Church Of St Matthew

Church of St Matthew

This is a church of high architectural importance with origins in the 12th century. The building comprises a nave and tower dating from the mid-12th century, a chancel and addition to the nave from the 13th century, and a south aisle that was enlarged around 1340. The tower was heightened and enlarged either in the 15th century or 17th century, with the date 1633 inscribed on its south wall. The nave's north wall was rebuilt, a porch was added, and significant restoration work took place around 1874. An organ chamber was added in 1894.

The church is constructed of Lias stone with some limestone and limestone dressings. The chancel and aisle are built of coursed rubble, the tower of regular coursed stone with ashlar buttresses, and the rebuilt nave north wall of rough ashlar with quoins. All roofs are tiled.

The main architectural features include a remarkable mid-12th century Romanesque north doorway with decorated shafts, the left capital of ribbed bands and the right of two decorated scallops, a chevron arch, and a tympanum with bands of stars, scales and rosettes. The nave contains three 13th-century lancet windows and a fine three-light Decorated window with flowing tracery. The wide chancel has Early English lancets—one to the south and three to the north—with a small rectangular low side window below the westernmost. A string course runs below these windows, carried inside as a hood mould over a two-centred arched door. The east wall has three stopped individual lancets with an irregular relieving arch of thin voussoirs. The south aisle features a Decorated doorway of two orders with hood mould and carved heads, three two-light Decorated windows (the westernmost square-headed with pierced spandrels), and a parapet on a moulded cornice with three fine original carved gargoyles. A projecting octagonal turret rises above the roof with a niche on its south side, featuring a canopied head with trefoiled ogee arch and ribbed soffit. The turret now contains a 19th-century statue brought from elsewhere.

The tower has two stages. The first stage is fitted with clasping buttresses, a Romanesque west window with chevron arch, and two small 12th-century windows high on the north and west sides. The second stage displays two-light Perpendicular bell openings with string courses at the sill and springing of the arches, an embattled parapet, and pinnacles.

Interior details include plastered walls and rere arches to all lancets. The chancel's east lancets have detached shafts with rings. The chancel features a 19th-century panelled wagon roof with carved angels below, a late 19th-century reredos, and encaustic tile paving. Notable are the finest monuments: wall monuments to the Clarke family erected around 1631 (a large tablet with eighteen coats of arms and a small figure), Margaret Clarke (circa 1640, a kneeling figure in a niche), and Lady Dorothea (1669, with a coloured semi-reclining figure, steep pediment and black columns). Three other 17th-century wall monuments appear in the nave and aisle, along with a stone coffin lid of Sir Simon Clarke, who died in 1637.

The interior is spanned by an Early English chancel arch. The nave has a wagon roof and a clerestory of four cusped curvilinear triangles. A four-bay arcade runs down the nave: three bays are of the later 12th century with narrow two-centred arches, heads at the apex, wide stretches of wall between, and responds with multi-scalloped capitals; the easternmost arch is a wider 13th-century example. The aisle has a lean-to roof, panelled with moulded beams on corbels, and fragments of carved woodwork from a pulpit survive. The turret contains a newel staircase with a 14th-century moulded capital at its top and an extra shaft above.

The fittings include west screens in the nave and aisle dating from around 1874, originally open but now fitted with panels of good 19th-century stained glass set behind the openings and also incorporated into a glazed screen in the tower arch. The church contains 19th and 20th-century stained glass in many windows. The south turret may have functioned as a beacon to guide travellers using the ford across the Avon. The north window is regarded as one of the major Decorated windows of Warwickshire.