Church Of St Thomas A Becket

The Church of St Thomas a Becket is an Anglican parish church situated in East Coulston village. It dates to the 12th century, with significant alterations in the 14th, 17th, and 19th centuries, and was restored in 1868 by Richard Gane of Trowbridge. The building is constructed of rubble stone and brick, with a Welsh slate roof.

The church consists of a nave, a west doorway, a north vestry, a north transept, and a chancel. The west end of the nave has a 19th-century Tudor-arched doorway with double doors, over which is a string course leading to a probable 17th-century three-light mullioned and transomed window. A brick gable sits above the window, flanked by diagonal buttresses. A single bell hangs on the west gable, sheltered by a gabled canopy. A blocked 12th-century doorway is located on the south side of the nave, displaying crocketed capitals, a missing shaft, a blank tympanum, and a roll-moulded round arch. Buttresses with offsets are positioned to either side, and a two-light 19th-century mullioned casement window is set to the right. The chancel, with a lower roofline, features two 19th-century geometric-style windows with hoodmoulds, a three-light geometric east window with a coped verge and cross finial, and a blocked pointed opening on the north side; one further 19th-century two-light geometric window is also present.

The 14th-century north vestry has a square-headed light to the east and a reset cusped window head. Diagonal buttresses feature on the north side, alongside a three-light 19th-century mullioned casement within a partly blocked opening. A small gable vestry to the right has a two-light recessed chamfered mullioned casement and a diagonal buttress.

Inside, the nave has a 19th-century, 2 1/2-bay roof supported by stone corbels, reinforced in 1935, as well as stone floors. A pointed late Medieval doorway leads to the 19th-century vestry, possibly a former church entrance. The north transept contains a wide, continuously chamfered pointed arch, displaying traces of painted decoration on its east jamb, and a plastered barrel vaulted ceiling. A roll-moulded pointed piscina is set into the south wall. The 19th-century chancel arch, with attached shafts and keel moulding, is set within a 19th-century wall featuring quatrefoil decoration. The 19th-century chancel roof is partially obscured by a more recent boarded ceiling. A roll-moulded pointed piscina is retained on the south wall, sitting on a 1728 marble floor. The church contains stained glass from the 1860s in the east window, a brass plaque detailing the 1868 restoration, pews from the Church of St John the Baptist in Colerne, a 12th-century cylindrical stone font with simple blind arcading, a grey and white marble wall tablet on the north wall of the chancel commemorating Jacobus Meredith (died 1746), a floor brass to James Meredith, the rector who died in 1712, as well as brasses on the south wall of the nave to Elizabeth Godolphin (died 1667) and Thomas Lambe (died 1741). A south transept was removed in 1842.