Church Of St Leonard

The Church of St. Leonard is an Anglican parish church, now redundant. It largely dates to the 12th century, with 14th-century elements and a substantial rebuilding in 1860. The church is constructed of flint and limestone, with a fishscale tiled roof. The plan includes a small nave and chancel, with an entrance leading to a south tower. The two-stage tower has a chamfered pointed doorway and diagonal buttresses. The upper stage has a cusped lancet window with pierced decorative louvres on each side, a moulded square sundial above the south window, and a moulded eaves cornice to a pyramidal tiled roof. The south side of the chancel has a plain chamfered pointed doorway and a 3-light 14th-century east window with intersecting tracery, a coped verge, and a cross finial. The north side of the chancel has a 19th-century two-light square-headed window. The north side of the nave features two 19th-century two-light square-headed windows and a blocked 12th-century round-arched doorway with a tympanum and rosette-decorated lintel. The west end has a 14th-century three-light window with intersecting tracery, diagonal buttresses, and a coped verge with a cross finial.

Inside, the chamfered pointed inner doorway has a 19th-century hoodmould, above which is a beaded circular tablet with a relief-carved Agnus Dei, believed to be from the 12th century. The nave has a three-bay 19th-century roof with arch-braced collar trusses. Other features include a small square piscina on the north wall, a 19th-century octagonal stone pulpit, a 12th-century cylindrical stone font with a brass cover, 19th-century pews, and a cavetto-moulded pointed niche on the north wall. The chamfered chancel arch has chamfered square responds, and the chancel has a 19th-century roof with two collar trusses and a tesselated floor, along with a large 19th-century ogee-headed piscina on the south wall, and an east window with grissaille-style glass flanked by prayer boards. A fine baroque marble wall monument on the north wall of the nave commemorates George Howe, who died in 1647. It features a broken segmental pediment with heraldic arms, relief-carved depictions of George Howe and his wife Dorothy, and demi-figures of their children in an oval recess, decorated with festoons and drapery. A slate panel on the south wall lists the five children of Sir George Grobham Howe, who died between 1660 and 1662. The church contains two bells, dated 1725 and 1766. The 1860 rebuilding was funded by Alfred Morrison of Fonthill. The church was declared redundant in 1973 and is now under the care of the Redundant Churches Fund. The church shows stop-chamfered spine beams with run-out stops.