Church Of St Bartholomew

CHURCH OF ST BARTHOLOMEW, GLAZELEY

A parish church built in 1873–75 by Arthur William Blomfield, one of the most prominent church architects of the Gothic Revival. Blomfield (1829–99) was the fourth son of Bishop Charles J Blomfield of London and became diocesan architect to Winchester, which brought him numerous church commissions. He was knighted in 1889 and awarded the RIBA Royal Gold Medal in 1891. The church replaces earlier churches at Glazeley and nearby Deuxhill.

The building is constructed of rock-faced grey sandstone with freestone dressings and quoins, and has tile roofs. It follows a simple Decorated-style design with a nave and slightly narrower chancel under a single roof, a fleche, a south porch, and a north organ chamber with vestry.

The exterior displays buttressed walls. The nave has two 2-light and two single-light windows in the north and south walls, and a 4-light west window. The south porch features a pointed arch to the entrance with continuous moulding, matched by a similar south nave doorway. A square slate fleche rises over the east end of the nave, with timber-framed cusped arches in each face and a weathervane. The chancel has 2-light and single-light south windows, and a 3-light east window with a stepped sill band. The organ chamber has a 2-light north window.

The interior is defined by a 4-bay arched-brace roof on corbelled wall posts in the nave. A full-height wooden screen with 3 tall arches, with higher arcading in the roof space, divides the nave from the chancel. The chancel has a keeled wagon roof of slender ribs, boarded behind. Two unequal arches with a central round pier and broad quadrant moulding lead into the vestry and organ chamber. Walls are plastered and painted white. The nave floor is 19th-century tile with raised wooden floors below the pews; the stepped chancel floor is concealed by carpets.

Blomfield designed the font with its stem of clustered shafts and the polygonal pulpit with arcading. The church retains simple pews with plain ends and moulded tops, and a communion rail with well-spaced turned balusters. The east window displays the Adoration of the Shepherds by C.E. Kempe, dated 1888. The north nave window, a war memorial by Joseph Wilson Forster dated 1925, commemorates James Cooke who died in 1917. It depicts a white-clad youth kneeling before the transfigured Christ in a scene from a verse by Lord Lytton; its mauve hues and evident use of portrait photographs create an affecting expression of post–First World War mourning. A brass to Thomas Wylde (died 1599) with small figures is located in the sanctuary.

A plain Norman tub font from the previous church stands in the churchyard.