Church of St Martin is a Grade I listed building in the Wiltshire local planning authority area, England. First listed on 23 March 1960. A C13 Church.

Church of St Martin

WRENN ID
weathered-foundation-hawk
Grade
I
Local Planning Authority
Wiltshire
Constituency
Salisbury MP: John Glen (Con)
Country
England
Date first listed
23 March 1960
Type
Church
Address
Church of St Martin, West Street, Barford St. Martin
OS grid reference
SU 056 313
Coordinates
51.08178, -1.92066
Source
Historic England listing

Also on this page: flood risk · radon risk · weather exposure · detailed attributes ↓

Description

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.

Local climate

Church of St Martin receives an average of 800 mm of rain a year. This makes it drier than 53% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is greater than that of 60% of listed buildings.

It experiences an average of 32 freeze-thaw cycles a year, fewer than 58% of listed buildings. Of these, 14 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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