Church of St Kenelm

Church of St Kenelm

This is a church of limestone rubble with ashlar dressings, situated on the north side of Church Street in Enstone. The building comprises a chancel, nave with north and south aisles (the aisles overlapping the chancel), a south-west porch, and a west tower. The roofs are copper and lead.

The church was largely built in the late 12th century, with significant additions in the late 13th and 15th centuries. The tower and various alterations date to the early to mid 16th century. The building was restored in 1856 by the architect G.E Street.

The chancel probably dates to the 13th century but has been substantially reworked. It features a 19th-century triple-lancet east window and two- and three-light 16th-century side windows with uncusped arched lights. A small arched doorway to the north probably once served a sacristy which is now lost.

The broad south aisle contains two 15th or early 16th-century windows to the east and four windows to the south, three of which have elaborate Perpendicular drop tracery with four-centred arches and deep casement mouldings. The aisle has numerous buttresses and incorporates earlier work. At its west end stands a two-storey porch with a 13th or 14th-century entrance arch of two chamfered orders and a small two-light 15th-century first-floor window.

The late 12th-century south doorway is particularly fine, featuring an elaborate arch of three orders decorated with roll, spool and chevron ornament, with small attached jamb shafts. The porch vault is octopartite, with head corbels and a small central boss of eight heads.

A narrower section of the aisle projects to the west of the porch and contains a square-headed three-light window with ogee tracery and a single-light 16th-century window on its west face.

The narrow north aisle has a simple round-headed late 12th-century doorway and a 13th-century lancet west window, which may have been reused when the tower was built. It also contains a three-light 15th-century window and a two-light 16th-century window, both with square heads. The wider section of the aisle adjoining the chancel has further square-headed windows. Both the chancel and aisles have plain parapets. The nave clerestory has plain two-light windows.

The three-stage tower is built of ashlar with a high moulded plinth, diagonal buttresses, and a crenellated parapet with corner pinnacles. It has a three-light west window with uncusped tracery above a moulded four-centre-arched doorway. The two-light bell-chamber openings with cusped lights may be earlier work that was reused.

The interior reveals much of the church's development. The chancel has a simple 13th-century arch to the north and a 14th or 15th-century doorway with continuous mouldings. To the south is a wide splayed four-centred arch with panelled soffit, which formerly served a narrow chantry chapel. The chancel arch has two continuous chamfered orders, probably dating to the 13th or 14th century. To the south of it is a small 12th-century capital.

The easternmost bays of the nave arcades have wide four-centred arches, possibly replacing a former central tower. The remaining four bays of the south arcade feature late 12th-century pointed arches with angle rolls, supported on circular columns with square knob-volute and waterleaf capitals and square bases with corner spurs. The corresponding bays of the late 13th-century north arcade have alternating circular and fluted octagonal columns with moulded capitals and bases, supporting arches of two hollow-chamfered orders.

The tall early 16th-century tower arch has splayed jambs and an arch of two chamfered orders.

Two adjoining 15th-century windows of the south aisle are divided by a tall shaft and served a chapel of which the small piscina survives. A further chapel at the east end of the aisle retains two 15th-century brackets supported by carved heads (possibly reset) and a small early piscina. The narrow chantry between it and the chancel has similar brackets supporting the springing of a former vaulted roof and a panelled reredos below a three-light window which includes canopied image niches in the wide casement moulding.

The roofs of the nave, north aisle and chancel are plain and may be partly 17th or 18th-century. The moulded south aisle roof with arched braces rising from tie beams to the ridge is 19th-century work.

The church contains stained glass including three panels which may be 17th or 18th-century, three 19th-century windows and an early 20th-century window, possibly by Morris and Company.

Monuments include a medieval stone coffin; a memorial to Stevens Wisdom (died 1633) with a kneeling figure within an arched recess flanked by Ionic columns on an inscribed panelled base; a wall monument to Benjamin Marten (died 1716) in Baroque style with drapery and cherubs in white marble; and a series of black marble ledgers to members of the Cole and Walker families.

Fittings are mostly 19th-century except for a 15th-century panelled octagonal font and an ancient chest with ornamental ironwork which may date to the 13th or 14th century.