Church Of St Andrew

Church of St Andrew

A medieval parish church substantially remodelled in the 19th century, built in flint with limestone dressings and lead roofs. The church comprises a west tower, nave, chancel, south aisle, south porch, north aisle, and north-east chapel.

The west tower was designed by G.E. Street and built in 1876. It is square in plan with angle-buttresses on the west, north and south sides, flanking the tower base. A tall lancet window lights the west face, with further lancets at bell stage and 3-light bell openings featuring cusped Y-tracery. The tower is finished with a coped parapet on a corbel-table.

The south porch, also by Street and dating to the 19th century, has diagonal gable buttresses and flushwork set in cusped niches. Its south gable is coped and parapeted, decorated with ashlar and flushwork panels. The porch has 2-light windows on its east and west faces. The south doorway is original to the 13th century, set within flushwork and featuring engaged shafts and a pointed arch with keeled roll-moulding.

The main body of the church displays a 4-bay nave clerestorey with 2-light cusped Y-tracery windows. The nave and chancel fenestration is 19th-century Perpendicular work, with bays separated by staged buttresses decorated with flushwork panels. The 5-light east window was designed by William Butterfield in 1851. The north doorway is early 14th century, plain with a hoodmould on headstops, featuring a plain continuous chamfer and wave moulding to the arch.

The interior retains a 15th-century nave roof with arch-braced rafters, with alternate bays carried on wallposts and head corbels; it has been much repaired and renewed. The tower arch features double hollow-chamfering and polygonal responds, with a circular quatrefoil opening above and a 2-light 19th-century plate tracery window above that.

The north and south arcades are 15th-century work, spanning four bays. The piers are composed of four shafts with continuous wave and hollow-chamfer mouldings. The aisle roofs also date to the 15th century, with roll-moulded and arch-braced principals featuring traceried spandrels, supported on wallposts above head corbels. Chapels occupy the eastern bays of both aisles. The south chapel contains 20th-century linenfold dado panelling and a piscina in its south-east corner with a petalled bowl and hollow-chamfered arch.

The chancel contains an angle-piscina in its south-east corner, with traceried and crocketted ogee heads on carved headstops. In the north-east corner is an elaborate 19th-century memorial niche to the 7th Marquis of Lothian (died 1841), comprising an ogee-arched recess that is crocketted, cusped and subcusped, with fleurons around the arch.

The chancel walls display notable monuments. Elizabeth Gurdon (died 1582) is commemorated by a semicircular niche with leaf spandrels and a modillion cornice on Ionic colonnettes, containing a kneeling figure. James Hobart (died 1670) has a monument with Ionic pilasters flanking a tablet with skulls on the base. The chancel floor contains 17th and 18th-century slabs.

The south aisle houses a 16th-century tomb chest to Sir Edward Clere with sixteen shields set in arched recesses, and a wall monument to Margaret Graile (died 1723). The church contains numerous fine 14th and 15th-century brasses, including a large figure of Sir Nicholas Dagworth (died 1401), a bust of James de Holveston (died 1378), and a brass to Roger and Cecily Felthorp dated 1454, showing the couple with their 16 children.

In the nave stands a large chest tomb with a recumbent figure flanked by attendant angels at head and foot. This commemorates William Schomberg Robert, 8th Earl of Lothian (died 1870), and was carved by G.F. Watts in 1878. Adjacent to the south door is a white marble relief by A.G. Walker dedicated to Constance, widow of the 8th Marquess (died 1901).

The church retains a 17th-century hexagonal pulpit on a coved pedestal. The font is 15th-century work, octagonal, with lions in panels around the bowl and angel-corbels below. The stem is encircled by four lions. It is topped with an open ogee cover and pelican finial.