Church Of St Peter Church Of England

The Church of St Peter is a Church of England church, originally built around 1615 as a chapel of ease for the vicar, Dr Alexander Strange. The date is recorded on an inscription stone on the east gable ("Domus Orationis 1615"). It was restored in 1899-1900 by W.A. Pite, who renewed the windows, restored a west gallery, and added a north porch and a vestry/heating chamber in the southwest angle.

The church is constructed of red brick in English bond and has steep tiled roofs. Its unusual design is a Jacobean town preaching house in the shape of a Greek cross, oriented so the chancel and semi-circular apse are at the south end, and the entrance is under a clock and bell at the north end. It incorporates a "Gothic Survival" style, featuring tall moulded brick windows with blunt pointed heads, set within similar moulded arched recesses. The west gable has two small pointed lights, and the gables have moulded copings, finialled corbelled kneelers, and squared apex finials. There's an offset plinth, step-corbelled eaves, and broad pilaster buttresses to the apse, alternating with pointed windows (heightened and refaced in 1900). A bellcote sits on the north gable, and a porch was added later.

Inside, the church has a flattened barrel-vaulted roof running east-west, with smaller vaulted roofs abutting it to the north and south. The timber ceiling is renewed, but the original heavy cambered, hollow-chamfered tie-beams remain, along with hollow-chamfered braces rising from wallposts on corbels, two to each arm of the church. There's a pointed arch of two chamfered orders leading to the apse. Billet moulded cresting runs along the wallplate all around the church. A heavy ovolo-moulded beam is positioned at the front of the gallery across the west arm, supported by four wooden Ionic columns with tall pedestals; one pedestal has strapwork carving and another houses a bench end. A pentagonal font with a moulded base, panelled stem, and bowl features arabesque ornament and bosses. A framed engraved brass plate depicts the interior of the chapel in 1622 during a service, and it’s inscribed to Alexander Strange who “fecit hanc Capellam.” A large iron clock movement is housed in a wooden frame in the east arm.