Church of St Vigor

Church of St. Vigor

A parish church of mixed date, with a 13th-century chancel and west tower, 14th-century nave and north and south aisles, and a 15th-century south transept. The building was substantially restored in 1869 by Sir Arthur Blomfield.

The church is constructed of clunch, limestone ashlar, flint and pebble stones with tiled roofs. The plan comprises a west tower, nave, north and south aisles, north and south transepts, south porch and chancel.

The west tower is of four stages with an embattled parapet and small splayed plinth, with two-stage set-back buttressing. Most of the tower openings are 1869 restorations, but 13th-century work survives in the west doorway, which has two chamfered orders in a two-centred arch with moulded label. The lancet windows in the upper stages have roll-moulded labels with fillets. The bell stage has two openings divided by an octagonal mullion with moulded capital and base in a two-centred arch. A newel staircase in the south east angle is now partly removed where the clerestorey was built.

The south porch dates from the 14th to 15th centuries but was restored by Blomfield with a 13th-century style outer archway. It is of two storeys.

The nave has a restored 15th-century clerestorey of three windows, each with two trefoil lights in a square head, and features 14th-century style fenestration to the south aisle. The south transept, dating from the 15th century, is embattled with beast gargoyles and crocketed pinnacles to the corners, and has restored vertical tracery to its windows.

The chancel is 13th-century in origin, with opposing lancet windows to the north and south walls and a restored east window of five graduated lancets. The north transept was added in 1869; the north aisle retains two windows of two cinquefoil lights in two-centred arches, 14th-century work in clunch.

The interior features a nave arcade of five bays. The north arcade has two-centred arches of two chamfered orders on octagonal columns with broach stops to the chamfers. The south arcade is possibly slightly later, with similar arches on columns of four shafts with hollows in the angles, and moulded capitals and bases that are good examples of 14th-century work.

A 14th-century oak pulpit with a repaired base features inserted 15th-century panels depicting St. John the Divine and St. Elizabeth of Hungary on two sides. It is octagonal with the remaining sides open, decorated with trefoil cusping to ogee arches in square heads, the spandrels filled with varied carving of birds and flowers.

A cadaver tomb in the north wall of the chancel commemorates John Careway, rector of Fulbourn, 1443. It has a shallow ogee arch with subcusping and a label terminating in mask stops. The tomb is of oak with six open panels or bays and a stone cadaver.

The chancel floor contains a large brass monument to William of Fulbourn, rector 1377–86, and a smaller one to Geoffrey Bysschop, vicar of All Saints, Fulbourn, another church once in the same churchyard but demolished in the 18th century. Additional brasses are located in the wall between the south transept and the nave. A large monument, probably of clunch and dating to the late 16th or early 17th century, has been reset in the south transept, where it obscures the piscina. The south transept also contains a blank marble wall monument to Tyrell Dalton, dated 1682.