Church Of St Peter

Church of St Peter, Flyford Flavell

This is a medieval parish church largely rebuilt in 1883 by W.J. Hopkins, the Worcester architect, for William Laslett of Abberton Hall. The 15th-century tower of the original church survives, but only parts of the nave south wall and buttresses, and a blocked north doorway, remain from the medieval structure. The remainder is a 19th-century Gothic-revival rebuilding.

The church is constructed of grey and red sandstone in squared blocks laid in regular courses, with a tile roof. The plan comprises a nave, lower and narrower chancel, west tower, south porch, and north vestry.

The two-stage west tower has diagonal buttresses and an embattled parapet. It features a renewed three-light Perpendicular west window and square-headed two-light belfry openings with labels. The remainder of the church displays 19th-century Gothic-revival styling. The nave has buttresses set well back from the west end and a south-east angle buttress. The south doorway has continuous moulding, with a two-light square-headed window to its right and a cusped pointed window to its left. The timber-framed south porch stands on a dwarf wall and incorporates trefoil arcading on turned posts, with an entrance arch featuring carved spandrels and pierced-quatrefoil barge boards. The north side has similar windows to the south, plus a three-light square-headed central window. A blocked round-headed north doorway is also present. The chancel has angle buttresses and three cusped south windows with sill and impost bands. The east wall displays three stepped windows with quatrefoil tracery lights, linked hoodmoulds, and head stops. The north side has a window matching those on the south, and the integral vestry features a three-light square-headed transomed north window.

Inside, the walls expose red and grey sandstone in a mild polychrome effect. The nave and chancel have keeled, boarded wagon roofs with moulded ribs and foliage bosses. The tall tower arch has a very broad chamfer. The 19th-century chancel arch has moulding dying into the imposts. The east wall has shafted rere-arches incorporating dogtooth friezes. A piscina in the south-east angle sits on a stiff-leaf corbel beneath a trefoil-headed canopy. Late-medieval floor tiles survive beneath the tower, with 19th-century tiles elsewhere. The nave has a floor of red and black tiles with raised wood floors below the pews, while decorative tiles appear in the chancel.

The principal fixtures include a 15th-century octagonal font with roses and fleurs-de-lis on the hollow-chamfered underside, though the stem and base are modern. Benches with moulded ends date to 1883, though two plain Jacobean benches also remain. A polygonal wooden pulpit features blind Gothic panels incorporating 16th-century tracery and a foliage trail cornice of similar date. A chancel screen incorporates older wood, probably from a 16th-century rood screen, with three bays either side of the entrance featuring delicate tracery to the main lights, 16th-century foliage trail, and brattishing. Choir seats have moulded ends with arm rests. A wooden communion rail rests on iron standards with scrollwork brackets. Fragments of medieval glass survive in one south window.