Church Of St Lawrence

Church of St Lawrence

This is a medieval parish church of Decorated and Perpendicular style, thoroughly restored in 1845 by Thomas Talbot Bury FSA. Much of the present fabric dates from this restoration. The church is built of flint rubble with uncoursed flint facing (coursed on the tower) and stone dressings. The old stonework is in clunch, while 19th-century work is in Bath stone. The church has steep slated roofs with graduated sizes to the chancel.

The building comprises a chancel, a five-bay nave with north and south aisles, a south porch, an embattled west tower with spire, and a northeast lean-to vestry. It is a scholarly example of Gothic church design in local style.

The exterior features moulded parapets to the nave and aisles. The three-stage tower has crocketed corner pinnacles and diagonal corner buttresses. The five-bay aisles are decorated with buttresses between windows. The south porch displays puddingstone as well as flint in its south gable, with a pointed arch of two chamfered orders closed by iron gates. The porch contains lockers as seats. A continuously moulded south door features a pointed arch and a battened door with decorative iron hinges.

The four south-aisle windows have unusual saltire tracery with trefoil cusping. Other windows either re-use earlier materials or follow the previous form. The three-light pointed Decorated west window has renewed mullions. A square hoodmould of Perpendicular style frames an arched doorway with spandrels, renewed. The moulded base course of the tower and of buttresses to the aisles is original, though offsets are in Bath stone. Clunch quoins and a string course to the nave are presumably original. Only clunch buttresses of the porch remain, along with bonding stones to the south aisle. A segmental arched recess in the tower once held a knight's effigy, now in the nave. The initials 'A.B.S.R' appear on gilded bosses of the tower ceiling.

The interior is floored in York stone. The tower arch features two chamfered orders. The five-bay nave has a low-pitched boarded roof with moulded purlins, ridge, wallplates, tie-beams and wallposts rising from stone corbels. A two-order chamfered 14th-century style pointed arcade separates the nave from the aisles, with a chamfered upright panel at the centre of each pier as if constructed from two piers back-to-back. The arcade has octagonal moulded bell-caps and roll-moulded bases. A moulded string course runs below the sills of two-light trefoil clerestory windows. Painted inscriptions appear on labels over the tower and chancel arches.

Pine pews with doors line the central aisle, featuring fine carved poppy heads. A two-light stained-glass window of 1874 commemorates Isobel Cator at the west end of the south aisle. An 1855 wall monument to Henry Stewart Ryder, by R. Brown of London, depicts a soldier leaning on a Gothic sarcophagus surmounted by a cross, executed in white marble with a pointed head and slate border. A chest tomb at the south side of the chancel arch contains the stone effigy of a knight of around 1370, wearing a pointed basinet, plate armour and chain-mail gorge, with hands in prayer and fragments of original painting visible. Wall monuments to the Ryder family of Westbrook Hay are also present.

The chancel is floored in Belgian marble with 17th-century inscribed slabs, some bearing brass plates. These include a slab of 1605 inscribed '-UM BEARAT' and one for Andrew Mayne, died 1621. The east window is a three-light stained-glass design by Charles West Cope, executed by Lavers in 1856, flanked by the Ten Commandments and painted scrolls. A long Gothic arcaded memorial tablet on the north wall of the chancel commemorates Lady Georgiana Ryder, third daughter of the 6th Duke of Beaufort (1800-65) and the Honourable Granville Dudley Ryder (died 1879), a local benefactor whose efforts secured the church's restoration. The chancel roof spans two bays with half-bays at each end, featuring arch bracing and moulded purlins, ridge, wallplates and wallposts on stone corbels.

The north aisle contains three benefaction boards and a stained-glass window commemorating Thomas Talbot Bury, the restoration architect, who died on 23 February 1877. An octagonal panelled font decorated with instruments of the Passion stands in the church. A coloured perspective drawing in the vestry, inscribed 'Bovingdon Church as restored by T. Talbot Bury FSA', documents the restoration scheme.