Church Of St Peter And St Paul

The Church of St Peter and St Paul is a parish church largely dating from the late 14th and 15th centuries, with substantial restoration and external refacing occurring between 1854 and 1871. A 19th-century south vestry and porch are also present. The church is constructed of flint with stone dressings, featuring lead roofs to the nave and south aisle, and slated roofs to the chancel and vestry.

The church comprises a west tower, nave, south aisle, south porch, chancel, and vestry. The tall west tower has diagonal buttresses, a battlemented parapet, and a semi-octagonal stair turret at the southeast corner. The bell chamber holds large paired cusped lancet windows, single cusped lights below, and a two-light traceried window on the west face. Windows in the nave and south aisle, along with the moulded parapets, are of 14th and 15th century design, incorporating traceried windows with carved head stops to the hoodmoulds. While some old stonework remains in the window surrounds, most of the detail is 19th century. The nave features a three-light window and moulded doorway on the west end, and three similar windows and a blocked moulded doorway on the north side. The south aisle has single and three-light windows, a moulded door, and a gabled porch with carved figures of saints housed in elaborate ogee niches over the arch. A slight projection in the centre of the aisle displays a stone roundel carved with a coat-of-arms and a stylised oak tree. The chancel has similarly traceried windows: two and three-light on the north side, and a three-light window to the east with ogee cusping to a cinquefoil above. The 19th-century vestry has cusped lights and a door. The church commands an imposing position on the crest of a small hill.

The interior features clunch dressings. The tower’s arches are moulded and chamfered, using three orders to the nave and two to the south aisle, supported by semi-octagonal piers with moulded caps; the label above has reworked carved heads. A similar chancel arch rises from moulded piers, without a label. The north windows have moulded surrounds. A small cusped ogee niche is located in the centre of the north wall. The chancel has a 19th-century arched doorway to the vestry and an arch to the organ chamber. A piscina of the same period, with carved spandrels and an embattled frieze, has been much reworked. The church contains 19th and early 20th-century fittings and stained glass, along with a 1901 reredos with gilt relief panels and painted shutters. Monuments include a fine wall monument to Bridget Croke, who died in 1638, located in a recess of the south aisle. This monument is made of black and white marble and features a finely dressed effigy reclining on a sarcophagus below a coffered arch supported by paired Corinthian columns. A brass memorial commemorates Thomas and Sybell Hawtrey (1544), and a stone tablet commemorates Robert Wallis (1666).