Church Of St Lawrence

The Church of St. Lawrence is a parish church dating from the 13th century, with substantial rebuilding in 1853-4 by F. Preedy. It also incorporates a 15th-century tower. The church is constructed of limestone ashlar with a plain tiled roof. The plan is of a nave and chancel, undivided and without aisles, a west tower, and a south porch.

The nave and chancel walls are buttressed, with angle buttresses at the east end, and feature a moulded string beneath the sills that continues over the buttresses. The eaves are moulded from the 19th century. Decorated Gothic north and south doorways are present in the nave, featuring moulded trefoil heads. The nave has three trefoil-headed lancets, and there are two Decorated 2-light windows with geometric tracery in the chancel side walls. A four-light Decorated east window, all 19th-century restorations, occupies the east wall. A Decorated priest’s door is located on the south side, leading to a 19th-century porch with a small 2-light window above the arch. The three-stage Perpendicular tower has diagonal buttresses; a square stair turret is situated on the north side, and the tower is topped with a crenellated parapet which has finely moulded crocketed pinnacles and corner gargoyles. A three-light Perpendicular window is located on the west side, with two-light openings to each bell chamber wall.

The interior of the church has whitewashed walls, except for the east wall which features a stone arcaded reredos behind the surviving stone 'mensa' . A 19th-century timber roof is divided by a large tie-beam truss supported by carved stone corbels, with four bays each to the nave and chancel, arched braced trusses, cusped strutting, and curved wind braces. A trefoil-headed piscina and two square-headed aumbries are located in the south chancel wall. A mortuary tomb dated 1880 by Gaffin is present in the north side, along with a marble memorial to Pharamus Fiennes, dated 1708, and an inscription tablet surmounted by a heraldic shield flanked by flaming gadrooned urns. Below is an Elizabethan brass memorial to William Hodges, who died in 1590. An upper rood loft doorway survives in the south wall. There is also a late 17th-century hexagonal timber pulpit, 19th-century choir stalls and pews, two carved stone figures beneath 14th-century canopies from the original east wall now situated in the chancel. The font in the nave has a 20th-century bowl on a 13th-century base with attached Early English shafts. Stained glass is present in all windows, dating from 1854 and 1867, by Wailes. A medieval stone coffin lies below and outside the south chancel windows. The church is located next to the site of a former manor house and, like other towered churches below the escarpment, possesses landscape importance.