Church Of St Thomas

SJ 84 SW WHITMORE C.P. BUTTERTON

6/173 Church of St Thomas

II*

Parish church. 1844, by Thomas Hopper. Sandstone ashlar on chamfered plinth with fishscale tile roofs; Lombard frieze throughout. Romanesque style; cruciform in plan with squat spire to tower; south-east vestry. Buttressed nave in 2 bays, round-headed windows with nook shafts, west door in similar style. Tower: rising one stage above nave; narrow round-headed windows to belfry, 2 to each face; moulded parapet; octagonal stair turret lit by 2 narrow round-headed openings at north- west corner; squat octagonal spire with one tier of 4 gabled lucarnes. Transepts: both in one bay; windows in gable ends both of 2 round- headed lights, also with nook shafts, that on south with doorway beneath. Short chancel of only one bay; East window a triplet of round-headed lights. Flat-roofed vestry on south side with entrance through round- headed doorway on east. Interior: rather plain but largely unaltered. Plastered panelled roofs and rib vault with foliated boss to tower; fittings and furnishings of 1844 including Romanesque-style wooden pulpit, brass altar rails to raised semi-circular sanctuary with carved reredos (angels blowing trumpets over a foot long), benches to nave and box pews to transepts; at the north-west corner of nave a screened- off baptistery, raised encaustic tiled floor (separated from nave by a low brass rail) with a small trefoil-shaped Byzantine-style font on a triplet of red marble columns. Stained glass of late C19/early C20. Monuments: memorials on east wall of south transept to Mary Milbourne Swinnerton (died 1854 and co-founder of the church) with a kneeling female figure; also to her son, Sir William Milbourne Milbourne Swinnerton Pilkington (died 1855) with a draped urn; both by G. Lewis and Co. of Cheltenham. The church was built at the expense of Sir William Pilkington of nearby Butterton Hall (now demolished) and stands alone in a field. B.O.E., Pp.91-2; Howard Colvin, A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects, 1600-1840 (1978), p.434.

Listing NGR: SJ8318942242