Church of St Andrew

Church of St Andrew

A Grade I listed church of 13th-century origins, extensively altered in the 18th and early 19th centuries. The building is constructed of stone rubble, partly rendered with some slate-hanging, and features red brick in the porch block and tiled roofs with a shingled spire.

The church comprises a nave, chancel, west tower, north and south transepts, and a north-east two-storey porch. The transepts and porch block have coped gables with kneelers. The transepts contain tall Gothic windows with Y-tracery. The other windows are a mixture of styles, mostly Perpendicular, though one apparently medieval lancet survives in the east wall of the south transept. The proud architraves of the south-side windows indicate the wall was intended to be rendered. Various blocked openings appear in the north and south walls.

The slender three-stage tower has lozenge-plan buttresses at the north-east and south-east corners, terminating in giant octagonal pinnacles with finials. The west face contains a Tudor arched window, a deeply recessed wide lancet, and a slender lancet to the upper stage. A clock face appears on the north face and a blind roundel on the south, below the tall shingled spire. The lower stage of the tower is pebbledashed. A covered way formerly attached to the north transept connected to the main house.

The interior features a pointed plastered roof to the nave and a lower roof to the chancel, with plastered groin vaults to the transepts. The church contains a remarkable collection of imported ecclesiastical fittings. Tiers of Flemish baroque choir stalls face one another across the nave, with shaped ends carved with cherubs' heads and claw feet, featuring misericords. These originate from a Benedictine monastery in Ghent. The stall wainscoting and canopies, extending across the transepts with timber pinnacles to the cornice, come from the Church of Our Lady, Aarschot, in Brabant, with the cornice dated 1515.

The chancel is lined with 16th-century panelling from Burgundy, the lower tiers featuring linenfold work with blind flamboyant tracery in the upper tier. The reredos contains panels of text in traceried timber frames. Timber sanctuary rails consist of arcading with clustered shafts and a tier of pierced quatrefoils. A polygonal timber pulpit projects from the south transept gallery, its carved figure panels thought to originate from a reredos, with another panel worked into the altar front.

The north transept serves as a family pew, lined with upholstered seats and chairs with panelling above and a Victorian timber chimney-piece with Gothic overmantel. The west end is screened by a five-bay medieval Perpendicular English church screen with the organ gallery frontal above. A plain octagonal stone font bowl sits on a cylindrical stem with corner shafts and stiff-leaf foliage capitals at the west end.

Stained glass includes a south window of French 16th-century glass, an east window of circa 1500, a fine 15th-century east window in the south transept, and an early 16th-century west window bearing the arms of Henry VII. Several oil lamps survive, converted for electricity.

The church is sited in Gatton Park, close to an ancient route, the North Downs ridgeway, and a large house (now a school) rebuilt in the 1830s by Lord Monson. Although a church is mentioned in the Domesday Book, very little medieval fabric now survives. In 1834, Lord Monson and his architect E Webb thoroughly rebuilt and refitted the church, adding the transepts and incorporating ecclesiastical fittings collected from across Europe, either from the patron's Grand Tour or from London dealers established by that date. The Colman family, who bought the estate in 1888, continued to add furnishings to the church.

The building is outstanding as an extreme example of 19th-century antiquarian interests and for the quality of its collection of imported 15th- and 16th-century timber fittings and stained glass, most introduced in 1834 by Lord Monson. The family pew is described by Pevsner as among the best in the country.