Church Of St Martin (Church Of England)

Church of St Martin (Church of England)

Parish church built in 1900 by Thomas Carter, as recorded by the inscription "Anno Dom: mdcccxcix" carved into the south-east buttress. The building is constructed of roughcast on brick with limestone ashlar dressings and a steep green slate roof that sweeps down in a wide bellcast to the eaves of the nave.

This is an unusual small church designed in the Voysey tradition. It consists of a tall five-bay nave and a narrower square-ended short chancel, both contained under a single roof. The arch-braced timber nave roof is carried on separate rectangular piers that project both inside and out, linked by segmental stone chamfered arches at the eaves level and outside the diaphragm walls along the line of the pier centres. Each of the five bays has a three-light mullioned oak window with a segmental arch, metal opening light, and rectangular leaded glazing.

The chancel has a deep chamfered stone plinth and stone buttresses at its corners. On the south side, a tall two-light window with Decorated tracery lights the chancel, next to which stands a battened door in a pointed arched stone doorway. The east end features a moulded gable parapet with an apex cross and a moulded string below. A high three-light pointed east window with cinquefoil tracery to each light dominates this elevation. A central gabled buttress stops below the sill and divides two square-headed narrow single-light windows with trefoil tracery, which light the narrow space behind the reredos and lead to the south door.

The west end is more dramatic, with an entrance leading into a canted central projection carried up to the apex of the nave. Lead-covered moulded offsets support a tapered stone bellcote in smooth jointed ashlar, V-shaped to north and south and pierced by a segmental headed opening containing a bell. The lower part of the projection is constructed in ashlar with a pointed doorway, battened door, and a two-light square mullioned stone window on each canted side. Just above eaves level, the gable features a deep ashlar band with similar stone two-light windows flanking the central projection and lighting the west gallery.

The north side is similar to the south but lacks a window to the chancel. A chimney is combined with one buttress, and decorative small tiled gables appear on each side.

Interior

The interior features an octagonal lobby below the west gallery, which occupies the west bay of the nave. The stair is positioned to the north of the lobby. Panelled double doors in the centre of a panelled screen, divided by ovolo-moulded posts below a moulded cross-beam, support a simple panelled gallery front, all painted white. The five bays have an open timber roof with two purlins to each slope, exposed rafters, and arched-braced chamfered trusses with high collars and wall-posts dying into piers. A deep painted moulded cornice runs at wallplate level with a cove below between the piers. The interior walls are simple and plastered. A pine woodblock floor laid in herringbone pattern covers the nave. Light fittings of copper with hoop spreaders for three pendant bulbs with small shades are hung from each truss.

A stone font at the north-west corner has a plain octagonal bowl on a fat stem faced with short keel-moulded shafts with moulded caps and bases in thirteenth-century style, with an octagonal step extended to the west. An oak cover with an iron handle was given by Mr and Mrs Cazenove. A semi-octagonal panelled oak pulpit at the north-east, with buttress pilasters and ogee-headed panels raised on a chamfered stone base, was given by Francis Newton of Hitchin. A carved oak eagle lectern stands at the south-east corner. In the south-east corner lies a thirteenth-century tapered stone coffin lid carved in relief with a slender cross and foliated crosshead, featuring a hollow chamfer over a plain chamfer (the bottom is missing). It was found on the site of Lutyens' extensions to Temple Dinsley around 1909.

The chancel is one step up, accessed through a wide two-centred stone arch with chamfered jambs and an extra deep chamfered order to the head on single hemispherical corbels with moulded circular abacus. The walls are plastered, and the floor is of black and white marble. A boarded pointed wagon roof is divided into three short bays by moulded wooden arches springing from moulded corbels below the level of a deep painted cornice at the wall-top. Each bay of the roof has a central moulded rib. A narrow vestry space at the east end is divided off by a plain stone reredos with moulded and embattled cresting, with a chamfered door to the chancel at the north end featuring a depressed ogee-moulded head and two vertical wooden panels.

The three-light east window is set high in a recess with splayed jambs and a pointed segmental rear arch. Large statues on pedestals in moulded cinquefoil ogee-headed niches flank the window: St George on the north and St Martin on the south, both standing figures in Renaissance armour. In the south angle of the reredos, a faceted angle-shaft with moulded base and cap carries a cusped piscina with trefoil drain, with a chamfered cusped stone shelf above and an ovolo-moulded ogee-headed stone canopy across the corner.

The stained glass east window is a Jesse tree dating to 1900 by Christopher Whall. A later stained glass window appears on the south wall. A stone wall monument on the north wall features a marble relief of the Adoration in an embattled stone frame, in memory of Leslie Grace Seebohm.