Church Of St Peter

The Church of St Peter is a parish church largely dating to the 14th century, with significant alterations in the 15th and 19th centuries. The chancel and nave are from the 14th century. The west tower and north porch, now serving as a vestry, were added in the 15th century. A south aisle was added in 1891, along with restoration of the chancel, and further restoration followed in 1894-5. The church is constructed of dressed stone and banded stone and flint walls, with slate and lead roofs. The chancel features a Ham stone parapet above a string course. The north wall has two early 14th-century windows with trefoiled ogee lights. The south wall features a 2-light window, trefoil-cusped with a label, all in 19th-century restoration. The east window, also from the 19th century, is a 4-light Perpendicular style window with cinquefoil cusping and panel tracery. The nave’s north wall contains two largely late 19th-century windows incorporating 15th-century material; near the west end are the lines of a blocked window with a 2-centred head. The north porch’s 14th-century outer archway, with chamfered jambs and segmental pointed head, has been blocked and replaced with a 20th-century window. The early 15th-century west tower has three stages, set-back buttresses, an embattled parapet, and gargoyles. The west doorway has moulded jambs and a two-centre arch with an upper plinth moulding extending as a label. The west window is a 4-light window with trefoiled lights and vertical tracery in a pointed head. The bell chamber has windows of 2 trefoiled ogee lights with a quatrefoil in a pointed head, moulded reveals, on each wall.

Inside, the chancel arch incorporates materials from around the late 13th century; it is a pointed arch of 3 chamfered orders. The moulded responds have marble shafting to the inner orders, with defaced stone capitals. To the north of the arch is a restored opening to a squint; to the south, one jamb of the upper doorway to the former rood-loft remains. The south nave arcade dates to 1891, with central stone and elliptical arches. The south aisle windows are three 2-light, transomed, with panel tracery above. The piscina (chancel) has a pointed arch head with 2 sunk-chamfered jambs, a quirked, moulded label, and a round stone bowl with moulded corbelling. The font has a limestone cylindrical tub with a chamfered top and crude volutes to three corners; a 12th-century feature. The upper part of the font, made of Ham stone, is octagonal with a single fleuron on each of the south sides, and uncarved sides otherwise. There are two white marble wall tablets: one to Harriet and Charlotte Meech, 1829, 1832; the other to Giles Meech, M. A., who died in 1849.