Church Of St Andrew

Church of St Andrew

A parish church at Bedingham, with a 12th-century tower base and a remainder dating mainly to the late 13th and early 14th centuries, together with 15th-century additions and fenestration. The building is constructed of flint with limestone dressings and has shallow-pitched slate roofs.

The church comprises a round west tower, nave, north and south aisles, a south porch, chancel, and a south transeptal chapel.

The west tower has a 12th-century base. Its 15th-century features include a 2-light west window with a four-centred arched head and drip, and a small rectangular light with iron bars above. An octagonal bell stage, also 15th century, features flushwork decoration. The 2-light louvred bell openings have tracery infilled at the cardinal points, with the pattern repeated in traceried flushwork panels on the remaining four faces. A castellated parapet surmounts a coved string course decorated with heads and flowers.

The nave has a clerestorey of six bays with 2-light 15th-century windows set beneath brick arches. The south porch, also 15th century, has engaged shafts and a roll-moulded arch, much repaired, with a gable parapet on moulded corbels and a head corbel at the apex.

The south aisle contains a single-light west window with a hood mould on headstops, and two 15th-century 2-light south windows with shallow arches and stilted hood moulds. Staged buttresses divide the bays. The gable of the south chapel carries a 3-light reticulated window, with buttresses to the gable; the south-east buttress is set diagonally. The east wall of the chapel has a 3-light window with intersecting tracery.

The chancel has a 15th-century clerestorey with 3-light windows arranged in four bays; the two western windows have raised cills, and the westernmost is now obscured by the later pitched roof over the chapel. A stepped cill band runs beneath. A fine priest's door in the south wall is late 12th century, featuring a pointed arch with shafts and colonnettes bearing decorated capitals and roll, keel and dogtooth arch mouldings. A 2-light south window has a trefoil head. The east gable has corner pilasters and a 4-light east window with intersecting tracery.

The upper part of the north chancel wall is rendered. Two 15th-century 2-light clerestorey windows light this wall. The east window of the north aisle has three lights with Y-tracery beneath a segmental head. The north aisle contains three 2-light windows with staged buttresses dividing the bays. A late 12th-century north doorway has two orders of shafts with stiff-leaf decoration to the outer capitals and an arch moulded with roll and keel ornament. A 2-light Y-tracery window lights the west of the aisle. The north nave clerestorey matches that of the south.

The interior contains 14th-century north and south arcades, each of three bays. The south arcade, apparently the earlier, has quatrefoil piers and responds with double hollow-chamfered arches. The north arcade has octagonal piers with double-chamfered arches. A tall, narrow tower arch has a semicircular arched head, now infilled.

A chapel in the eastern bay of the north aisle is reached through an archway with details similar to the south arcade, and contains a piscina recess in its south-east corner. A 15th-century screen has traceried and ogee-headed lights beneath a brattished cornice, with a central opening featuring a dropped ogee arch with small head-pendants and traceried spandrels. Much colour and decoration survives.

The chancel stalls incorporate some old bench ends with re-used rails and panelling. Sedilia with dropped cills feature matched angle piscinae on each side; the eastern piscina has a bowl and drain, and both have cusped arches on Purbeck shafts. A late 17th-century communion rail has twisted balusters and square panelled newels.

Three monuments to the Stone family decorate the north wall of the chancel. The chancel floor contains memorial and coffin slabs inset. The north aisle has floor slabs to the Stone family, while the south aisle has floor slabs to the Stone and Copping families.

The 15th-century font is octagonal, raised on two risers; the upper riser is decorated with quatrefoils. Four lions surround the stem, angel corbels appear below the bowl, and the bowl is decorated with angels, beasts and roses. Several good 15th-century carved bench ends survive. Some re-set medieval glass appears in the church, including two roundels in the east window of the north aisle.

All roofs have been replaced in softwood during the 19th or early 20th centuries.