Church Of St George

CHURCH OF ST GEORGE, MIDDLE STREET, WEST HARNHAM

This small country church comprises a Norman nave and chancel with a south chapel added around 1300–1330. The tower, which stands unusually halfway down the north nave wall and now contains the vestry, dates mostly from the early 19th century, probably replacing an earlier structure. The building was substantially restored in 1873–1874 by the renowned architect William Butterfield, who designed the south porch.

The church is built of flint with some rubble and freestone, with a red-brick west wall. The tower is constructed of local white stock brick from Fisherton, Salisbury, with flint chequerwork, raised pilaster strips at the angles, and an oddly classical moulded cornice in brick. All roofs are tiled.

Norman features are best observed from the north-east, where a round-headed window survives high up in the nave wall just east of the tower. The Norman main entrance remains to its right, now within the tower. The chancel north wall retains one Norman slit window. Butterfield entirely rebuilt the chancel east wall with its plate-traceried two-light window and replaced the Early English style lancet at the north-east corner of the nave. The south chapel was added in ashlar. Both windows on the south side of the chancel and all those in the south chapel contain repaired medieval lights: a triple lancet for the south chapel east, and two pairs of cusped lancets in the south wall of the chapel. A medieval mass dial is positioned at the south-west corner of the chapel. Butterfield added a narrow corridor porch in flint west of the chapel and rebuilt the south-west corner of the nave. The nave west wall is hand-made red brick in English bond, with score lines in the mortar indicating it was originally tuck-pointed, suggesting an 18th or early 19th-century rebuilding; this wall has been incorrectly assigned to Butterfield, whose plans show he only inserted a new west window. The gable was rebuilt, possibly by Butterfield.

The tower was rebuilt around 1820 with local white stock brick, flint chequerwork, raised pilaster strips at the angles, and an oddly classical moulded brick cornice.

Within the porch is a small horizontal squint window, reglazed in 1939, with its north splay canted towards the altar. The nave roof is 19th-century work. The chancel has a wagon vault with panels and bosses over the sanctuary, probably dating to the 15th century.

From the vestry—that is, the tower base—to the nave is a Norman doorway featuring a solid tympanum, one order of plain columns, and splayed capitals incised with upright foliage and hints of curling points at the angles, characteristics of 12th-century work showing early development towards Early English leaf forms. The chancel has two large splays to the south windows and a trefoil-headed piscina. The chancel arch, dating to around 1300, has triple shafted columns and a two-centred arch with two sunk quadrant mouldings. It cuts through a Norman arch-headed recess on the south side, probably part of a typical Norman arrangement for the chancel wall with matching recesses on both sides of the chancel arch for nave altars. A plinth in front of this recess is topped by a cut-down altar slab bearing a consecration cross, possibly from the altar originally positioned there. The arch to the south chapel is double-chamfered and dies into the imposts. The chapel contains a small Decorated piscina of cusped ogee form. The small opening from the chapel to the nave was created by Butterfield as a sight-line for the organist. Most floors are carpeted, with the underlying surfaces not visible.

The high altar features a fixed stone and painted reredos of 1874, flanked by two oak panels each depicting the four Evangelists, all painted by Alfred Weigall of Salisbury. The centre panel is obscured by a freestanding triptych reredos by Eleanor Warre, the rector's daughter, dating to around 1900–1930 and modelled in gesso and painted. The choir stalls, nave benches, and pulpit are oak, probably all from around 1874. The font is likely Norman, plain with a straight-sided bowl and a fat roll-moulding at its base. In the recess to the right of the chancel arch is part of a fine wall painting of the late 13th century, rendered in red outline work and depicting the Noli Me Tangere, uncovered in 1873–1874. The chapel contains two freestanding oak figure groups of the Presentation and Entombment, both 16th-century Flemish work. The Jacobean-style oak reredos, all stained glass in the south chapel, and that in the chancel east window, were designed by Eleanor Warre around 1900–1930. The chapel also has a small Jacobean altar table with carved frieze and turned legs.

The church was certainly built or rebuilt by 1115, when King Henry I signed a charter granting certain churches to Salisbury Cathedral, including the church at Harnham. The chancel was lengthened in the Early English style during the 13th century, and the Trinity or Jarvoise chapel on the south side—now the Lady Chapel—was probably built in the early 14th century. West Harnham was absorbed into the city of Salisbury in 1927.

William Butterfield (1829–1899) was among the very greatest 19th-century church architects. His career flourished from the mid-1840s when he became a favourite of the influential Cambridge Camden, later the Ecclesiological Society. In the 1850s he was responsible for the great church of All Saints, Margaret Street, London, which broke new ground in its use of brick and extensive polychromy detailing. Butterfield possessed an astonishing fertility of invention, and his work is often strikingly original in its intriguing geometry and bold colour. Beyond All Saints, his best-known work is probably Keble College, Oxford. As a devout High Churchman, his clients were usually of similar religious leanings.