Church Of St Matthew

The Church of St Matthew is an Anglican parish church located in Coates Village. It has Norman origins, with the nave dating from the 13th century and the tower from the 15th century. The church was restored in 1861 by John Norton. It is constructed from coursed rubble stone and features stone slate roofs with coped verges and cross finials.

The building includes a west tower, a nave with a south aisle, a projecting south porch, and a north transept, along with a chancel that has a small north vestry. The tower consists of three stages with string courses and carved heads on the top string course. It is supported by stepped diagonal buttresses that culminate in pilaster strips and crocketed pinnacles at the corners of the embattled parapet. The tower has louvred belfry windows with ogee crocketed arches and pinnacles. The west face features a square-headed doorway at the base, a three-light Perpendicular window above it, and a niche on the second stage. The south-west corner has an anthropophagus and a niche in the buttress. There is a stair tower in the south-east angle. The south porch is flanked by two-light Perpendicular windows with square hoodmoulds, and it contains an inner Norman doorway with a chevron arch, along with a three-light Early English lancet at the east end of the south aisle. The east window is decorated with flowing tracery, and there are also two-light windows on the north side of the nave.

Inside, the church has a three-bay nave arcade supported by cylindrical columns with moulded round capitals and water-holding bases. There is a trefoiled piscina from the 13th century in the south aisle. The tall arch leading into the tower features a quadri-partite vault and a Tudor doorway to the stair. The baptistery in the south-west corner of the aisle has a stone seat around two walls and a Norman font. The chancel includes a double-stepped round Norman arch on the north wall and an Early English priest's door on the south side. A tile and mosaic reredos from the 19th century is present, and some Tudor woodwork remains in the chancel screen.