Parish Church of St Peter and St Paul

Parish Church of St Peter and St Paul

This Grade I parish church dates to the early to mid-13th century, with significant rebuilding campaigns in the mid-14th, 15th and early 16th centuries.

The church is constructed of Barnack stone, pebble-rubble and clunch, with a pantile-clad roof covering the nave and north slope of the chancel, and clay tiles to the south slope. The plan comprises a west tower, a nave flanked by north and south aisles, a south porch, and a large chancel to the east.

The tower rises through five external stages with four-stage angle buttresses. It is pierced by a cinquefoil belfry light with label and headstops. The broached ashlar spire is further pierced by two trefoiled spire lights. The nave features a plain parapet and four two-cinquefoiled lights in four-centred arches in the clerestory. The south aisle has a shallow pitched roof, plain parapet and three large four-cinquefoiled lights in four-centred arches. The south porch is topped by a 16th-century parapet, with a two-centred arch to the doorway featuring a re-used 13th-century label enriched with dogtooth decoration. Reset above the arch is a 13th-century vesica window. The chancel is lit on its north and south sides by three three-cinquefoiled ogee lights with net tracery in two-centred arches, while the east window displays seven-cinquefoiled ogee lights with reticulated and curvilinear tracery.

The interior north and south arcades, rebuilt in the 15th century, feature moulded columns with four attached semi-octagonal shafts. Both aisles embrace the tower, and two mid-13th-century arches cut into the original fabric and into two original two-centred arched windows. The 15th-century east tower arch is decorated with hollow chamfer and wave moulding. The chancel arch was rebuilt in the 15th century on 13th-century responds. The mid-14th-century sedilia comprises three stepped bays with a piscina in the fourth bay, all with ogee cinquefoil heads.

The nave roof, possibly reconstructed, has four bays with cambered tie beams and king-posts, supported by carved stone corbels and carved wooden bosses at the main intersections. The north and south aisle roofs date to the late 15th or early 16th century and feature four bays with moulded timbers, hollow-chamfered rafters and carved and moulded cornices. Carved bosses mark the main intersections, and large carved angels appear under the intermediate principals. The early 16th-century pulpit retains linen-fold panels, reframed in 1860, while the fixed pews were installed in the 19th century. The east window of 1876 is probably by Henry Hughes of Ward & Hughes, and the windows on the north and south sides of the chancel are by Clayton and Bell.

On the north wall of the chancel stands a memorial to Lancelot Brown, Lord of the Manor from 1768 to 1783, who died aged 67, and to his wife and two sons. The monument is constructed of Portland Whitbed stone and consists of a flat tomb-chest on steps with a back plate embellished with Gothic detailing and a crenellated top. The inscription reads:

Ye Sons of Elegance, who truly taste The Simple charms that genuine Art supplies, Come from the sylvan Scenes His Genius grac'd, And offer here your tributary Sigh's. But know that more than Genius slumbers here; Virtues were his which Arts best powers transcend. Come, ye Superior train, who these revere And weep the Christian, Husband, Father, Friend.