Church Of St Peter And St Paul

Church of St Peter and St Paul

This is a parish church of medieval origins, substantially rebuilt and restored in the late 19th century. The building is constructed in thin slabs of roughly coursed stone beneath plain tile roofs.

The church comprises a west tower, nave, south porch, chancel, north vestry and north aisle. The west tower dates to the 13th century and has two stages on a rendered plinth with battlements above a chamfered string. A saddleback roof was removed around 1892. The belfry windows are 19th-century insertions in a 13th-century style, while three 19th-century chamfered round-headed windows are set towards the base of the south side. The west doorway also dates to the 19th century.

The nave is of late 11th or 12th-century date, distinguished by the absence of a plinth and a single buttress. It contains two 19th-century windows of two cinquefoil-headed lights, and a narrow blocked round-headed window to the east of the porch.

The south porch is a 19th-century timber-framed structure on a stone plinth, with a restored late 11th or 12th-century inner doorway.

The chancel is 14th-century, with one south and one north buttress, and diagonal south-east and north-east buttresses. Two 14th-century south windows survive: one with two cinquefoil-headed lights without overall architrave, and another (restored) with two cusped ogee-headed lights with quatrefoils. The east window features reticulated tracery of the 14th century. Two north windows match those to the south.

The north vestry is a 19th-century addition on a moulded plinth with bargeboards to the north, and is unpierced. The north aisle is primarily 19th-century but retains 13th-century origins. It is gabled (formerly lean-to) with three north buttresses and 19th-century windows. A 19th-century stone boilerhouse with a low adjacent turret dated 1873 stands at the west end.

Internally, the church retains a 13th-century two-bay nave arcade of broad, lightly-chamfered pointed arches springing from chamfered imposts with bar stops to the end piers. The broad pointed 14th-century chancel arch displays plain and hollow chamfers with attached columns bearing bell capitals and bases. No tower arch is present. A double-shafted late 11th or 12th-century west doorway, visible from within the tower, features scalloped capitals and moulded abaci.

The nave roof is a crown-post roof of 3 moulded octagonal crown-posts on moulded tie-beams with solid brackets to pendant posts, together with ashlar-pieces and trenched sous-laces.

Fittings include a restored scroll-moulded string to the chancel, and moulded stone corbels with carved heads flanking the east window. A pointed-arched beaded piscina occupies the south-east end of the north aisle. A 15th-century octagonal dressed stone font has concave sides and shields. A late 13th-century wooden chest features five panels of blank geometrical bar tracery with beasts added to the end panels. Royal Arms dated 1834 are mounted on the north wall of the north aisle, alongside 19th-century box pews.

The church contains several monuments. A brass on the chancel floor commemorates John Verien, died 1370, and shows a half figure of a priest. Another chancel brass records Anne Muston, died 1496, with an angel bearing her heart. A brass in the north aisle depicts Thomas Brokhill, died 1437, and his wife as a knight and lady. On the west wall of the nave, a tablet to Thomas Tourney, died 1712, and others (the last dying in 1788) features a moulded plinth on consoles, moulded frieze, panelled pilasters and a moulded triangular pediment with urn, draped skull and shield. A similar tablet commemorates Mary Tourney, died in the early 19th century, and others. On the north wall of the north aisle, a tablet to Thomas Tourney, died 1810, by T. King of Bath, displays white marble on a gadrooned base with fluted borders and reeded cornice, surmounted by a draped urn and shield on black marble ground.