Church Of St Bridget

Church of St Bridget

A Grade I listed parish church in Anglican use, originally built in the 12th century with significant alterations around 1300 to the chancel, and further development in the 14th and 15th centuries. The building comprises a west tower, nave, south aisle and chapel, south porch, and chancel.

The exterior is constructed of coursed rubble with freestone dressings, except for the ashlar porch. Roofs are slate with coped raised verges. The three-stage west tower features diagonal buttresses and a pierced parapet decorated with trefoils within triangles, with corner pinnacles. The bellchamber has two-light openings with cusped tracery. The west window and west door are in Perpendicular style with moulded surrounds beneath plain hoodmoulds. A projecting polygonal stair tower on a square base extends from the north-east corner.

The nave displays two three-light Perpendicular style windows (restored) with cusped tracery and a central buttress with offsets. The chancel contains two single-light cusped lancet windows, with an east window matching the nave style. The south aisle and chapel feature four two-light early Perpendicular windows with plain ogee heads to the lights.

The south porch is set slightly back behind the south aisle, with a diagonal buttress with offsets and a blank arcaded parapet. The outer door has double wave moulding. A possibly reset 12th-century window appears on the west wall. The south doorway is mid-12th century with single columns bearing scalloped capitals, inner roll-moulding, and a thick roll-moulded arch. A stoup to the right has a cusped ogee head.

The interior tower arch features two wave moulds. The chancel is defined by an inward projection of the north wall and contains a blocked north door with chamfered surround and depressed two-centred arch. The south aisle has a two-bay arcade and the south chapel a smaller single bay; the piers alternate columns and wave moulds with four-centred arches. The chancel's north windows have deep embrasures.

The chancel reredos is 19th century but its frame dates to the late 15th or 16th century, constructed as a rectangle decorated with fleurons and a crested top forming a canopy rising above the window sill, flanked by plain square-headed image niches. Stone dado of the rood screen survives with a mortised sill beam. The south aisle features a ribbed and panelled roof with moulded wall-plates, a rectangular moulded surround to an inset for a reredos with flanking cusped ogee-headed image niches, a piscina with cusped ogee head, and three recessed niches in the south wall with cusped and crocketted ogee canopies and blank arcaded bases.

The 19th-century wooden pulpit has a polygonal top on an ashlar base. Behind it is a blocked chamfered doorway, probably leading to a missing or hidden rood stair. The font is probably 12th century but recut, with an octagonal ashlar bowl on an octagonal stem and a 17th-century top.

The pews include south nave pews dated 1621/W.G. (William Gregory, Rector) with panelled fronts and foliage frieze. The south chapel contains seven coarsely cut medieval benches, some retaining lozenge-shaped poppy heads, and the Jacobean Tynte family pew with panelled front, foliage frieze, urn finials, double S-shaped hinges, high back with blank arcading, enriched frieze and moulded cornice. Four further coarsely cut medieval benches occupy the west end of the south nave side. A wall painting on the north chancel wall depicts a ragged cross with a circle.

Medieval stained glass survives: a late 15th-century reversed pane bearing arms on the nave north side, and fragments of 14th-century yellow glass with Evangelist symbols. The chancel east window contains 13th and 15th-century fragments including the head of Christ and a tonsured male saint with roses, crowns and borderwork. The south aisle retains several sun roundels.

An incised Purbeck slab monument to a knight, probably dating to 1250–1270, is reset in the south chapel.