Church Of St Martin

The Church of St Martin is an Anglican parish church dating from 1842-46, designed by G.G. Scott. A spire was added in 1876. The church is constructed of rockfaced limestone with ashlar dressings, featuring a tiled roof with bands of plain and beaver-tailed tiles. It is built in the Decorated style.

The church comprises a west tower with spire, a nave, a chancel with a north vestry, and a south porch. The gabled south porch has a moulded, pointed, chamfered doorway with attached shafts, diagonal buttresses, and a coped verge. The south side of the nave has one 2-light pointed window to the left of the porch, and two 2-light pointed windows to the right. The chancel has a blind priest’s doorway, with a 2-light pointed window on either side. The east end has diagonal buttresses and a 3-light window; the north side has a 2-light window. The vestry has a pointed north doorway and a pair of cusped ogee lancet windows, an external stack, and 2-light windows to the east and west. The north side of the nave has four 2-light windows, all with flowing tracery.

The square, three-stage west tower has diagonal buttresses and string courses. It incorporates a 2-light west window, single-light leaded windows with cusped tracery and hoodmoulds on the second stage, corner pinnacles, an octagonal bellstage with 2-light louvred windows, a cornice with gargoyles, and a recessed spire with gableted windows and a moulded finial. A polygonal stair turret with a pointed doorway is located on the south side.

Inside the church, the porch contains a screen with double doors, leading to the nave with an archway in a pointed, double chamfered form. The nave features a 4-bay hammer beam roof with stone corbels and arch-braced collar trusses. The double chamfered tower arch has attached shafts, and a screen, originally from the chancel arch, is reset here. A C14-style chancel arch is supported by triple moulded arch on compound pilasters. The chancel contains a polychrome tiled floor, a moulded pointed archway to the organ chamber, a chamfered pointed doorway to the vestry, a stone panelled reredos with a carved vine frieze, and a trefoiled piscina on the south wall. Other fittings include C19 pews and choir stalls, a polygonal stone pulpit with traceried panels, and an octagonal stone carved font near the south doorway. Monuments include a stone gothic tablet in the chancel to William Frederick Grove, the church's founder, who died in 1847, several brass plaques on the nave walls, and stained glass in the east window in memory of William Chafyn-Grove of Zeals House.

The church was commissioned and paid for by the Grove family of Zeals House, at a cost of £2000, with C. Kirk serving as the builder. It is considered a good early example of Scott’s work.