Church Of St Andrew

Church of St Andrew, Bemerton

A small village church of Norman origins, substantially updated in the 14th century and significantly altered from the 17th century onwards. The building comprises a nave and chancel with an open south porch and a west bell-turret. It is constructed of flint with freestone dressings and chequerwork, the freestone including much characteristically local grey-green stone, possibly Chilmark stone. Red tiled roofs cover the structure.

The exterior presents a simple two-cell plan. At the west end stands a tile-hung bell turret with louvres and a pyramidal cap. The chancel roof is slightly lower than the nave roof, with a clear building break visible in the south wall at this junction. The north nave wall is blind, featuring chequerwork and a blocked Norman doorway. The chancel has a two-light north window of 19th-century date, copying a Decorated example on the south side. The south porch, added in the late 19th century, is picturesque in style, gabled and tiled, with timber superstructure on low stone walls and arch-braced roof trusses. The south-east nave window is of two ogee lights and a quatrefoil under an ogee outer arch with flowing Decorated tracery, dating from around 1310-40. A simpler cusped two-light window in the south chancel wall has slight ogee points, also Decorated in style. Adjacent to this window is a small square opening through the wall with a timber shutter inside, perhaps used for ringing a Sanctus bell from within the chancel. The east window is Early English in style, comprising three stepped lancets under a continuous hoodmould; it was inserted perhaps in the early or mid-19th century and was altered during the 1894-6 restoration. A late 14th or 15th-century Perpendicular west window has two cusped lights and a hoodmould with head stops.

The interior is a small, undivided space without a chancel arch, seating only 30-40 people. The roof structure comprises open timber on tie-beams with a deeper frieze in the chancel. Segmental trusses are present, probably originally covering a plaster wagon-vault. The chancel roof dates entirely from the 1894-6 restoration, and most of the earlier roof fabric in the nave was replaced in oak at the same time. The north wall contains a blocked door recess with a plain round-arched head of simplest Norman character. The square opening in the south chancel wall has a splayed reveal under an oak lintel with simple iron shutter hinges, possibly from the 17th century. The floor is laid in oak blocks.

The fine 17th-century south door features moulded ribs forming nine panels, with concentric segmental mouldings and carved decoration in the head; the style is consistent with George Herbert's repairs around 1630. The 1894-6 restoration by C.E. Ponting emphasised the association with Herbert through simple 17th-century-style fittings including oak panelled dado in nave and chancel, and turned communion rails. A plain octagonal font dates from the 19th century. There is no pulpit. Seating comprises 19th or early 20th-century open-backed benches. A chancel pavement of chequered green and white marble was laid in 1895. Stained glass in the east windows is by Lavers & Barraud, 1866, with two smaller chancel lights attributed to them on stylistic grounds. The west window glass is signed by Caroline Townshend and Joan Howson, dating from around 1935, and commemorates George Herbert and his friend Nicholas Ferrar, who published Herbert's poetry as The Temple posthumously. A small tablet with naive fluted pilasters commemorates John Norris, circa 1711, and a more refined Georgian monument with oval slate ground on Siena marble commemorates John Lawes, died 1787.

The blocked round-arched door indicates a Norman church dating not later than around 1200. The earliest record of a chapel at Bemerton dates from around 1286. In 1291, the Abbess of Wilton's holdings in the parish are recorded under the heading "Fugglestone and Bemerton", suggesting that St Peter, Fugglestone and St Andrew formed a single parish by that date, with Bemerton as a dependent chapel. From the Reformation onwards the church may have had many absentee rectors; Walter Curll, Herbert's predecessor, lived at a rectory in Suffolk. In 1630 Curll was replaced by the metaphysical poet and writer George Herbert (1593-1633), appointed to the living under the patronage of his relatives, the Herberts of nearby Wilton House. Herbert repaired the dilapidated church, virtually rebuilt the rectory opposite, and described the ideal of clerical behaviour in his book A Priest to the Temple, better known as The Country Parson. He is buried in the church or churchyard, commemorated by a small stone of 1895 in the chancel.

In 1861 T.H. Wyatt constructed the larger church of St John approximately 200 yards to the west and made haphazard alterations to St Andrew at the same time, removing the pulpit, tester, gallery and box pews. A more thorough restoration was carried out in 1894-6 by the Diocesan Architect C.E. Ponting under the rectorship of Canon Warre. The principal workmen, both parishioners, were George Powell, the village carpenter who made the panelling, and Mr Barratt, master mason of Salisbury Cathedral. Both are commemorated in small plaques on the west wall. The church reopened on 20 October 1896.