Parish Church

The parish church, built in 1861-2, was designed by Hicks of Dorchester. It is constructed of coursed rubble stone with freestone dressings, and has a clay-tile roof with stone gable-copings and moulded kneelers. A gabled bellcote is located at the west end, featuring two trefoil-headed openings for the bells, with a quatrefoil in the head above. The nave has corner buttresses with two set-offs. It has three windows to the north, each with two trefoil-headed lights and a quatrefoil in the head, featuring plate tracery. The west window is of two lights with trefoil heads and a quatrefoil above, all under a super arch. The chancel has two single-light lancets with ogee trefoil heads, and the east window is of three lights with trefoil heads, trefoils, and cinquefoils above. A keeled label with head-stops runs above the east window. A north porch has a steep gable with a cross-in-wheel head; its entrance has a chamfered jamb and a segmental pointed head, where the inner order dies into the jambs. Inside the nave, a four-bay, arched, scissor-braced roof is supported by naturally carved stone corbels. The chancel arch rests on short, corbelled responds, and the arch itself is of a large trefoiled form with naturalistic foliage in the spandrels and carved terminal bosses. The chancel roof has a hammer beam construction with high collars carried on carved capitals and corbelled supports. A three-sided, corbelled stone pulpit is accessed through the chancel arch jamb; a stone lectern has a carved corbel on its front, displaying a carved Agnus Dei in a spur-trefoil. Two marble tablets with Gothic Bath stone framing are on the chancel north wall: one to Mary, widow of George J Wood, who died in 1880, and the other to G J Wood, born in Upwey in 1807 and died in Athelhampton in 1867. Stained glass in the east window commemorates Emma, wife of H P de la Fontaine, depicting a crucifixion scene and images of the saints Mary and John. A north nave window is dedicated to Cecil de la Fontaine, who died in 1916, and depicts St George and the Dragon and emblems of the King’s Own Rifle Corps. The font is a later 19th-century stone bowl with carved rushes and lilies, a cylindrical stem, and a water-holding base. A plank nave door has ornamented iron strap hinges and a vertical iron bar alongside. The stone carving was undertaken by Burge of London.