Church Of St Martin

The Church of St Martin is an Anglican parish church largely dating to the 13th century, with significant alterations in the 15th century and a rebuilding of the north transept in 1841. The church is constructed of rubble stone with dressed limestone, and has a Welsh slate roof. It is an aisle-less cruciform building with a west-facing entrance.

The west front features a Tudor-arched, chamfered doorway with a ribbed door. To either side are 3-light square-headed windows with pointed lights and hoodmoulds, incorporating 18th and 19th century memorial tablets to the Crouch family. The gable above has a stepped parapet. The south side of the nave has three 2-light square-headed windows with cusped pointed lights and hoodmoulds, with a single 2-light window to the right, all punctuated by buttresses and a parapet with saddleback coping. An octagonal stair turret, situated in the angle between the nave and south transept, has a Tudor-arched doorway and an attached, square ashlar stack with a moulded capping. The south transept is distinguished by a 3-light pointed Perpendicular window, a 2-light cusped square-headed window to the east, and a heavy, cyma-moulded plinth. The chancel has pairs of lancet windows to the south and north sides, and its east end features diagonal buttresses and three stepped lancets beneath a relieving arch. The 1841 north transept incorporates a Tudor-arched doorway, a lancet on its east side leading into an integral vestry, and a 3-light Perpendicular-style window. The north side of the nave presents three square-headed windows with cusped lights and a battlemented parapet. The two-stage crossing tower has buttresses with offsets, with round, gilded clockfaces on the north and east sides. The bellstage is set above, featuring 2-light pointed Perpendicular windows with louvres, a cavetto-moulded cornice to a battlemented parapet, and gargoyles.

Inside, a 20th-century vestibule is located at the west end of the nave, which is characterised by a 6-bay king-post roof with moulded soffits and short, curved braces resting on 19th-century stone corbels. The narrowness of the nave and the height of the window sills suggest an original medieval structure. The 13th-century crossing was rebuilt in the 15th century and includes hollow and cyma-moulded piers, a tierceron vault supported on octagonal shafts with rosette and zoomorphic bosses, and a central circle for bells. The south transept has an arch-braced collar-rafter roof and a chamfered, pointed piscina in the south wall, with a squint offering a view into the chancel. The north transept boasts a plastered, Tudor-arched, barrel-vaulted ceiling; one section now forms the vestry, and a benefactions board on the west wall records the 1841 rebuilding and provision of nave pews. The chancel has a 3-bay collar-truss roof, containing good 17th-century wainscot panelling with a rosette frieze and matching choir stalls, and a 19th-century encaustic tiled floor. A fine 17th century, chip-carved wooden altar is accompanied by a matching reredos, thought to incorporate re-used panels. A font at the west end features a 19th-century bowl. Relief-carved Royal Arms adorn the east wall of the nave. Stained glass windows date to the 1920s. Monuments include a brass in the south transept to Alis Walker, who died in 1584, and a stone panel in the chancel depicting a woman with a basket of loaves, with a late Medieval painted effigy of a woman in a restored niche and a Latin inscription. There is also a grey marble tablet in the chancel to Petri Hersent (sic), who died in 1759, alongside a collection of 18th and 19th century wall tablets.