Church Of Saint Just

Church of Saint Just

Parish church of 13th-century origin (consecrated 1216), with significant 15th-century additions, restored in 1872 and with a 20th-century vestry. Built of slatestone with granite tower buttresses, featuring 15th-century windows and doorways beneath scantle slate roofs with gable ends.

The building comprises a nave and chancel under one roof, a west tower, north transept, south aisle, and south porch. The 15th-century tower rises in two stages with weathered diagonal corner buttresses, a string dividing the stages, and a parapet with battlements. The pointed moulded west doorway has a hood mould and relieving arch. Above it is a three-light Perpendicular window with replaced 20th-century mullions, hood mould, and relieving arch. The upper stage has original arch-headed two-light Perpendicular windows with hood moulds, cinquefoil lights, and slate louvres. An octagonal stair turret stands to the east of the south wall, rising above the tower parapet with an additional string and battlements. A clockface appears below the second string on the south side.

The north wall of the nave, contemporary with the tower, contains two 15th-century three-light Perpendicular windows with a 20th-century boiler house between them featuring a lean-to slate roof and rubble stack. The transept, probably incorporating some 13th- to 14th-century walling, has been remodelled with a roof parallel to the nave roof and contains a 15th-century two-light Perpendicular window to the west wall and north wall. A pointed, chamfered doorway leads to the vestry, which has a tall two-light window to the east gable.

The north wall of the chancel is 13th-century with a 15th-century two-light window with round-headed lights and a 15th-century pointed doorway. The east window of the chancel gable is 19th-century freestone in Perpendicular style. The east window in the south aisle gable has an original 15th-century frame but 19th-century freestone tracery. The south wall of the south aisle is entirely 15th-century, complete with one three-light Perpendicular window to the left of the porch and five to the right, with a similar west gable window.

The south porch, also 15th-century, contains a fine granite doorway with trefoil-headed panels on engaged octagonal jambs with moulded bases and capitals. These respond to an ordered four-centred, almost rounded arch with cusping, mostly broken away, surrounded by granite ashlar walling. An original moulded inner doorway survives. The porch retains its 15th-century oak waggon roof with moulded ribs and purlins, carved wall plate, and central boss. An old carved plaster fragment is set into the wall plaster.

Interior

The nave roof is probably early 19th-century with arch-braced collars and roll moulding to bracing and under purlins. Originally in the form of a waggon roof with plaster panels, it now has exposed common rafters. The chancel has a closer-set arched-braced collar roof in waggon-roof form. Paint appears on the bracing of both roofs. The aisle roof, probably dating to 1872, is of similar arch-braced type. All three roofs have moulded cornices with painted Bible texts.

A granite arcade of seven bays separates the nave and chancel from the south aisle. The piers are of standard A type (Pevsner), each with four engaged shafts and capitals supporting inner and outer hollow-chamfered basket arches. The chancel retains thicker walling from the 13th century and features a contemporary trefoil-headed piscina to the south in an arcade respond. The tower arch springs from corbelled responds and may survive from an earlier tower. A pointed granite doorway in the tower leads to a granite newel stair. Old painted decoration surrounds the south and north doorways of the chancel, and a now-headed painted panel of the Lord's Prayer dated 1693 stands beside the south doorway. The floor is slate-flagged.

Fittings include 19th-century pine pews with scrolled and carved bench ends; a polygonal pulpit with engaged shafts to the angles dividing painted trefoil-headed panels; and a 15th-century Perpendicular octagonal granite font with quatrefoil panels. A brass of a priest on the east wall of the aisle is either that of Perys (died 1504) or Jeffrey (1529), both rectors of the parish.