Church Of St Leonard

The Church of St Leonard is a church dating from the 13th century, with significant alterations in the 15th and 19th centuries. It is constructed of uncoursed limestone rubble with ashlar dressings, and has a lead roof except for old tiles on the chancel roof. The church consists of a chancel and nave, a south transept, a north tower, and a west porch.

The east window is a late 13th-century three-light design. The chancel’s side walls feature 15th-century ogee-headed windows, separated by an offset buttress on the south side. The south transept contains 3-light cinquefoil-headed windows, with the exception of an early 16th-century three-light segmental-arched window on the west side. The south wall of the nave has similar 15th-century windows with restored mullions and heads, flanking a blocked 13th-century two-light window without mullions; the north wall of the nave repeats this pattern. The three-stage north tower, also dating from the 15th century, has 15th-century single-, two-, and three-light windows and a crenellated parapet with gargoyles.

The west porch, built in 1571 for Bishop Jewel, is in a Gothic and Classical style, featuring a Tudor-arched doorway with a classical entablature and cinquefoil-headed lights divided by unfluted Ionic columns surmounted by a classical entablature.

Inside, a reredos, piscina, and mosaic floor date from around 1870. Decorative medieval-style floor tiles represent Revelations Chapter 4. A 16th-century collar truss roof features a king stud, and the chancel arch is from around 1902. The nave contains a Jacobean pulpit, a 15th-century octagonal pulpit, and 17th-century bench-ends with prominent poppyheads similar to those at Radley Church. The 16th-century roof has arch braces springing from vertical side struts, into which are tenoned hollow-chamfered purlins with jowled ends. A hollow-chamfered arch leads to the north tower, which has a narrow 15th-century doorway to the stairs. A similar double-chamfered arch leads to the north transept, featuring a 15th-century five-bay parclose screen with foiled heads and an early 18th-century panelled double-leaf door.

Memorials include a reset memorial in the chancel floor to Margaret Fell, widow of the Dean of Christ Church, who died in 1657, and other members of the Fell family. A late 17th-century plain oval wall tablet commemorates Mary, daughter of Sir Thomas Throckmorton, who died in 1632, and her children, alongside an epitaph to their in-laws, the Baskervilles. Plain wall tablets in the nave record the Blower family (early 18th century), Joseph Barnett, the rector who died in 1796, and Caroline Stonehouse, who died in 1810. The stained glass is mainly from 1902, and a fine east window by J.P. Seddon depicts The Adoration of the Shepherds and the Magi in a Pre-Raphaelite style. The porch was built for Bishop Jewel to commemorate his time as rector of Sunningwell before becoming Bishop of Salisbury.