Church Of St Martin

The Church of St Martin is a late 19th-century church built between 1868 and 1877, with a later Lady Chapel added between 1905 and 1913. Designed by Henry Woodyer, it is constructed of coursed knapped flint with ashlar quoins and dressings, topped with a Welsh slate roof featuring decorative ridge tiles. The chancel has an ashlar spire. The church is in a 14th-century Gothic style, exhibiting a chamfered plinth, quoined buttresses, and roll-moulded pointed-arched doors and windows. Many windows are two or three-light designs with cusped tracery, while those in the chancel have decorative hoodmoulds. The parapets feature roll-moulded coping, and the chancel parapet has pierced decorative tracery.

The church consists of a four-bay nave with lean-to eight-bay aisles and clerestory, a south porch, a three-story north transept, a lower four-bay chancel, a lower two-bay vestry to the north, and a four-stage west tower with a spire and a northeast vice. The clerestory features tripled two-light windows and pilaster buttresses. The east gable has two quatrefoils flanking crocketed finials. The south porch has gableted buttresses with blind tracery, and the entrance is flanked by diagonally-set ashlar piers surmounted by crocketed finials. A spherical triangle window and decorative iron finial top the gable. The chancel features a five-light window, decorative kneelers, and the south chapel has gableted bays and a priest's door. The west tower has gableted angle buttresses topped with figurines. The west door has a heavily roll-moulded surround of three orders and wooden doors with radiating iron strap-hinges. A deep ashlar band above the door is pierced by narrow lights. The third stage of the tower has cross-windows and an added ashlar clock face with a decorated surround and the date 1883. Paired louvred belfry openings are set within an ashlar frame. The vice has steps up to a door, quatrefoils, and gableted two-light windows at the top. The broached spire has gableted corner pinacles, pierced gableted two-light windows at the base on each side, and an iron finial.

Inside, the chancel arch and nave arcade are supported by grey stone columns and colonettes. The arcade has fruit and flower bosses in a continuous hoodmould. The roof trusses are decorative wooden king-post designs. The chancel features carved ashlar sedilia and piscina, and a highly decorated reredos made of ashlar and marble with gilding. There is 19th-century stained glass throughout, and rich mural wall decoration, including a tympanum in the chancel arch, by Arthur Powell. An octagonal font, donated in 1897 and richly decorated in a 14th-century style, stands alongside a carved octagonal wooden font from around 1500, likely made in the Netherlands. Decorative wooden altar rails, an organ casing, and choir stalls are also present. A series of reset 18th and 19th-century wall monuments are found in the tower, including a good Rococo monument to Abraham Talbot, who died in 1774. A bronze memorial to Dr Ralph Vaughan Williams is located in the porch.