Church Of St Peter And Paul

The Church of St Peter and Paul is a parish church in Harrington, built in the early and mid-14th century and the 15th century, with a tower added in 1809. The building is constructed of coursed and squared ironstone and limestone with ashlar dressings, beneath lead and slate roofs.

The church has a south tower, a nave with clerestory and aisles, a north transept, a chancel, and a south porch. The four-stage tower is built of ironstone with clasping buttresses, a plinth and three string courses, a coped parapet, and four corner pinnacles. To the south is a chamfered pointed doorway. Above, on each side, is a round-headed louvred bell chamber opening with a hood mould linked to the string course. To the north is a parapeted porch with a 15th-century three-light window with a four-centred arched head on its east side.

The four-bay nave has a hipped roof behind a parapet with coped gables and crosses. On each side are four hollow chamfered round-headed double lancets with hood moulds. The buttressed west end has a central Geometrical triple lancet with hood mould and above it an empty niche. The angle-buttressed three-bay aisles have chamfered plinths and coped parapets. Above each doorway is a segmental pointed double lancet, flanked by single mid-14th-century triple lancets with segmental pointed heads. All windows have hood moulds.

The diagonally buttressed and parapeted north transept has triple lancets with Tudor arched heads and hood moulds to the north and east. In the northern angle is a 19th-century canted parapeted stair turret. The three-bay chancel, dating from the 14th and 15th centuries, has a string course, coped parapet, and gable with cross. It has two diagonal buttresses to the east, two to the north, and a single central one to the south. The north side has a central 15th-century triple lancet with segmental head and hood mould, flanked to the left by a Tudor arched doorway with decorated spandrels, hood mould, and a beaded 18th-century plank door. The east end has a stepped sill band and a 15th-century panel-traceried triple lancet with segmental pointed head and hood mould. The south side has a 15th-century flat-headed triple window to the left and a blocked 13th-century lancet to the right, both with hood moulds.

The restored 14th-century south porch has a sill band and coped gable with gabled kneelers. The interior of the porch has two stone benches, a scissor-braced roof, and a triple roll-moulded doorway with hood mould and an 18th-century beaded plank door. The south side has a chamfered single lancet.

The church interior features 14th-century four-bay arcades with quatrefoil west piers with stiff-leaf capitals and clustered east piers with moulded capitals. The arches are double hollow-chamfered with hood moulds, mask and fleuron stops. An early 19th-century hipped roof covers the nave. The aisles have plain and hollow-chamfered arches at their east ends, that to the north with a central drop. Both have segmental-headed doorways with hood moulds and restored lean-to roofs; that to the south has moulded tie-beams.

The north transept has a double hollow-chamfered arch screened off to form a vestry, and to the south east a moulded rood stair doorway. Its restored hipped roof has a low pitch with moulded cambered tie-beams. The tower chamber contains a 13th-century piscina to the east and a four-centred arched 15th-century piscina with bracket to its right, with a restored roof and chamfered tie-beam.

The chancel has a double hollow-chamfered arch containing a restored late 14th-century traceried and crested screen. Its plain low-pitched roof was restored in the 19th and late 20th centuries.

Church fittings include roll-topped stalls and benches, Gothic desks, an oak lectern, and an octagonal traceried pulpit, all dating from the 19th century. An octagonal font rests on a round stem with three round flanking shafts.

Memorials include a limestone chest tomb with shields in lozenge panels and a canopy with coffered jambs and soffit containing brass figures, crest and inscription to Laurence Saunders from 1545. A large high-quality remodelled alabaster wall monument features central panels with facing kneeling figures flanked by shallow niches containing allegorical figures, with a crest above flanked by decorated spandrels, commemorating the Saunders family from 1588. A part of a 16th-century brass with arms and inscription survives. Later monuments include a large pedimented marble and slate tablet from 1831 and a marble war memorial tablet from 1919.