Church Of St Giles (Church Of England)

Church of St Giles is a parish church with a nave dating to the 14th century, an early 15th-century west tower, and a 15th-century chancel. The north aisle and north chapel were added in 1532 for George Canon. The church was substantially restored in 1859 by Baillie & Co, when the chancel and south porch were rebuilt.

The structure is constructed of flint rubble with stone dressings, with remains of external plaster on the tower. The north aisle and north chapel are faced in thin red brick. The roofs are steep old red tiles, and the tower carries a lead spire with a vane.

This is a Perpendicular church comprising a three-bay nave, a two-bay square-ended chancel, an unbuttressed three-stage battlemented west tower, a south porch, and a notable brick north aisle and north chancel chapel. The north chapel is dedicated to St George and dated by a recorded brass to 1532.

The 19th-century chancel has a three-light east window with a cinquefoil in the head, two paired lancet windows on the south side, and an arch-braced open timber roof with wallposts and corbels. The 15th-century tall chancel arch has two moulded orders, the inner carried only on engaged shafts with moulded caps and bases. A large two-centred brick arch opens into the north chapel, formed of two double hollow-chamfered orders with octagonal responds and chamfered capitals. This opening is closed by an elaborate early 17th-century carved and pierced oak panelled screen with an arched double door, arcaded top, and grotesque figures interrupting a dentilled entablature with a swelled frieze.

The nave has a 19th-century open timber roof with a three-and-a-half-bay arch-braced moulded roof containing two purlins, wind-bracing, and moulded king-posts set on collars with axial bracing to the ridgepiece. The moulded wallplate features collar pieces, and arch braces spring from stone corbels. The south wall features a panelled pulpit and pews, with grouped lancet windows including one to light the pulpit at the east, a single window to the east of the porch, and a similar window at the west of a two-centred arched south door.

The three-bay 16th-century north arcade is constructed of brick, probably originally plastered but now colour-washed red and tuck-pointed with narrow black joints. The wide two-centred arches have three chamfered orders, the middle chamfer being hollow, resting on brick piers with semi-octagonal shafts on cardinal faces and hollow-chamfered shafts on the diagonals. Tall 17th-century panelled box pews in the north aisle block the middle and east arches of the arcade.

The tall 15th-century tower arch has two orders, with the inner carried on half-octagonal shafts with moulded caps and bases. The west tower features chamfered string courses to three diminishing stages, a west window of two lights under a quatrefoil in a two-centred head, and a south face with a clockface in the middle stage. Two-light pointed bell openings have trefoil-headed lights, and a gargoyle sits at the parapet base-course.

The 19th-century gabled south porch is faced in knapped flints with an Early English style moulded entrance featuring small raised shafts and single lancet side windows.

The continuous north brick range comprising the aisle and chapel of 1532 has a moulded external plinth with offset and eaves course, diagonal corner buttresses with stone watertables, and a canted brick projection for the full height at the west end. Plastered gable triangles rise above. The range features two two-light 15th-century traceried stone windows, probably reset from the nave, at the west and west end of the north wall. Four brick-traceried three-light windows on the north side have heavy moulded hoodmoulds with lozenge-shaped terminals. A more elaborate three-light brick east window has cinquefoil lights and six small lights in the head under a Tudor arch with hoodmould. An early 17th-century classical stone north doorway with a round head, moulded square surround, and full entablature features plain impost blocks and a keystone that breaks up into the frieze.

The interior of the north aisle has a continuous segmental plaster barrel-vault braced with two iron tie-rods. An elaborately carved early 17th-century arcaded screen with entablature separates the chapel, with a single door offset to the north to accommodate former box pews. The carved panelled sides of these pews now form a dado at the west end of the aisle. Plainer 17th-century panelling forms the original dado along the north wall. Elaborate moulding adorns the north face of the brick arch from the chancel to the chapel and the front face of the screen, which faces into the chapel. Two of the north windows of the aisle contain eight panels of mid-16th-century Flemish stained glass.

Monuments include that of George Canon, who died in 1532, now on the west wall of the north chapel (the upper half is missing). A palimpsest to John Gille, who died in 1546 with his wife and children, stands in the chancel. Margaret Plumbe, who died in 1575, is commemorated by a demi-figure with four shields on a stone panel with moulded surround, also in the chancel. A wooden tablet inscribed with gilt text on a black arabesque border on a grey ground commemorates Margery Disney, who died in 1621, and is situated in the nave. Sir William Goulston, who died in 1687, is commemorated by a large wall monument in the chapel with an inscription on a gilt tasselled drape above a Baroque gadrooned base supported by deathsheads and cherubs. The monument features barley-sugar black shafts with white marble bases and Corinthian cups, two white busts in black niches, a full entablature with an urn of black and white between reclining figures on a swan-neck pediment. An undecipherable fine early 18th-century wall monument to the south of the chapel altar has a black panel framed in fruit-festooned Corinthian pilasters supporting a broken pediment with fresco-painted achievement and heavy swags on the surrounding plastered wall. A wall monument in the north aisle commemorates Brabazon Ellis, who died in 1780, and features a draped urn and achievement on grey marble cenotaph over a grey marble surround to a white marble tablet, with a figure carved in an oval frame on a tooled base.

Fittings include a mid-19th-century communion rail, lectern, pulpit, and seats. The chapel altar frontal features blind 14th-century tracery in wood. A 19th-century screen to the tower arch carefully copies the early 17th-century screens to the north chapel and incorporates some moulded 17th-century panels in the 19th-century pews.

This medieval church is of outstanding interest for its brick north aisle and north chapel of 1532, the 16th-century stained glass, monuments, and 17th-century carved woodwork.