Church Of St Denys

Church of St Denys

A cruciform church with west tower, originally built in the early 13th century but substantially rebuilt in the late 13th and early 14th centuries. The west tower dates from the 15th century. The building is rendered over limestone rubble, except the chancel which is of uncoursed limestone rubble, with an artificial stone slate roof except for stone slates on the chancel roof.

The chancel, dating from the 13th century, features offset corner buttresses, a three-light geometrical east window, and late 13th-century trefoiled lancets with hoods on the north side. The south wall displays two similar lancets, a string course forming a hood over a 13th-century hollow-chamfered doorway, and a mid-13th-century two-light window of plate tracery. The chancel arch is double-chamfered with moulded capitals to half-quatrefoil responds.

The south transept contains a late 13th-century trefoiled lancet on the west, two-light windows on the east, and early 14th-century three-light reticulated windows on the south. The south wall of the nave has a late 13th-century Y-tracery window with trefoiled heads, and a 17th-century timber-framed and rendered porch with an arched timber head to the plank door. The north transept displays a late 13th-century trefoil-headed three-light window on the east and an early 14th-century reticulated window on the north. The north wall of the nave has two two-light Y-tracery windows with cinquefoiled heads, and a hood over a hollow-chamfered door. The west gable has offset corner buttresses and an early 14th-century three-light window of intersecting and cusped tracery.

The 15th-century tower features trefoiled lights, two-light square-headed belfry windows, and an embattled parapet. The nave walls contain late 18th and early 19th-century wall tablets.

Interior features include a trefoiled piscina with credence table, and three late 13th-century trefoiled sedilia with hoods and jamb shafts. There is a fine late 17th-century communion rail with pierced scrolls of leaves and roses. Both transepts have trefoiled piscinae. The north transept has a late 16th or 17th-century two-bay tie-beam roof with stop-chamfered purlins. The south transept contains a fine early 14th-century crocketed canopy framing a 20th-century statue of the Virgin and Child, and a parish chest dated 1721. A 17th-century parish chest is set in the blocked south door of the nave. A late 17th-century gallery at the west end of the nave has bolection-moulded panels and turned balusters. The font is a 12th-century tub font with carved leaf sprays.

The nave windows have early 14th-century hollow-chamfered rere-arches with short jambs stopped on head corbels and fine naturalistic leaf capitals. The 15th-century tie-beam roof features arch braces stopped on shield and foliate capitals, moulded ashlar plate and tie-beams, and an arched hollow-chamfered truss at the east end. Mid-19th-century benches, fittings and pulpit are present. A 15th-century hollow-chamfered and casement-moulded archway leads to the west tower.

Monuments include ledger stones and a 14th-century slab with cross set in the chancel floor. Wall tablets in the chancel commemorate John Nalder (died 1797), Anne Ledwell (died 1764) with epitaph, and Richard Kent (died 1761) and family, with a slate inscription slab set in a white marble architectural frame with scrolled sides and a figure weeping over an urn in an open pediment. The south transept has a late 17th-century Baroque cartouche. The north transept contains a wall tablet to Anna Warcup (died 1713) with a flaming urn surmounting an architectural marble frame and cherubs' heads flanking a heraldic achievement. A memorial below to Anna-Maria Pryce (died 1732) has an epitaph set in an architectural marble frame with a heraldic achievement in a broken pediment. A similar memorial with a bracketed pediment commemorates her daughter Anna-Maria Pryce (died 1735). A memorial to Richard Lydall (died 1721) features a bewigged bust set in a nowy-headed pediment with ball finials. A tomb chest to Edmund Warcup (died 1712) has two panels of drapery swags over skulls and a floral swag with a cherub set in the end panel. A late 17th-century ledger stone and a defaced 14th-century cross slab are set in the floor. Chamfered arches in the north wall span fine late 14th-century stone effigies of Sir Thomas de la More and his wife.

Wall painting in the north-west corner of the north transept depicts heraldic shields, two souls being raised to heaven, and Christ's hand raised in blessing. Good stained glass of 1866 fills the chancel window, with further stained glass of 1871 in the south wall of the nave.

The shaft capitals in the nave represent an important illustration of the naturalistic leaf carving of mature early 14th-century Gothic.