Church Of St Lawrence

Church of St Lawrence

Originally a Chapel of Ease to Pitstone Church in Buckinghamshire, this became a Parish Church in 1895. The building dates mainly from the 15th century (with a licence to consecrate altars recorded around 1470), though the chancel and north wall of the nave were substantially rebuilt in brick in 1811, probably by James Wyatt, who was then engaged in rebuilding Ashridge for the Earl of Bridgewater. The church was restored in 1887 and the roof was reconstructed between 1947 and 1957.

The fabric consists of flint rubble (now roughcast) to the older portions, with plum red brick used for the chancel and south side of the nave. Brick buttresses with two offsets define three bays of the nave and a lower, narrower two-bay square-ended chancel. The south side features brick buttresses and embattled parapets. Roofs are low-pitched and concealed.

The church is a small unaisled structure comprising a chancel, nave, west tower, and north porch. A rectangular brick porch on the north side has a painted stone four-centred entrance with cusped spandrels and square label, with stone copings to its battlements. The north door has a hollow-moulded head with chamfered detail and the date 'WW/1811' cut into the right-hand jamb, with a battened 19th-century oak door hung on reused wrought iron foliate hinge plates. The north side of the nave contains two three-light tall stone Perpendicular-style windows to the east of the porch, with traceried pointed heads, hollow-moulded jambs inside and out, and cinquefoil lower lights. Some reused 15th-century tracery is present, and these windows copy two restored original windows in the south wall.

The interior features 19th-century encaustic tiled flooring and wooden painted dadoes of narrow trefoil-headed panels. The nave roof is open timber with wallposts and straight braces to cranked tie-beams, each bearing diagonally striped painted roll-mouldings. A chamfered square oak pulpit on a fat circular base with vigorous high-relief carving was presented by Lady Marion Alford in memory of Reverend G.S. Cautley (1887). A 19th-century low wooden screen stands on the lower chancel step with four painted saints.

Monuments include a discreet upright oval bellied wall tablet to John Maccascree (died 1713) and Ann his wife (died 1714) on the left side of the chancel arch. A fine painted alabaster Jacobean wall monument on the south wall commemorates Edmund Bressy (died 1612) and Lucretia his wife (died 1610), featuring black marble Corinthian columns, two kneeling figures, small figures of children below, and strapwork ornament to the base corbel. The chancel arch is four-centred Gothick with hollow chamfered moulded caps to half-octagonal jamb shafts, similar in style to Wyatt's work at Ashridge. The chancel has a stone floor and plastered four-centred ribbed vault. The windows in the chancel walls have jamb-shafts and hoodmoulds, with stained glass fitted to two-light and three-light Perpendicular-style traceried windows. A brass in the chancel floor depicts a knight in armour with shields of arms in the corners of the slab, commemorating George Cotton (1545). A monument on the south wall to Robert Carke (died 1841), in Gothic style with clustered shafts framing a panel with four-centred head and cresting above, was erected by the Earl and Countess of Bridgewater.

The three-storey west tower has an embattled parapet and diagonal west buttresses based on puddingstones. A cast iron rainwater head dated '1811' is positioned on the east face. The belfry openings contain two trefoil lights with four-centred heads. The ground stage has square-headed 16th-century windows to the north and south with low cills and two trefoil lights (the north window is blocked and retains pins for internal shutters). A 19th-century chamfered pointed west door is inserted below a blocked three-light 15th-century window with label and trefoil lights under a four-centred head. York-stone offsets line the buttresses. A vestry occupies the base of the tower. A 14th-century stone coffin without lid stands outside the west wall of the tower.