Parish Church Of St Augustine

The parish church of St. Augustine is an Anglican church dating to the late 14th and early 15th centuries, with significant rebuilding in 1814/16, 1833, and later restoration. It is constructed of rubble, mainly rendered, with ashlar buttresses, freestone dressings, and slate roofs. The building comprises a west tower, nave, north aisle, south porch, chancel, and a north vestry.

The three-stage Perpendicular tower features diagonal buttresses with weathered setbacks and a polygonal southeast stair turret topped with an octagonal cone cap, a ball finial, and a weathervane. The first stage has a west door and a richly moulded arch with attached crocketed shafts and a three-light window under a heavily moulded dripmould with head stops, one grotesque, rising into the second stage. The second stage has paired two-light blank windows under a moulded drip, and the third stage has paired two-light belfry windows with outer lights blank, set between attached shafts rising from a string below. A trefoil pierced parapet sits between crocketed pinnacles.

The nave and north aisle, dating from 1814/16, consist of three bays with three northern three-light flat pointed windows featuring flat Rickmanesque tracery. The south side has a plain gabled porch mirroring the nave, with corbelled, coped raised verges. The two-bay chancel, of 1833, has two two-light windows with square heads under drips on either side of a moulded pointed priest’s door under a dripmould with decorated stops, with diagonal buttresses bearing a date inscription. A two-light pointed east window and a slit window are also present, with tracery similar to that of the nave. A later lean-to vestry adjoins the chancel and north aisle. On the east end of the north aisle is a lead hopper head inscribed "CH.WARD/CHAS.KNOWLES BUILDER/1814/R.D. CHALLEN GER/PLUMBER."

Inside, a triple-chamfered tower arch leads to a stone screen with four cusped panels and a cusped inner west door from 1816. Two Tuscan columns stand on tall octagonal plinths between the nave and north aisle. The chancel arch is moulded with three hollow waves. The chancel houses windows and doors matching the exterior description, a north vestry door, and an embattled wallplate. Ornate and varied panelling from the 20th century is also a feature. Fittings include a Perpendicular stone pulpit with two-light bays and tracery between crocketed finials, atop an octagonal shaft with corbels, a quatrefoil frieze, and a foliate cornice; the pulpit is gaudily painted. A 11th or 12th-century font is square, with ornate strapwork on three sides, featuring chevron on the south side and corner figures whose outstretched arms meet. Later 19th-century additions include damaged heads and four neo-Romanesque shafts at the corners, alongside a massive central shaft, all standing on a plain plinth within the tower. Five brass chandeliers, tiered in two, are also present. The porch contains an oak beam from the belfry inscribed “John Plumley Gent/Lord of the Man. 1631.”