Church of the Holy Cross is a Grade II* listed building in the Wiltshire local planning authority area, England. First listed on 28 October 1959. A Medieval Church.
Church of the Holy Cross
- WRENN ID
- unlit-chamber-river
- Grade
- II*
- Local Planning Authority
- Wiltshire
- Constituency
- South Cotswolds MP: Dr Roz Savage (LD)
- Country
- England
- Date first listed
- 28 October 1959
- Type
- Church
- Period
- Medieval
- Address
- Church of the Holy Cross, Church Lane, Hankerton
- OS grid reference
- ST 972 907
- Coordinates
- 51.61565, -2.04111
- Source
- Historic England listing
Description
The Church of the Holy Cross is an Anglican parish church displaying elements from the late 12th century, late 13th century, 15th century and 1903. It is constructed of squared and coursed dressed stone to the tower, coursed rubble with some render to the remainder, with stone dressings, ashlar copings, and stone slate roofs. The church consists of a nave, chancel, west tower, north aisle, and south porch.
The south side of the nave features a single 2-light 15th-century window with a flat head to the left of the porch, and two further 15th-century windows to the right; one 3-light window with a pointed head and hoodmould, and one 2-light window with a flat head and hoodmould. The north aisle has a single 3-light Tudor-arched 15th-century window set in a deep reveal, and a blocked Caernarvon-arched doorway. The east window of the north aisle is a 3-light Early English window.
The west tower is of three stages with diagonal buttresses, set-offs, a moulded string course, a stair turret on the south-east corner, and an embattled parapet with corner pinnacles and gargoyles below. The western buttresses at first stage have statue niches. The west face of the tower has a 3-light 19th-century Perpendicular-style window to the first stage and an oblong opening to the second, with 2-cusped-light bell openings with pierced wooden panels to all faces.
The chancel, dating to 1903, has a Perpendicular-style 3-light east window. The gabled south porch has a multi-rolled pointed-arched entrance with 2-leaf plank doors, and an inner doorway with Ringerike-style dragon stops to the hoodmould and a 19th-century plank door, with benches either side.
Inside, the 4-bay north arcade has circular piers, moulded capitals, circular abaci, and double-chamfered round arches. The nave has a wagon roof, the tower a ribbed plaster vault, and the north aisle a further wagon roof. A low, narrow chancel arch, likely from the 13th century, gives onto the 20th-century chancel with a barrel vault. There is a 1744 wall monument to the Ludlow family on the nave's north wall, near the tower; a 15th-century octagonal font with a quatrefoil frieze located by the south door; and a fine 1775 monument to Miles Earle by Nollekens on the west wall of the north arcade.
Local climate
Church of the Holy Cross receives an average of 800 mm of rain a year. This makes it drier than 55% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is lower than that of 53% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 33 freeze-thaw cycles a year, fewer than 56% of listed buildings. Of these, 15 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.
Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
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- Detailed attributes — period, style, materials, features
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