Church Of St Mary Magdalene

Church of St. Mary Magdalene

Parish church of 12th-century origin with major subsequent alterations. The building comprises a chancel, north chapel, nave with aisles, western tower, and north porch. It is constructed of ragstone with a plain tiled roof, timber north porch, and leaded spire.

The western tower is two stages, with the upper section dating to the 13th century and supporting a spire on a 12th-century lower stage. The tower features offset corner buttresses and a south-western angle vice. The tower incorporates a Perpendicular double wave moulded western doorway set within a 12th-century doorway with billet, keel, chevron, and roll and fillet moulded orders on double attached columns with scalloped capitals. Other windows include ogee headed and cusped single and doubled lights.

The south aisle has paired trecusped lights with one leaded wooden casement. The south doorway dates to the 12th century with chevron and roll moulded outer orders on attached columns, the abaci enriched with zig-zag and billet mouldings. A boldly projecting south chapel features offset corner buttresses and a corbelled western chimney, with a blocked 18th-century brick west doorway and cusped Y-tracery fenestration. The east end contains two three-light cusped Y-tracery windows with mouchettes, that to the chancel having larger, less cusped tracery pattern. Cusped lancets light the chancel, while Y-tracery fenestration lights the north aisle, with corner buttresses repaired in brick.

The north porch stands on a flint base with rendered and applied timber upper walls and a damaged cusped and moulded bargeboard with pendant. The interior porch is unrestored, featuring a small crown-post roof on a cambered and moulded tie beam with moulded wall plate. A fine 14th-century door has moulded and lapped timbers in a hollow-and ovolo-moulded doorway with hoodmould.

The interior contains a wide nave with a mutilated tower arch on octagonal responds, with double chamfered and roll moulded arch. The stonework of the arcades is badly scaled by fire, with some pieces secured by iron straps. 14th-century three-bay arcades feature octagonal piers and moulded capitals to double chamfered arches. The south pier to the 14th-century damaged chancel arch is a 15th-century replacement. The roof comprises four crown posts with lean-to aisles and a simple arch from the south aisle to the south chapel. The chancel has a 19th-century tie beam and rafter roof, with a double chamfered arch to the south chapel, which features a trussed rafter roof on moulded tie beams.

Fittings include a cusped ogee headed piscina in the east wall of the chancel; a 17th-century altar table with fluted frieze and gadrooned cup and cover legs with square floor-level stretchers and a mid-18th-century turned baluster altar rail. Medieval choir stalls occupy the south of the chancel with a screen frame to the south chapel featuring simple poppy head bench ends, returned across the chancel arch and mirrored on the north side. These are largely 19th-century copies, but incorporate four 15th or 16th-century panels with tracery and shields. A cusped and roll moulded shelved piscina occupies the south chapel. A simple octagonal font and base is present. A heavy 19th-century wooden Gothic style pulpit stands in the interior. An early 18th-century screen to the tower has a raised and fielded panelled base with turned balusters over to a cornice with iron spiked top rail and central door on H hinges.

On the south wall of the tower is a reredos with four fluted Doric pilasters, painted to resemble marble, with entablature blocks supporting a modillion cornice. The centre rises to a pediment with a central segmentally headed commandments board with cloud burst over and Hebrew lettering, flanked by the Lord's Prayer and the Creed. An early 19th-century painted Royal Arms appears on the tower north wall.