Church of St Margaret

Anglican parish church. Built in the late C11, with C14, C17 and mid-C18 alterations and additions. Restored 1874-76 by William Butterfield.

MATERIALS: dressed limestone with some flint under a stone-slate roof with coped verges with cross finials.

PLAN: the church is orientated west to east and comprises a nave and chancel with early –C17north porch, and late-C19 north vestry.

EXTERIOR: the two-storey north porch has diagonal buttresses, a C19 double-chamfered pointed archway, and a pair of C19 cusped ogee lancets with louvres to the first floor. In the apex of the gable is a datestone inscribed 1623 and the name of a churchwarden which is partly illegible. The nave has a pair of restored cusped ogee lancets to left of porch. The vestry is attached to the north side of chancel and has a shouldered, chamfered doorway in its north wall and a trefoiled lancet in the west. The east end of the chancel has pilaster buttresses and three chamfered round-headed windows, all C19. The south side has two C19 round-arched windows to the chancel, while the nave has a projecting C19 stone stack with cylindrical ashlar top, and a C19 window of two cusped ogee lancets and a quatrefoil. To the left (west), protected by a C19 framework with a coped gable, is a blocked doorway with a tympanum with zoomorphic carving, and attached shafts and capitals, all believed to be C11. The west end of the nave has a chamfered, trefoiled window, probably C14, and two C19 trefoiled ogee-headed lancets over.

INTERIOR: the porch has single fixed stone bench, and a chamfered Tudor-arched doorway with C19 planked door with ornamental strap hinges leads into the church. The walls of the nave are plastered with exposed dressings, and it has a plastered, shallow barrel-vaulted ceiling with two moulded tie-beams, one dated 1740. There are polychrome tiles and cast-iron heating grilles to the floor. In the south wall is a blocked rounded-arched doorway. The chancel arch has C11 carved corbels supporting a wooden arch-braced beam with pierced quatrefoils, by Butterfield. The chancel has a two-bay plaster wagon roof and there is a chamfered shouldered doorway in the south wall leading to the vestry.

FITTINGS: behind the altar is a limestone reredos with Anglo-Saxon interlaced carving; the stained glass in the east windows, in memory of Elizabeth Lady Heytesbury who died 1874, is by Alexander Gibbs; and the brass on the south wall, to John Morgan and his wife, is dated 1592. Set into the floor at the extreme west end is a worn C14 funerary slab. The octagonal marble font on a stone octagonal plinth and the organ are both C19, and the pews, pulpit and communion rail also all date from the 1870s. There is one monument at the west end, a black and white marble tablet in memory of Brouncker-Thring, buried 1787, and his family, by Harris of Bath.