Church Of St Martin

TQ 1649 Church of St Martin 850/1/222

11.06.1973 II*

Church. 1868-77 by Henry Woodyer; Lady Chapel 1905-13. Coursed knapped flint with ashlar quoins and dressings. Welsh slate roof with decorative ridge tiles to chancel; ashlar spire. 4-bay nave with 8-bay lean-to aisles and clerestorey, south porch, 3-storey north transept; lower 4-bay chancel with 3-bay Lady Chapel to south and lower 2-bay vestry to north; 4-stage west tower with spire and north-east vice. In C14 Gothic style having chamfered plinth; quoined butresses with offsets; roll-moulded pointed-arched doors and windows, the doors of several orders with attached columns, the windows of 2 or 3 lights with cusped tracery and those of chancel having hoodmoulds with decorated terminals; parapets with roll-moulded coping, chancel parapet pierced with decorative tracery; raised verges, with Celtic cross finial to nave. Nave: clerestorey has tripled 2-light windows and pilaster butresses between bays; at east gable, 2 quatrefoils flanking crocketed finials. South porch: gableted buttresses with blind tracery; entrance flanked by diagonally-set ashlar piers with crocketed finials; gable has spherical triangle window and decorative iron finial. Chancel: 5-light window and decorative kneelers to east end; south chapel has gableted bays and priest's door on left. West tower: gableted angle buttresses surmounted by figurines. Steps up to west door which has heavily roll-moulded surround of 3 orders and wooden doors with radiating iron strp-hinges. Deep ashlar band above pierced by narrow lights. Cross-windows to 3rd stage below added ashlar clock face with decorated surround and date 1883. Paired 2-light louvred belfry openings. Vice has steps up to door, quatrefoils and gableted 2-light windows at top. Broached spire with gableted corner pinacles, a pierced gableted 2-light window at base on each side, and iron finial. Interior: grey stone columns to chancel arch and to nave arcade, which has fruit and flower bosses to continuous hooldmould, and grey stone colonettes to windows. Decorative wooden roof trusses, of king-post type to nave. In chancel, carved ashlar sedilia and piscina and highly decorated reredos of ashlar and marble with gilding. C19 stained glass throughout and much rich mural wall decoration, including chancel arch tympanum, by Arthur Powell. Octagonal font, donated 1897, richly-decorated in C14 style. Carved octagonal wooden font of c1500, probably made in the Netherlands. Decorative wooden altar rail, organ casing and choir stalls. Series of re-set C18 and C19 wall monuments in tower, including good Rococo monument of Abraham Talbot, d1774. Bronze memorial to Dr Ralph Vaughan Williams in porch.

Listing NGR: TQ1654049499