Church Of St Andrew

Church of St Andrew

The Church of St Andrew at Alderton is a medieval parish church of the 14th and 15th centuries, substantially rebuilt and restored in the 19th century. The chancel was rebuilt in 1862 and the nave was restored and re-roofed in 1864 by the architect A W Blomfield. The building is constructed of knapped and rubble flint with brick and ashlar dressings, and has slate roofs. It comprises a west tower (now ruinous), a nave, a chancel, a north-western porch, and a south-eastern vestry.

The 15th-century tower forms the most elaborate part of the exterior. Its west front has a projecting plinth with a moulded ashlar offset, and diagonal buttresses that have largely lost their outer faces, though vertical ashlar dressings survive at the inner angles. The central doorway is richly moulded in ashlar, with wave, ogee and roll mouldings and a hollow chamfered hood mould decorated with miniature square flower bosses. Above this is a rectangular ashlar surround enclosing spandrels with shields set within circular cusped panels and daggers at the angles. Higher still are the remains of an arcade of flushwork with trefoil heads, and above that a tall Perpendicular window with chamfered and wave moulded ashlar surround, though the tracery has now entirely disappeared. The south and north faces are largely blank, with 19th-century rebuilding visible on the east face. A late 18th-century print records that the tower originally had three further windows to the northern and southern sides and a battlemented parapet, but the upper stages have now fallen away.

The north face of the nave is dominated by an elaborate porch. The porch has diagonal buttresses at its corners that die back by two offsets, and a deep plinth running around its body. The lower plinth is faced with knapped flint (now partially replaced with rubble flint), which dies back via an offset to the upper level. This upper plinth features square panels of flushwork containing crowned initials, shields, mouchettes within circles, and four circles within a circle. Above this, across the north face and the inner and outer faces of the buttresses, runs an arcaded panel of flushwork; those panels with rounded heads contain crocketed ogee arches, while those with trefoil heads are blank. The porch doorway itself has a richly moulded ashlar surround with colonnettes to the outer edges, jambs, moulded capitals and bases. The arch features casement, keel and wave mouldings. A moulded rectangular surround above encloses spandrels depicting a man with a spear at the left and a crouching dragon at the right. Further above is another arcade of flushwork panels, now much weathered, which originally contained three canopied niches; the lateral ones survive with buttressed shafts and canted ledges, though the centre is now infilled with rubble. The porch has a shallow gable, now rebuilt in rubble flint and brick with an ashlar coping. To the right and left flanks of the porch are central windows with four-centred arches and moulded ashlar surrounds, originally containing tracery but now blocked. The walling around the porch combines knapped flint with small square ashlar stones, while the nave walling at either side consists of knapped flints set between bands of 15th-century bricks and tiles, with some rubble replacements.

To the left of the porch are two 19th-century windows with reticulated tracery and voussoirs of radiating bricks between panels of knapped flint, with buttresses to the centre and extreme left. The south face has three similar windows with reticulated tracery and 19th-century buttresses between and at the extremes; the walling here appears to have been entirely replaced around 1864. A doorway to the left has a richly moulded 19th-century ashlar surround with wave and keel mouldings and similar brick voussoirs.

The chancel comprises the rebuilt structure of 1862. Its north side has buttresses to the left of centre and at the extreme left, with a three-light window to the right featuring reticulated tracery, and a priest's door to the centre with a moulded ashlar surround. The south face has a projecting lean-to vestry at the left with a blank south wall and a two-light window to the right flank with ogee trefoil heads. To the right of the vestry is a two-light window with ogee-headed cusped lights, and a buttress at the extreme right. The east face has buttresses at the far right and left, with a string course at the level of their dying that runs across the wall face and dips to the centre to form the sill of a five-light window of Decorated tracery with cinquefoil heads to the lights and quatrefoils and mouchettes to the apex.

The interior of the porch contains the church doorway, which has wave and keel mouldings. The nave interior features a 19th-century pine roof arranged in nine bays, with every third truss having wall posts supported on corbels. The roof has chamfered tie beams, central king posts and cusped arch braces connecting to collars from which spring king posts with angle braces. The subsidiary trusses are similar except for the absence of wall posts or tie beams. To the south-eastern corner is a piscina with an ashlar surround, now mutilated but originally cusped. Above this, to the left-hand reveal of the south-eastern nave window, is a niche with crocketed gablets to two sides and a miniature vault. A blocked doorway with an ashlar surround is located at the eastern end of the northern wall. The chancel roof is boarded with one truss that has cusped and pierced arch braces springing from stone corbels resting on black marble posts set on square lower corbels. A memorial of 1910 to Charles Goodwyn Archer, rector of the church, records the rebuilding of the chancel and restoration of the nave, together with the dates of the work.

Although the church is now either dilapidated or heavily restored, it retains elements of a significant Perpendicular building. The Builder noted in 1865 that the church had been restored and rebuilt "to such an extent that it may be said to be rebuilt." The porch is similar in form and detail to that at the Church of St Mary at Ufford, though the Ufford example is more complete.