Church Of St Andrew

Church of St Andrew

Parish church dating from the 14th century and later, restored in 1877. The building comprises a nave, chancel, west tower, and south porch, constructed mainly in rubble flint with freestone dressings. The chancel is rendered externally, while the tower incorporates an admixture of knapped flint and red brick. The nave is roofed in slate, the chancel in tiles.

The south porch dates to the high 15th century and features diagonal buttresses and a parapet of black knapped flint. It contains a 2-light window to east and west with cusped tracery, and the remains of a holy water stoup in the south-east angle. The 14th-century south doorway to the nave displays multiple continuous mouldings and a hood-mould.

The nave walls contain three 2-light windows on both north and south sides with Perpendicular tracery. Buttresses with checkerwork bases in moulded stone and black knapped flint are present, and an old wooden sundial is mounted on the south-east buttress. The 14th-century chancel features a narrow pointed priest door with quarter-round mouldings, a 3-light east window with flowing tracery, and a low-side window on the south-west with embattled transome and wooden shutter. A north door is blocked.

The plain tower rises in three stages with stone string-courses and stone-faced diagonal buttresses on the west. It has a flint-faced stepped parapet, a west door with multiple mouldings, and a small single-light window above it. The top stage of each face has a 2-light window with cusping and quatrefoil. These features appear to date from the early 14th century, although wills from 1439 and 1440 refer to the tower as new. A stair turret on the south face rises to the top of the second stage. The top window now contains a large clock, and a carved stone block with a shield is set into the flintwork of the lowest stage.

The nave interior contains a fine set of 15th-century benches with traceried panels against the ends and along the backs with crestings. The bench arms feature poppy-heads and figures of animals, birds, monsters, and one kneeling figure. Jacobean panelling lines the rear part of the walls. A 14th-century octagonal font stands on a low base with traceried panels around the bowl. Half of the Jacobean altar rails, with turned balusters, are resited in front of the benches on the north side. A very late 17th-century panelled pulpit with Jacobean sounding-board is present.

The nave roof spans eight bays, with the three eastern bays longer than the rest. It features moulded purlins and principals with arch-braces to the principals and capitals of alternating height along the walls, but no collars. Medieval stained glass remains in the heads of all nave windows, with old leaded panes of crown glass to the lights. The former medieval studded plank south door has been reversed, refaced in the 19th century, and now serves as the vestry door in the base of the tower. A large wooden parish chest in the south-east corner has iron bands stamped "C.E. Catton, 1873" and older initials "B.P." A cinquefoil-headed niche with piscina for a side altar is set in the south wall, above which the stairs to the rood loft are cut into the south-east window, with the cut-off end of the candle-beam embedded in the wall. A fine screen retains remains of original painted patterns and gesso-work on the buttresses, featuring one-light ogee arches with panel-tracery and a cresting above, with Jacobean doors.

Chancel fittings mostly date from the 1877 restoration, with all stained glass from that period. An angle piscina with trefoil head, sedilia, and a Jacobean altar table are present. The north wall displays a memorial brass with a standing figure to William Goche, sometime rector, who died in 1499. The chancel roof spans four bays with arched-braced trusses without collars, the braces meeting at a central pendant carved with a boss.

The diary of Thomas King, a Thelnetham carpenter, records that "Barningham Church screwed together by Geo Bloomfield June 1834", referring to the tie-irons across the nave.