Church Of St Leonard

Church of St Leonard

Parish church, built around 1300, with a vestry added in 1829–30 and a porch added in 1860 by Street. The chancel was restored in 1851 by Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin. The building is constructed of ashlar with a slate roof to the chancel, featuring crested ridge tiles and coped verges.

The church comprises a west tower with diagonal buttresses, a four-bay nave with aisles and south porch, a three-bay chancel with angle buttresses, and an octagonal north vestry with buttresses at each angle.

The west tower has two stages with a crenellated parapet. The buttresses die away below the belfry stage, which is a later addition, probably of the mid-19th century. The west window is a 2-light opening with a hood mould terminating in heads, restored; above it sits a small square-headed window containing two trefoil-arched lights with super mullions. The belfry openings are pointed 2-light windows with hood moulds terminating in heads. The nave has Late 15th- or 16th-century clerestory windows of three trefoil-headed lights under a 4-centred arch. The aisles contain square-headed windows of two ogee-trefoil arch lights and a moulded parapet. The gabled south porch has a pointed arch to the south door and an arch-braced roof. The chancel has pointed windows with Y-tracery, with bay divisions marked by buttresses. The east window is a pointed 5-light window with intersecting tracery. On the south side is a recess containing a recumbent effigy of a priest, dating from the early 13th century. The vestry has a Tudor arch door to the west, a 3-light window to the north, and a 2-light window to the east; both windows consist of trefoil-arched lights under a square head.

Interior: The nave arcade consists of double-chamfered pointed arches on cylindrical columns with moulded capitals and hoodmoulds terminating in heads. A wide pointed chancel arch with continuous roll moulding and broad fillet opens into the chancel. A pointed tower arch with similar moulding, restored, opens into the tower. The nave roof dates from around 1853 and is a copy of the original of around 1500; it is nearly flat with moulded tie beams, principal rafters and ridge piece, and chamfered common rafters. The chancel roof is a 19th-century scissor-braced structure. Sedilia with trefoil-headed niches and a continuous hood mould are present in the chancel, along with a double piscina with a trefoil ogee arch and quatrefoil tracery above two scalloped basins.

Fittings include a 12th-century pillar piscina with a scalloped bowl, a 14th-century octagonal font with roll-moulded bands, and 15th-century bench ends with carved tracery and poppyheads. A 15th-century rood screen, restored by Bodley in 1881, has four lights on each side of a central opening, with a frieze and cresting. A 19th-century octagonal pulpit attributed to Pugin has panelled sides, and a mid-19th-century brass altar rail is present.

Monuments in the chancel include: a chest tomb for Sir Lewis Bagot (died 1534) with incised effigies of Sir Lewis and his two wives on top; a chest tomb for Thomas Bagot (died 1541) and his wife with two incised figures on top; a chest tomb for Sir Richard Bagot (died 1596) and his wife with two recumbent effigies, Sir Richard in plate armour with a helmet topped by a goats-head crest hung above the tomb; an incised floor slab for Francis Aston (died 1593) and his wife; a cartouche for Hervey Bagot (died 1755); and three late 17th- or early 18th-century aedilular wall plaques, one with Ionic columns surmounted by an urn spouting flame and looped-up curtains to the sides, the others with Corinthian columns, foliated brackets, and open-top pediments containing coats of arms. In the vestry are two wall plaques: one for Sir Edward Bagot (died 1673) with a semi-circular head surmounted by a coat of arms and flanking cherubs, and a double plaque for Sir Walter Bagot and Dame Jane Bagot (died 1695) with two semi-circular headed panels, outer foliated pilasters, and a gadrooned cornice.