Church Of St Giles

The Church of St. Giles is a parish church dating to the late 12th century, with significant additions from the 14th century. The chancel was removed in the 1860s by Gilbert Scott. The church is notable for its nave arcade and west front. It is constructed of Barnack stone, with rubble and some brick. The west front features a 14th-century doorway with an ogee arch ornamented with running foliage and a foliated terminal. Above the doorway are three 14th-century niches with trefoil heads and ogee arches, divided by small diagonally-set piers with pointed finials. Two buttresses, each in three stages, flank the doorway, with a similar niche on the second stage of each. A large 14th-century west window contains five trefoil lights with complex foiled and intersecting tracery set within a two-centred arch. The nave retains its original late 12th-century clerestory, now blocked, with four windows. Above this is a 15th or 16th-century clerestory of six windows, each containing two cinquefoil lights within a square head. Beast gargoyles are present on the 15th or 16th-century cornice above the clerestory. The roof was raised in the 19th century. The south aisle has three 14th-century windows of three trefoil lights with decorated tracery in four-centred arches, and two later 14th or 15th-century windows of similar style with vertical tracery. A south doorway has a two-centred arch with roll and hollow mouldings. The north aisle, largely 14th century, features five windows with three trefoil lights and decorated tracery in four-centred arches. A late 13th or early 14th-century north porch has a two-centred outer arch composed of one moulded and one chamfered order, with half-octagonal responds featuring moulded capitals and bases. Internally, the north and south arcades, dating from the late 12th century, consists of six bays and round-headed arches of two chamfered orders supported by round columns with scalloped or foliate capitals on hold-water bases. The 14th-century chancel arch is two-centred with hollow and roll mouldings, and its responds have half-round attached columns with foliate capitals and moulded bases, flanked by two smaller attached shafts or columns. A 14th-century piscina is set into the south wall of the south chapel, featuring a trefoil head within an ogee arch. The 15th-century font has a hexagonal bowl and stem on a double-stepped base, the bowl carved with heraldic devices and an inscription. One of the nave arcade columns bears a 14th-century inscription.