Christ Church Melplash Church Melplash Church (Christ Church)

SY 49 NE NETHERBURY MELPLASH

7/138 Melplash Church (Christ Church)

GV II*

Church in neo-Romanesque style. 1845-6 by Benjamin Ferrey for James Bandinel, in memory of his father Dr. Bandinel, vicar of Netherbury and Beaminster. Cruciform with apsidal Chancel, North vestry, Central Tower, North and South Transepts, Nave and South Porch. Local rubble walls, with Ham Hall stone dressings. Slate and lead roofs. All the openings have moulded round heads and most of the jambs have attached shafts with scalloped capitals and moulded bases. Chancel : 2 pilaster buttresses to full height of apse and a stepped corbel table under the eaves. Apse has five small single-light windows. Vestry: apsidal east end and a billet- moulded eaves cornice. The east window and north door with nail- head enrichment. North door, plank with a round head. Central tower, one stage above the crossing. Each face with a main arch enclosing two tall windows and flanked by recesses. Round sinkings above. Square tower stair projects in the angle between the south transept and nave. Transepts, north and south walls of 3 stages. South transept has a doorway of 2 enriched orders, with shafted jambs and roll-mould heads. Nave: of 4 bays, windows with heads shaped to a broad trefoil. Pilaster buttresses with inverted, scalloped ogee capitals. West wall is in three stages. South Porch: moulded parapet and small engaged shafts at the angles. Entrance arch is of 3 plain orders with shafted jambs and 2 rolls. Interior: chancel- roof, arch-bracing to a transverse collar on the chord of the apse. Nave roof: high arch-braced collar, springing from short hammer- posts, ashlaring at wall-plate. (Now used as Hall and Badminton Court and screened off.) Crossing with coupled shafts and scallop capitals, in each direction, with spur bases. Fittings: Brasses on the south wall of the south transept 1) date of building and directing that all seats to be free. 2) Containing quotations from Chronicles, ch. 29, vv. lO, 14, 18. Font: Cl9, stone, similar to the Cl2 font at Whitchurch Canonicorum. Source: R.C.H.M. Dorset I, p 172 (2). Dorset County Chronicle, 22nd May, 1845.

Listing NGR: SY4844597552