Church Of St Leonard

Church of St Leonard

This is a church of Norman origin, with an eleventh-century nave and chancel, a fifteenth-century tower, and later alterations including a vestry with gallery above added in 1812 and a nineteenth-century rebuilt porch.

The nave and chancel are constructed of squared coursed sandstone, with the east wall rebuilt in ashlar and mid to late twentieth-century ashlar patching throughout. The tower is of limestone ashlar. The nave east gable and south porch are of brick. The roof coverings date from the late twentieth century with coped gable parapets and simple moulded kneelers on the nave; the vestry and gallery have a slate lean-to roof.

The plan comprises nave, chancel, north vestry and gallery, south porch, and west tower. The chancel has two bays, and the nave three bays. The chancel features a splayed plinth to the east and diagonal buttresses of two offsets. The east window is a three-light opening with nineteenth-century Perpendicular tracery and leaded lights. A late eleventh-century Romanesque north-east window retains its shafts with cushion capitals and large roll moulding. A narrow twelfth-century north-west lancet survives. The south-east wall has a nineteenth-century straight-headed three-light window with tracery. A blocked eleventh-century window arch remains visible. The south-west wall contains a sixteenth-century two-light chamfered mullioned window. Leaded lights are found throughout.

The south porch has a round-arched doorway with keystone and late twentieth-century part-glazed doors, and a gable with stone coping. Inside the porch, the original eleventh-century Romanesque doorway retains shafts with cushion capitals and large roll moulding. A sixteenth-century four-panelled door features applied ribs. A Diocletian window dating from around 1812 sits above the porch with a brick arch.

The nave's south-east wall displays a large fifteenth-century straight-headed Perpendicular window. A blocked eleventh-century window is also visible on this wall. A two-light south-west casement is present, and a massive north buttress reinforces the northern side. A blocked eleventh-century doorway with shaft and capital featuring tendrils is evident, with a straight-headed window inserted above it and a Diocletian window above that.

The gallery has simple Gothick four-centre arched casements with Y-tracery to the east and west, with a similar but larger casement on the ground floor to the north. A segmental-arched plank door opens to the west.

The tower is Perpendicular in style, rising in two stages. It has a splayed and moulded plinth, full-height diagonal buttresses of four offsets on all sides, and a deeply-recessed west doorway of three moulded orders with an old plank door and remains of a hood mould. Above this is a three-light window with renewed tracery, followed by a clock face. A string course separates the stages. The second stage contains louvred two-light bell openings with transom, the lower part of which is blind. All openings carry hood moulds and head stops. The parapet is moulded and embattled, with gargoyles and panelled pinnacles.

The interior is plastered except for the east wall. The chancel has a wagon roof with a run-out moulded tie beam. The chancel arch, dating from 1929, comprises two chamfered orders. The nave features a plastered barrel roof and two sixteenth-century tie beams with wallposts, the eastern beam displaying a carved boss. The tower arch has two moulded orders, the outer continuous. The gallery has a plain opening to the nave with a panelled breakfront balustrade and a twentieth-century organ case, below which is a fielded six-panelled door.

Fittings include a twelfth-century octagonal font cut back to a square base, a seventeenth-century oak pulpit, two benches incorporating re-used late fifteenth-century panels, seventeenth to early eighteenth-century barley-sugar twist altar rails, and nineteenth-century panelled pews.

Monuments are located within the church. On the chancel east wall is a monument to Edward Donnan dated 1679, executed in white marble with a broken segmental pediment, cartouche, and Composite columns. The chancel south wall bears a small brass of 1712 inscribed to Moses Macham, Minister.