Church Of St Thomas

Church of St Thomas, Simpson

This cruciform parish church comprises a late 13th-century or earlier crossing tower, with the remainder of the building rebuilt around 1330–40. The church stands on stone rubble with stone dressings and some brick repairs, beneath tiled and slated roofs. It has a central tower, chancel, north and south transepts, an unaisled nave, and a south porch.

The exterior features a tall, slender central tower with an embattled parapet (rebuilt in the 19th century) and two-light late 14th-century bell openings. The tower retains visible scars of earlier, steeply pitched roofs on its east and west faces, with small rectangular openings below them, possibly inserted after the roofs were lowered. The chancel displays a large three-light east window with Decorated-style tracery, wholly rebuilt in 1904, and renewed two-light Decorated north and south windows. A large square-headed window on the chancel south side is blocked in brick; the chancel north wall contains a blocked pointed-headed window and blocked door. The scar of a former north vestry roof is visible on the east wall of the north transept, where a 15th-century door to the former vestry survives. The transepts have Decorated windows, with curious small blocked openings that were formerly squints providing external views into the transepts. A large, blocked, probably 15th-century window exists in the south transept west wall. The nave retains renewed 14th-century windows with intersecting tracery and a large 15th-century-style west window, largely renewed. The south porch has a 15th or 16th-century outer arch and a 14th-century south door with continuous mouldings, an ogee hood-mould with head stops, and a foliate finial.

The interior comprises a wide, unaisled nave. In the northeast corner stands an unusual early 20th-century timber stair, rising from the former rood loft door to access the tower ringing chamber. The central tower has pointed arches of two orders on each face; the outer orders are continuously chamfered, while the inner orders stand on half-round attached shafts with moulded capitals and bases, probably dating to the 13th century. The tower is noticeably narrower than the nave, transepts, and chancel. In the nave, the west tower arch is flanked by doors to the transepts, which have shallow relieving arches over pointed heads on shafted jambs. Both transepts are now closed to the tower by timber screens. The north transept has been divided into toilets and service facilities but retains an early 15th-century east door to the former vestry and a small, blocked late 15th or early 16th-century opening that served as an external squint. The south transept contains a similar blocked opening and part of a blocked window jamb in the west wall. The chancel floor has been significantly raised, and only the upper part of the former chancel north door remains visible.

The church contains several principal fixtures. A plain round tub-shaped font with a stepped base dates to the 12th or 13th century; its cover, probably 17th-century, has a turned post and shaped brackets. A 14th-century piscina with a trefoiled head stands in the north transept, with a cinquefoiled piscina in the south transept and a piscina in the chancel, now partially blocked by the raised floor. A square aumbry with a rebate for a door is located in the chancel north wall. Of particular interest are royal arms painted directly onto the plaster over the chancel arch, dated 1742; the outer GR2 (for George II) was changed to ER2 (for Elizabeth II) in 1953 for the Coronation.

The glass includes some 19th and early 20th-century pieces, most notably a figure of St Nicholas in the northeast nave window. The east window dates to 1921 and was made by Powell and Sons.

The chancel contains a group of monuments to the Hanmer family. The most notable are those of Job Hanmer (died 1738), an architectural wall tablet by Bayliss, and Sir Walden Hanmer (died 1789), by John Bacon—a large monument featuring a white marble mourning figure of Justice in a roundel and an achievement of arms against a black obelisk, with a white marble base with fluted columns. Also in the chancel, loose within the former piscina, is a broken round headstone for William Gale (died 1638), an early example of such a monument.

The nave roof dates to the 15th century and features hammer-beam trusses at the east and west ends with three intermediate trusses having arched braces to the collars. The lower edges of the beams are moulded, while the upper parts remain rough and unshaped. Windbraces appear in two tiers. The transept roofs are 17th-century with plain trusses and reused beams. The chancel roof is 19th-century, with short king posts and moulded ribs dividing boarded panels with simple painted decoration.

Simpson is mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086, though the church is not recorded there. The first mention of the church dates to the early 13th century; the earliest surviving fabric comprises the late 13th-century tower arches, though the font is probably considerably earlier. The church was wholly rebuilt around the tower in the second quarter of the 14th century, with further works in the late medieval period, including the nave reroofing, south porch construction, and the former north vestry (now demolished). Additional work occurred in the 17th century, when the transepts were reroofed and the font cover made. The church underwent staged restoration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries: underpinning the tower, restoring the transepts, and rebuilding the chancel roof in 1873; rebuilding the chancel east wall entirely in 1904; and entirely renewing the south transept south window in 1999. Restoration work was also undertaken by J. O. Scott in 1892 and 1904–5. The church was amalgamated with four others, not all Anglican, to form the Woughton Ecumenical parish in 1977.