Church Of St Bartholomew

The Church of St. Bartholomew is a parish church largely dating to the 13th century, with additions and alterations made in the 15th century, and a restoration in 1909-10. It stands on the site of an earlier 12th-century church. The church is constructed of rubble and stone, with a 15th-century west tower of Barnack stone. The tower has five stages, a splayed plinth, clasping buttresses, and a parapet with cut-down pinnacles at the corners. The west doorway is a two-centred arch with two moulded orders, and the west window has three cinquefoil lights with vertical tracery in a two-centred head. The bell stage features two cinquefoil openings in a two-centred head. A sundial is incised into the south-west buttress. The nave has a plain tiled roof and a 15th-century clerestory with three windows, each of two cinquefoil lights in a square head. The south aisle, also 13th-century, has three windows with three lights, decorated tracery, shallow pointed arches, and moulded labels with return stops. A 15th-century, altered south porch has a round-headed outer arch and an inner four-centred arch with wave and hollow moulded orders. A reset stone with Lombardic lettering, probably from the 14th century, is set in one wall of the porch. The chancel, late 13th-century, has a 14th-century window of two trefoil lights in a square head and a restored 15th-century window. The east end was partly rebuilt in the 19th century, featuring a four-centred arch to a three-light window with intersecting tracery. A 13th-century window of two trefoil lights and a 13th-century doorway with a single chamfered order are found in the north wall. Inside, remnants of ribbed vaulting remain in the ground stage of the tower, springing from finely carved beast and grotesque corbels. The tower arch is two-centred, with two wave moulded orders and attached shafts with moulded capitals and bases. The nave arcade has four bays; the west bay of the north arcade was blocked when the tower was built. The north arcade columns have bell capitals, and the south arcade capitals are round, except for one with carving. The 15th-century chancel arch is two-centred with two chamfered orders, with the inner order carried on half-octagonal shafts with octagonal capitals and bases. The chancel has a 17th-century roof with Queen strut trusses. A 14th-century piscina in the south wall has a trefoil head within a two-centred arch with a projecting drain. A 13th-century octagonal font with a roll-moulded lower edge, a circular stem, and eight detached subsidiary shafts (some restored) is also present.