Church Of St Katherine

The Church of St Katherine in Great Bedwyn is an Anglican parish church, originally built as an estate church for the Tottenham estate. It was designed in 1861 by T.H.Wyatt for Mary Caroline Herbert, 2nd Marchioness of Ailesbury. The church was substantially reconstructed in 1952 following an explosion at a nearby ammunition store. It is constructed of flint with Bath oolite banding and has a tiled roof. The architectural style is Florid Decorated.

The church consists of a nave and north aisle, a south porch under a steeple, north and south transepts, and a short chancel with an apse. The windows have two lights with foiled roundels in their heads, except for the three-light west window and the two-light windows in the polygonal apse. The tower has three stages, with gabled buttresses and a quatrefoiled parapet rising to a broach spire with small high lucarnes. An iron balustrade runs along the ridge of the chancel, and cast iron railings enclose the steps leading to the vault at the east end.

Inside, the nave has five bays, with the north arcade now blocked to create a meeting room. The two eastern bays are combined, separated by an openwork geometric stone screen that provides access to the transepts. The nave features an open timber roof with a king post on a collar, cusped brackets to wall shafts, and decorative corbels. The transepts each have one bay, with a three-light window to the south and a rose window and two low lancets to the north. The chancel is raised by three steps and accessed via an arch supported on elaborate vine leaf corbels. An arcaded gallery extends from the chancel to the pulpit on the north side. A door leads to the vestry on the south. Two stained glass windows remain in the apse. A marble communion rail sits on two steps. Encaustic tiles cover the floors throughout.

Notable fittings include a lobed limestone font, located centrally in the nave, supported on five columns, and a corbelled pulpit with a trefoiled arcade on marble colonnettes and inlaid marble panels. A memorial wall tablet in the east wall of the nave, dated 1892, commemorates Mary Caroline Herbert, 2nd Marchioness of Ailesbury, and features a gilded zinc figure within a shallow niche set against an elaborate metal tree. A memorial to Chandos, 6th Marquess, is located in the south transept. A tall brass memorial depicting George Brudenell Bruce is on the north wall of the nave, dated 1878. The church is constructed from limestone and slate.