Church Of St Thomas Of Canterbury

The Church of St Thomas of Canterbury is a parish church. The west tower dates to the 15th century, while the rest of the church was entirely rebuilt between 1838 and 1839. The rebuilding incorporated 14th-century Gothic features, designed by Benjamin Ferrey and paid for by Robert Williams of Bridehead. The church consists of a west tower, a nave with a north aisle and south porch, a chancel with a polygonal sanctuary, and a north vestry. A crypt lies beneath the chancel.

The building is constructed of greensand rubble walls with lias stone buttresses and window dressings. The roofs are stone slate, with a lead roof to the tower. The west tower has diagonal buttresses, two stages, and an embattled parapet, with a 19th-century stair turret on the north side. The west window features two trefoiled lights with a quatrefoil in a two-centred head, with renewed mullion and tracery. The bell-chamber has two trefoiled lights in each wall, the lights filled with pierced quatrefoils.

The nave has four bays, divided by substantial buttresses. There are three windows to each side, each with two ogee-trefoiled lights and a quatrefoil in a two-centred head with a label. The north aisle has four windows, each with a single ogee-trefoiled light. The south porch has diagonal buttresses and a gable with moulded kneelers, coping, and a foiled apex stone. The outer archway has moulded jambs and a moulded two-centred head, with a niche above containing a trefoiled head. The porch is vaulted with a sexpartite stone ribbed vault.

The chancel features a three-sided sanctuary with three lights in each face, containing tracery in a three-centred head. Buttresses are positioned between the window faces, with gable-shaped weatherings. A moulded cornice is enriched with ball-flower. The north vestry has a window of two trefoiled lights in a square head, with a doorway in the north wall.

Inside, the tower has a 19th-century tower arch and a ribbed vault with a central boss carved with an angel. The nave arcade has depressed two-centred arches with a hollow-chamfered moulding. The chancel has a sexpartite ribbed vault springing from carved and moulded corbels, with wall ribs forming window rere-arches at the east end. The nave and aisle roofs are wooden, dating to the 19th century.

Notable features include a 15th-century font with an octagonal bowl decorated with shields, a 19th-century stone pulpit, a stone reredos with cinquefoil cusping and foliated gablets displaying Communion prayers, a complete set of 19th-century oak benches with simple poppy-heads, and a monument to Ann (Chappell), wife of Samuel Best, dated 1740.