Church Of St Peter

Church of St Peter

This is a church of 12th-century, 13th-century and late 15th-century origins, heavily restored with a new nave and chancel added by S.S. Teulon in 1868. The building is constructed in Kentish ragstone, flint, indurated conglomerate, erratics and limestone fragments with oolitic limestone dressings and a peg-tiled roof.

The tower at the west end is built in ragstone with angle buttresses and rises in three stages. The lowest stage is blank except for a bell moulding to the plinth. The middle stage contains a 19th-century window with a two-centred arch and two lights, and is dominated by a 19th-century clock set beneath a heavy gabled hood with angels. The top stage features a crenellated parapet and cornice with gargoyle spouts, and a belfry opening with louvres and super-mullioned tracery. A crenellated stair tower rises above the parapet at the junction with the nave.

The nave walling was rebuilt in the 19th century and is distinguished by two prominent stone bands dividing the elevation into three principal registers, with a plinth. The flint and cobble walling includes a considerable amount of indurated conglomerate scattered in a contrived random pattern. The upper register displays a conspicuous pattern of imitation putlog holes framed by limestone slabs and infilled with knapped flint. All windows are 19th-century work, featuring two-centred arches with paired lancets and quatrefoiled circle tracery, their heads stopped with labels.

A 12th-century doorway survives on the west elevation of the nave, partly restored, with column shafts and an arch decorated with zigzag ornament and volute capitals. The tympanum is diapered with a segmental soffit arch of half roll with three transverse roll segments. A 19th-century boarded door with imitation 12th-century 'C' hinges now fills this opening. A 19th-century timber porch of medieval form projects before it, with a central arch, side openings decorated with quatrefoil and trefoil work, and an open gable with king post and curved braces. The porch contains four windows in buttressed bays; the glass includes a 19th-century roundel depicting St Peter's hand holding two keys.

The south aisle and south chapel represent the former 13th-century nave and chancel, with a later 15th-century tower at the west end. The south elevation displays windows in perpendicular style with two lights, super-mullions and head-stopped labels. The chancel, treated as an aisle, contains a single perpendicular window.

The north elevation includes a 15th-century style window with upper tracery of super-mullions, some of which are original and reset. A church hall of 1981 is attached to the north side and accessed through a north doorway; it has three perpendicular-style windows of three lights each, separated by buttresses. The organ chamber has matching walling and a hipped roof.

The east end displays gable ends to both chancel and south aisle, with the organ chamber to the north. The nave gable has a five-light perpendicular window with a cinquefoiled roundel above. The aisle gable contains a three-light window in geometrical style with an oculus and two small round-headed apertures above. The organ chamber has one two-light perpendicular window and one five-light window with hood mould, each light four-centred.

The west elevation shows a partly restored doorway with moulded and shafted jambs and a moulded four-centred arch with traceried spandrel in a square head bearing a moulded label. A 19th-century boarded door with ironwork fills this opening. Above is a four-light perpendicular window with super-mullions.

The interior contains a six-bay 13th-century arcade between the nave and aisle, with restored capitals and bases; most drums are round but two are octagonal. A 19th-century hood mould with naturalistic leaf stops runs above. The roof of the nave and chancel is of softwood with side purlins, deep arched braces, king struts and curved braces on collars, and traceried spandrels. The choir features three tiers of decorated wind-bracing with stone corbels carved as angels playing musical instruments. At the nave-chancel junction, the truss is enriched with pierced cusping. The aisle has a side-purlin roof with curved bracing to each truss creating a waggon roof, with king struts to each collar; the east end is also boarded.

The chancel contains an alabaster reredos depicting the entombment, with alabaster screen walls. Iron chancel rails are by G.G. Scott. The aisle chapel is divided by an oak screen in decorated style.

The tower arch is perpendicular with a two-centred head and moulded responds. The west window contains 19th-century stained glass with two 15th-century panels, probably Flemish, depicting Abraham and Isaac and King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. A door to the tower stair, dating from around 1500, is boarded with moulded battens and nail studding that passes through rear cross-boarding and swages over lozenge-shaped washers.

The font is dated 1662 and is polygonal with acanthus leaves round the pedestal. Re-sited brasses at the rear of the nave include several fragments from the 15th to 17th centuries. A floor slab in the tower, dated 1663, commemorates Henry Wright, Baronet. Further slabs of the 17th and 18th centuries now form a path in the churchyard south of the aisle. A standing wall monument in the aisle chapel, dated 1757, commemorates Hugh Smith with a sarcophagus and grey obelisk bearing a large roundel with two profiles facing one another.

Teulon's curious decorative scheme on the 19th-century church walls, comprising indurated conglomerate and putlog holes, is derived from the original Norman church walls in which courses of conglomerate commonly occur in Essex, such as at Ingatestone, and in which putlog holes were frequently left unfilled, as at Great Canfield. Teulon employed them as major decorative elements.