Church Of St Anne

The Church of St Anne in Wyre Piddle is a parish church of 12th-century origin, restored in 1888-89 by W.J. Hopkins, architect of Worcester, at a cost of £700. The contractor was Stanley of Birmingham.

The church is constructed of local grey lias rubble laid in regular courses with freestone dressings and quoins, beneath a tile roof. It comprises a nave with a lower and narrower chancel and a north porch.

The exterior displays a nave with three 2-light geometrical windows and a single-light window at the west end. The west wall features diagonal buttresses and a re-set 3-light Perpendicular window. On the north side are one 2-light and a single-light window, with corresponding windows on the south side and a smaller 2-light window at the east end. The porch is timber-framed on a dwarf wall with glazed panels. The north nave doorway has a continuous chamfer. Big freestone buttresses at the east end of the nave support the bellcote, which is gabled with 2 bells in pointed openings. The chancel has a 3-light Decorated east window. In the south wall is a 2-light window with geometrical tracery, a straight-headed 3-light Tudor-Gothic window, and a blocked pointed doorway. The north side has a 2-light Tudor-Gothic window.

Internally, the nave has a trussed-rafter roof of 1889. The narrow 12th-century chancel arch rests on plain imposts and is flanked by post-Reformation squints. The chancel has a keeled wagon roof boarded behind thin moulded ribs. Walls are stripped of plaster. The nave has a parquet floor; the chancel has a floor of mainly medieval encaustic tiles, arranged in 1889.

The Norman font was renewed in 1986, with the original bowl featuring arrow-head and chevron friezes now in the sanctuary (similar to the font at Abberton). Its replacement bowl rests on the original round base. The chancel contains a pillar piscina on a round column and next to it a 13th-century shelf that retains part of a stiff-leaf corbel but has otherwise been rebuilt. The polygonal pulpit stands on a stone base with Gothic panels framing mandorlas containing the IHS monogram, Alpha and Omega, and a cross. The west window contains fragments of medieval glass. The 19th-century crucifixion in the east window is by Lavers, Barraud & Westlake. Glass in the porch is by Francis Stephens (1960) and Hardman (1975). A glass cupboard in the north wall houses fragments of carved masonry found during the 1889 restoration. The nave has modern chairs; the chancel has one 19th-century bench with moulded end.

A drawing inside the church, made during the restoration, shows the nave to have been taken down, though the chancel and bellcote remained standing. Chancel windows may replicate earlier windows. Pre-Christian burials are said to have been found during restoration in 1888.