Church Of St Etheldrada

The Church of St. Etheldrada is a ruined medieval church located in Chesfield. The main fabric of the church dates to the 13th or early 14th century, with a southeast chapel added in the mid-14th century. The church was dismantled in 1750 with permission from the Bishop of Lincoln, and the ruins were consolidated in the 1980s.

The building is constructed of flint rubble with clunch dressings; the chapel walls include many pebbles. Unroofed, the remaining walls are of flint rubble with clunch dressings. External plaster remains on some walls, and traces of painted decoration simulating masonry exist on the north and south walls of the nave. The original church was a large rectangular structure, measuring approximately 50 feet by 18½ feet, consisting of a nave and undivided chancel. An added southeast chapel, of equal height and measuring approximately 21 feet by 13 feet, features diagonal corner buttresses, with its east wall aligning with the east wall of the church. The floor of the chapel is now at ground level, while the nave floor is buried approximately 1½ feet below.

Significant portions of the walls survive to their full height, including the west gables of both the church and chapel, the north and south walls of the nave, the western half of the south wall of the chapel, and the northeast angle of the chancel. Elsewhere, walls stand only to ground level, marked by consolidated walltops. Putlog holes are visible at three levels, each framed by clunch surrounds. There are wide, two-centred doorways on the north and south sides of the nave, featuring a continuous external chamfer, a scroll-moulded dripstone, and internal door checks. A narrow bar-slot is set into the north wall beside the doorway. Remains of both a north and south window jamb and sill are present within the chancel, along with a section of fallen wall. A tall, narrow two-light west window retains continuous splay stones in its head but has lost its central mullion. Fragments of tracery indicate cinquefoil-headed lights and a quatrefoil above the head. A similar, narrower doorway in the middle of the chapel’s west wall has continuous chamfered jambs, a doorcheck, but a pointed segmental rear arch. A single-light, pointed window with a cinquefoil head is set into the remaining half of the chapel’s south wall. A straight joint is visible between the west wall of the chapel and the south wall of the nave. A slate tablet is set into the nave floor with an inscription commemorating Saint Etheldreda, noting her birth as a princess, marriage as a queen, and a choice as an abbess (630–679). The tablet further notes the church’s status for the people of Chesfield Manor and laments its ruin and plunder in 1750. An account records a stone coffin in a hole within the chancel (RCHM, 1911; VCH, 1912). A standing statue of St. Etheldreda on an inscribed plinth, created by Mary Spencer Watson in 1982, stands outside the west door of the chapel. Documentary records refer to a chapel at Chesfield Manor as early as 1216, which may have preceded the church and served the deserted medieval village of Chesfield.