Church Of St Peter

TL 86 SE NOWTON

4/21 Church of St. peter - 14.7.55 II*

Parish church. C12, C13 and C14; much restored and enlarged in 1843. In random flint, extensively repointed, with freestone quoins and dressings. Old plain-tiled roofs: a small pitched dormer on each side of the nave roof, and Victorian ornamental ridge-tiles. Simple Norman south doorway, and a C12 north doorway, with keeled roll-moulding and one order of shafts with volute capitals, incorporated into a north aisle in Victorian Romanesque style. A small plain Norman window has also been reused at the east end of this aisle. Early C13 chancel. 2-light ogee-headed windows to north and south, and a 3- light east window with intersecting tracery and mouchettes. Angle buttresses at the east end. Unbuttressed C14 tower in 3 stages: plain base; freestone quoins, dressings and string-courses; stone facing to the crenellated parapet, which has damaged pinnacles at the corners. A 2-light window with flowing tracery to the lowest stage of the west face, a single cinquefoil-headed window in the second stage, and a 2-light cusped Y-tracery window to each face of the top stage. A canted stair-turret on the south side with a conical roof. Very little original work survives inside: most of the fittings, and the north arcade in Romanesque style, date from the 1843 restoration. Extensively restored screen. A simple trefoil-headed piscina, and a stone reredos with cinquefoil panels, in the chancel. A high canopied niche on each side of the east window. Steeply-pitched roofs to nave and chancel: arch- braced, with mouldings to purlins and braces; 4 bays to nave, 2 bays with lower collars to chancel; shields at the intersections, and curious lozenge- shaped carved bosses added later. A feature of the church are the numerous small roundels of engraved C16/C17 Flemish glass in the nave and chancel windows, about 75 in all, set into brightly-coloured surrounds of C19 stained glass. These were brought 'from monasteries in Brussels' in the early C19 by Orbell Ray Oakes, who lived at Nowton Court. Various memorial tablets on the walls, mainly to the Oakes family; the marble monument to Elizabeth Frances Oakes, d.1811, by John Bacon Jnr. shows a draped female figure kneeling beside a sarcophagus.

Listing NGR: TL8633060467