Church of St Peter

Church of St Peter, Norbury

The Church of St Peter is a parish church of the 14th century with an 18th-century tower, restored between 1826 and 1829 when the vestry was added. Built in local red sandstone with a brick tower and tile roofs, it comprises a nave with a lower and narrower chancel, a west tower, and a north vestry.

The exterior displays Decorated Gothic style throughout, with steep roofs on boarded eaves. The buttressed nave has three 2-light windows in both north and south walls, with the north side remaining unrestored. The south doorway features continuous moulding and graffiti dating from various periods, the earliest inscriptions being from 1600 and 1613, with an old strap-hinged door. The north doorway is simpler but similar in character, with an old boarded door with strap hinge now blocking what was once an open passage. The chancel has diagonal buttresses, a continuous sill band, a 19th-century 5-light east window, and two restored 2-light windows in its north and south walls. A south priest's doorway contains an 18th-century panel door. Two weathered scratch dials are visible in the south wall. The 3-stage brick tower, designed in Georgian Gothic style, features clasping buttresses and a dentil cornice below a plain coped parapet. The lower stage has Gothic-panelled west doors beneath a 2-light second-stage window with Y-tracery, flanked by blind north and south windows. The belfry stage contains similar 2-light openings with louvres, all openings surrounded by bold freestone. The north vestry has a 2-light north window with a dedicatory tablet below the sill.

Inside, the tower's lower stage serves as a porch with stone steps leading to the ringing chamber and the former west gallery. Double panelled Gothic doors open into the nave. The nave retains its cradle roof, probably dating to the 14th century. The chancel arch is restored with polygonal responds and foliage bands for capitals; its soffit retains stencilled rosettes. The chancel features a late-medieval keeled wagon roof with moulded braces carved with feet, set on a moulded wall plate similar to the roof at High Offley; bosses have been removed. The south wall contains four low sedilia with linked hoods and head stops, and shields in the spandrels. Corbelled heads flank the east window. The walls are unplastered, revealing many masons' marks. Nave windows have rere arches with hoodmoulds and head stops. The floors are stone-paved, with parquet flooring beneath the pews.

The church contains several monuments spanning the 14th to 18th centuries. The chancel north wall displays a very fine 14th-century tomb recess with a cinquefoil arch beneath a crocketed gable flanked by pinnacles. The cusps are enriched with faces and foliage, and with crude symbols of the Evangelists in the cusp spandrels. The effigy, repainted probably in the 17th century, represents Ralph de Botiller (died 1342) as a cross-legged knight in chain mail and surcoat, drawing his sword. A damaged 15th-century effigy lies before it, said to be of Sir Edward Botiller. The sanctuary floor contains weathered 14th and 15th-century female effigies. A late 14th-century brass of Lady Hawys Botiller, showing a 4-foot-long figure, is inlaid in the sanctuary floor. The chancel south wall bears a large Baroque monument to Charles Skrymsher (died 1708), featuring fluted pilasters, a broken segmental pediment, and heraldic achievements. The font, dated 1738, has a baluster stem with a round bowl carved from a single piece. The pulpit is late 19th century but incorporates Jacobean panels. Benches and choir stalls, also late 19th century, have square ends with two fielded panels and fielded panels to the seat backs. 17th-century communion rails feature fret-cut balusters. Benefaction boards from 1834 and 1885 hang on the nave west wall.

The church was built in the 14th century, probably by Ralph de Botiller (died 1342), whose monument occupies the chancel. The nave roof may be original to this period, though the chancel roof, similar to that at nearby High Offley, likely dates to the late 15th or 16th century. The medieval church originally had a west tower, which was replaced in brick in 1759, possibly by William Baker (1705–1771), architect of Audlem, although the new tower is said to have been constructed around older stonework at its base and contains 17th-century bells. This attribution does not appear in Colvin's Dictionary of Architects. The restoration of 1826–1829, recorded on a tablet on the north vestry, included the addition of the north vestry and a west gallery at a cost of £700. The gallery was subsequently removed and the present benches were installed later in the 19th century. The east window was installed in 1873 to the design of Miss C.S. Burne.