Church Of St Peter

Church of St Peter

An Anglican parish church on Codford High Street, primarily of 13th-century date with 15th-century additions and a comprehensive 1863 restoration by T.H. Wyatt. The building is constructed in dressed limestone and rubble stone with a tiled roof featuring coped verges.

The church comprises a west tower, nave, south porch, chancel, north aisle and vestry. The 15th-century gabled south porch has a 19th-century pointed archway with an original hoodmould featuring shield-carved terminals, diagonal buttresses, a string course with gargoyles, and a battlemented parapet. The nave to the left displays a 2-light square-headed 19th-century window, while the right side has 3-light and single-light 19th-century windows, all with cusped lights and hoodmoulds. The nave is topped with a battlemented parapet featuring a string course and gargoyles.

The chancel contains a chamfered pointed south door, 2-light 19th-century plate tracery windows on either side, diagonal buttresses to the east end, and an original 13th-century pilaster buttress at the centre of the east end below a 19th-century three-light pointed lancet. A 19th-century gabled vestry on the north side has a pointed doorway and a cusped lancet. The lean-to north aisle features 3-light and two 2-light 19th-century square-headed windows with cusped lights and hoodmoulds. Some original 13th-century stonework is retained with reset fragments of carved stone, and the west end of the aisle has a 2-light square-headed window with an original hoodmould.

The three-stage west tower has diagonal buttresses and a string course to the bellstage only. The west face displays a 3-light restored Perpendicular window; the middle stage contains arrowloops and an octagonal clockface on the south side; the bellstage has 2-light Perpendicular louvres on three sides with one cusped lancet on the south, and is topped with a string course featuring gargoyles and a battlemented parapet with crocketed corner pinnacles. A plain rectangular stair turret with arrowloops stands on the north side of the tower.

Interior

The porch was rebuilt with funds from Maria Waldron and features a moulded ribbed vault on foliage corbels and a moulded pointed inner doorway with a planked door fitted with ornamental strap hinges. The nave contains a 3½-bay 19th-century deep arch-braced collar truss roof on foliage corbels, with collar trusses to the half bays. A 15th-century moulded tower arch opens into the nave. A three-bay 19th-century north arcade has double-chamfered arches on compound piers, with a lean-to aisle roof and an organ at the east end.

The chancel is separated by a 19th-century moulded pointed arch on marble shafts and features a carved wooden screen by F.C. Eden dating to around 1910. The chancel interior has a rib-panelled boarded ceiling, a polychrome tiled floor, early 20th-century communion rails with vase balusters, an 18th-century communion table, an 1891 brass candelabra, and 13th-century trefoil-headed sedilia on the south wall, each with a triangular hoodmould.

Fittings include a square 12th-century font carved with stars and crosses in discs, set on a single column with a scalloped base, and a 17th-century font cover with strapwork carving. An eight-point star-shaped hatchment of Prince Leopold hangs in the chancel. An early 20th-century polygonal wooden pulpit is present, as is a painted Royal Arms dated 1716 on the south wall of the nave.

The stained glass is of high quality: early 20th-century work of probable German or Flemish origin occupies the north aisle; a south-west nave window contains stained glass dedicated to the Brind family, signed by Gibbs and Howard and dated 1881.

Monuments of 18th and 19th-century date include a slate and marble tablet in the tower to Thomas Polden (died 1753), classical 15th-century marbles to the Crouch family, and a marble by Wood of Bristol commemorating Reverend John Dampier (died 1839).

Against the north wall of the chancel stands a well-preserved 9th-century Saxon cross shaft, finely carved with the figure of a man holding an alder branch.