Priors Dean Church

Priors Dean Church is a parish church located in Priors Dean, dating from the 11th and 13th centuries, with restoration work completed in 1856. This aisleless Romanesque building may have Saxon origins and features a north porch and a western bell turret. The church has cemented walls, with two flat and one stepped buttresses on the south side, a Norman north door, and slender Victorian/Norman windows, including one original lancet and a small blocked Norman window on the south wall of the chancel. The roof is tiled and hipped at the west, topped with a stepped bell turret from 1856 that has a small broach spire. The open porch has a tiled roof supported by a timber frame on stone walls.

Inside, the church has plain walls with deep reveals and a 'Norman' chancel arch from 1856, featuring a pair of half-columns with cushion caps. At the west end, there are four massive medieval timber piers that support the bell turret, also from 1856. A notable feature of the church is the series of monuments in the chancel, which include: a wall monument with a Corinthian frame enclosing two oval recesses containing portrait busts of John Compton and his wife Jane (who died in 1653 and 1634), a similar wall monument with Ionic pilasters and a marble bust of Compton Tichborne (1637), a wall monument with a Corinthian flame enclosing a kneeling female figure and two small children dedicated to N Stoughton and Bridge Compton (1631), a classical monument with a kneeling female figure of Eliz Tichborne (1622), and a monumental brass on a floor stone for John Compton and Jane Michelborne (who died in 1606 and 1586). Additionally, there is a 'Norman' font from 1856 and a chair dated 1657.