Church Of St Thomas A Becket

Church of St Thomas a Becket

Anglican parish church on Church Street, Widcombe. Built between 1499 and 1525 for Prior Cantlow, enlarged in 1820, with restoration and fittings added in 1860–1861 by C.E. Davis. The architect H.E. Goodridge oversaw the 1820 work. Constructed in limestone ashlar with slate roofs and stone slate to the porch.

The building follows a late Perpendicular design with nave, north porch, west tower, chancel, south chapel and crypt. It is set into steeply rising ground, with access to the crypt from the tower base, and the east end positioned well below the adjoining graveyard level.

The tower rises in two stages plus a lower ground level, with diagonal buttresses, moulded string courses and two gargoyles to each face. It has a crenellated parapet with small corner pinnacles. The bell stage contains small two-light openings with stone louvres, and above a small rectangular light sits a large three-light opening. At lower level, immediately on the road, is a 16th-century doorway with basket arch on a plank door with strap hinges. The south side has a blocked doorway with four-centred arch and drip course. The north side features a full-height octagonal stair turret in four stages. The tower has a sixteen-compartment ceiling carried on drops to corbels on four sides, with a small lancet above the nave arch.

The porch has 20th-century glazed outer doors and a coped gable to ball finial over a four-centred opening, with diagonal buttresses. The inner door is a 19th-century plank door, framed and braced with strap hinges, set in a four-centred arch with drip, above a deep image niche.

Perpendicular windows with deep casement mould and stopped drips characterize the exterior. The nave has a low pitched roof to a continuous crenellated parapet on a hollow mould string, with a raised attic behind the porch. Two two-light cusped windows appear on the north and south sides. At the east end of the nave on the north side is an octagonal projection with a stone roof, containing an inner arch to the pulpit; it appears too low to have served as a rood. The chancel has a pierced parapet above a 19th-century two-light window, and its east end features a large five-light window below a small pierced quatrefoil, with a high central coped gable flanked by short lengths of horizontal pierced parapet, returned and continued over the projecting chapel. The south side of the nave adjacent to the tower projects forward with a broad buttress and a small 20th-century boiler flue.

Inside, the ashlar walls are unrendered and unpainted. The nave comprises three bays with 19th-century cambered tie trusses, ridge crown posts, single purlin and brattished plate, all on a stone slab floor with timber underfloor to pewing. Windows have plain embrasures with steep flush sills. The tower arch has broad double chamfer with central mould on shafts. North and south sides each have a deep recess to a four-centred head and a small plank door to the belfry. The walls are lined with linenfold wainscot, continuing the detail of a fine oak screen of 1913 with central doors and three lights each side; an inscription records this as a memorial to George Moger.

The chancel arch is four-centred with Perpendicular panelling to the intrados, stepped up one level. The chancel has a very complex 19th-century ceiling in three facets and many panels, each with dropped cusped surrounds to bold carved bosses. The south wall has two arched openings; the larger features an unusual stone screen with a door and four panels below three large vesicae containing very close-set and cusped tracery bars, and a central quatrefoil with multiple cuspings. Pevsner describes this as "the craziest and most incorrect tracery". The other high arch contains a late 20th-century timber screen. Behind the organ loft and vestry are further spaces.

All windows contain 19th or 20th-century glass. The tower west window has the form of grisaille with blackberry decoration and three coloured panels. Polished hardwood pews have small doors. The pulpit is richly carved and octagonal, set on five high stone steps. A small brass lectern is also present. The font beneath the tower is a fine early 18th-century bowl supported by three winged cherubs, with a gadrooned base. The reredos of 1914, designed by F. Bligh Bond, features cresting and a central icon-like painted panel of Christ flanked by painted panels of the Beatitudes. The carved oak screen dates to 1913.

Memorials include many 19th-century white marble tablets in the nave. Earlier monuments of interest are two white marble cartouches with crowning cherubs at the west end of the nave: one to the north commemorates Anna Bennet, died 1730, and one to the south commemorates Martha Bennet, died 1739. At the south side, rear of the nave, is a large oval white marble tablet with crowning swag and epitaph to Etheldreda Chester, died 1797 aged 38, and her daughter, died 1798 aged 10. In the tower, the south side has a thick slab of 1610 with artisan lettering recording Jane Gay, and a large rococo cartouche in white marble to Lewis, dated 1791. On the north side is a fine double tablet with pediment and weeping figure. Painted Royal Arms dated 1660 appear over the chancel arch.

A painted panel in the porch records the first vicar as 1322, though a church is thought to have stood here in the 12th century. In 1573 the parishes of Widcombe and Lyncombe were merged with the rectory of Bath, and the vicarate was not revived until 1855. The church stands immediately opposite Widcombe Manor and the group was incorporated into the landscaped layout of Prior Park.