under the bellcote. The pointed doorway has replacement doors, above which sits a pointed window with stone impost band and a small pointed window with iron grille in the gable. The doorway is flanked by tall, very narrow pointed windows in the outer bays. The gabled bellcote contains two bells in pointed openings with a pierced roundel above. The single-bay chancel has pointed north and south windows without hood moulds, and a stepped triple east window under linked hood moulds.

Inside, the walls are plastered with a boarded dado in the nave. The nave floor is laid with red and black tiles in the central aisle. The four-bay nave roof is supported on corbelled brackets and features Gothic enrichment to moulded tie and collar beams, with arches between them and a boarded ceiling behind. The pointed chancel arch is of painted freestone, chamfered on polygonal responds with moulded capitals. The chancel has a simple boarded and canted ceiling. Decorative and encaustic tiles in the floor were probably added later in the 19th century. A freestone cusped piscina is set low in the south wall. A vestibule at the west end of the nave is enclosed by ribbed panelling with pointed double doors to the nave, below a gallery. The gallery front has open arcading above and below vine trails reused from a late-medieval rood screen. The gallery is reached by a closed-string stair in the vestibule.

Several fixtures were salvaged from the old church. The font is Perpendicular with an octagonal bowl bearing sunk quatrefoils on four facets, on a round pedestal and octagonal base; it is lead-lined and retains one of its original staples. The polygonal 17th-century pulpit incorporates tiers of enriched round-arch and fluted panels. A rood screen, fragments of which were incorporated into a new screen and the west gallery, provides particular historical interest. The screen spanning the chancel arch is made up of 16th-century fragments and 19th-century work and was probably erected there later in the 19th century, though it obscures the Decalogue, Creed and Lord's Prayer on the chancel wall. It has a central doorway flanked by four narrower lights with panelled dado, delicate openwork Gothic tracery, a cornice of two tiers of vine trails and 19th-century brattishing. The wooden communion rail has enriched Gothic balusters. In the chancel are pointed metal wall panels of 1841 with painted Ten Commandments, Lord's Prayer and Apostle's Creed. Pews in the nave have plain ends with carved poppy heads. The gallery has low backless benches. A painted Royal Arms of George IV (1820-30) is above the chancel arch. The principal memorial of interest is a neo-classical marble wall tablet to Rowland Hill (died 1780) by Truman of Bewdley on the south wall of the chancel. Simpler marble tablets commemorate Reverend William Moore (died 1848, who built the church) in the east wall of the nave, and a 1914-18 war memorial on the nave north wall. A brass plaque on the nave south wall with red and black lettering commemorates Helen Brooke (died 1897).