Whitchurch Canonicorum Church (St Candida and Holy Cross)

Whitchurch Canonicorum Church (St Candida and Holy Cross)

This parish church and former minster church contains architectural material spanning the 12th to 15th centuries, with modern additions and restorations. The building comprises a west tower, nave with clerestory, north and south aisles, south porch, north and south transepts, chancel, and south vestry, all constructed in Lias stone ashlar with slate roofs.

The west tower dates to the 15th century and consists of four stages with set-back buttresses, a crenellated parapet, and renewed crocketed finials. The west door features heavily moulded jambs that intersect the plinth mouldings, with plant-motif spandrels and a quatrefoil shielded frieze above. Two statue niches flank a cross-transomed west window. The bell openings are 2-light with quatrefoil heads. Notable carved panels appear on the tower's south wall, including one depicting a Viking ship.

The south aisle wall dates from the 12th and 13th centuries and retains renewed reticulated window tracery. The south porch is 15th-century, single-storey, with diagonal buttresses and massive carved grotesques. Its entrance has a pointed arch with two respond orders and a cambered tie beam roof within.

Interior features include a late 12th-century doorway with nook shafts and late water leaf capitals; the arch mouldings incorporate projecting dog tooth and hood-roll with gripping beak-head at the apex and beak-head terminals. The south transept dates to the 13th century, its west face displaying Early English lancets with straight chamfering, deep hollows, and keeled roll-labels. A 14th-century south window contains three lights with trefoil-cusped intersecting ogees leading to a mandorla-head with quatrefoil fill.

The south vestry was rebuilt in 1822 using coursed knapped flint. The chancel contains two Early English lancets with original labels and a blocked trefoil-headed priest's doorway with heavy keeled roll. Its east wall was rebuilt in 1847–8 with three stepped lancets, incorporating late 12th-century keeled angle shafts carved with faces at the top. The north transept shows the back of St Wite's shrine projecting from its east wall, which features a window dating from around 1300. The north aisle has been rebuilt with plain parapets.

The nave comprises five bays plus one for the transepts. The south arcade, dating from around 1170, features round piers with scallop and water-leaf capitals; labels include one beak-head and large naturalistic heads as spandrel-stops. The north arcade, from around 1190, has four-respond shafts standing on bases and plinths with capitals derived from transept-scallops showing conventional and naturalistic foliage. The moulded pointed arches are heavily detailed, one containing a free-standing double-chevron. The nave was extended one bay westward in the 14th century. Clerestory windows are quatrefoils with rere-arches over arcade-spandrels. The wooden wagon roof, bosses at intersections, dates to the 15th century. The north transept features clustered respond-shafts with similar capitals and rings. The chancel arch has triple-respond shafts with naturalistic foliage and a wide pointed arch beneath a segmental barrel-vault.

The shrine of St Wite, located in the north transept, is a 13th-century stone structure with a Purbeck marble top. The tomb chest is built over three mandorla-shaped openings intended for pilgrims' offerings and healing. The font, late 12th-century, comprises a stone bowl with intersecting arcading and a chip-carved saltire band above, set on a rope-moulded base with Purbeck marble stem. The pulpit, dating from around 1630, is octagonal wood on a trumpet-stem with Carolean ornament. An early 17th-century wall tomb commemorates Sir J Jeffery of Catherston (died 1611) and features a stone effigy with fine carved framing.