Christ Church Melplash Church Melplash Church (Christ Church)

Christ Church in Melplash is a church built between 1845 and 1846 in a neo-Romanesque style. It was designed by Benjamin Ferrey for James Bandinel, as a memorial to his father, the vicar of Netherbury and Beaminster. The cruciform building comprises an apsidal chancel, a north vestry, a central tower, north and south transepts, a nave, and a south porch. The exterior is constructed from local rubble walls with dressings of Ham Hall stone, and features slate and lead roofs. The windows have moulded round heads, with most jambs incorporating attached shafts with scalloped capitals and moulded bases.

The chancel has two pilaster buttresses rising to its full height and a stepped corbel table under the eaves. The apse itself has five small single-light windows. The north vestry has an apsidal east end and a billet-moulded eaves cornice. Its east window and north door are decorated with nail-head enrichment, the door featuring planking and a round head. The central tower rises one stage above the crossing, with each face containing a large arch enclosing two tall windows, flanked by recesses and round sinkings above. A square tower stair projects from the angle between the south transept and the nave. The north and south walls of the transepts are in three stages. The south transept’s doorway has two enriched orders, featuring shafted jambs and roll-moulded heads.

The nave consists of four bays with windows having heads shaped as broad trefoils, and has pilaster buttresses with inverted, scalloped ogee capitals. The west wall is arranged in three stages. The south porch has a moulded parapet and small engaged shafts at the corners, with an entrance arch of three plain orders, shafted jambs and two rolls. Inside, the chancel roof features arch-bracing to a transverse collar along the chord of the apse. The nave roof is similarly arch-braced with a collar, springing from short hammer-posts, with ashlaring at the wall-plate. The crossing features coupled shafts with scallop capitals and spur bases in each direction. The fittings include brasses on the south wall of the south transept, one marking the date of the building and stipulating that all seats should be free, and the other containing quotations from Chronicles, chapter 29, verses 10, 14, and 18. A 19th-century font, constructed from stone and resembling the 12th-century font at Whitchurch Canonicorum, is also present. The building is currently used as a hall and badminton court, and is screened off accordingly.