Church Of St Luke

Church of St Luke

This is a Grade I listed medieval parish church on the west side of Kislingbury High Street. The building dates from the 14th century and has been substantially restored and altered in subsequent centuries, notably around 1700, with the tower restored in 1717 and the spire rebuilt in 1926. The main body of the church received significant restoration and a new vestry in 1829-30, with further 20th-century work.

The church is constructed from coursed squared ironstone and limestone with ironstone and limestone dressings, and has slate roofs except for lead roofs to the aisles. It comprises a chancel, vestry, nave with north and south aisles, a south porch, and a west tower.

The two-bay chancel features a particularly fine Decorated east window with five lights and intersecting ogee tracery containing quatrefoils. The north and south windows have three lights with similar tracery. A many-moulded priest's door to the south is fitted with a hood mould and head stops. The vestry to the north has a gabled roof and a panelled door with a stop-chamfered lintel facing west. It is lit by a three-light leaded casement window to the west with a stop-chamfered wood lintel and a similar two-light window to the east. The vestry has a chamfered plinth, stone eaves, and a stone-coped gable with kneelers.

The aisles contain two-light Decorated windows to the west with reticulated tracery and three-light straight-headed windows to the north and south with chamfered stone mullions and no tracery, likely dating from around 1700. The north door has a sunk quadrant moulding with fleurons and a hood mould with head stops. The south door comprises six-panel double-leaf doors set within a many-moulded doorway decorated with ball-flowers and fleurons, and is topped by a hood mould with head stops.

The 15th-century south porch has a chamfered doorway with a four-centred head and hood mould, and two-light Perpendicular windows to the east and west with straight heads. Stone in the gable records the names of churchwardens and the date 1747, while another inscribed stone of red sandstone records a "thorough and complete repair in the years 1829 and 1830".

The three-stage west tower features a west door with chamfered jambs and lintel inscribed with churchwarden names and the date 1717, and a two-light window above with Y-tracery. The bell-openings are two-light openings with Y-tracery. The tower has diagonal offset buttresses, a battlemented parapet with corner pinnacles, and a recessed spire with two tiers of lucarnes.

The chancel has offset angle buttresses and an offset buttress between bays on the south side. It features a deep chamfered plinth string course at sill level with fleurons, plain stone-coped parapets, and a fleuron frieze at eaves level on the south side. All windows except those to the vestry have hood moulds, most with head stops.

The interior contains several notable medieval features. Canopies of former statues flank the east window. A piscina with a cusped ogee head has a hood mould, head stops, and finial. The sedilia has seats separated by shafts with foliage capitals and triangular cinquefoiled heads; the western seat is topped by a crocketed hood mould with head stops and a foliage finial. A fine door to the vestry is decorated with leaf trails, fleurons, and a hood mould with head stops. A chamfered chancel arch springs from corbel heads.

The nave has four-bay arcades with octagonal piers, moulded bases and capitals, double sunk chamfered arches, and head corbel responds. A piscina in the south aisle has a cusped ogee hood with a hood mould and crocketed pinnacles either side. The nave, chancel, and aisles have plaster ceilings.

The font is octagonal with fleurons in quatrefoils to the sides and underside of the bowl, and has a panelled stem. A chest dating from around 1500 features blind arcading and large rosettes. An 18th-century sixteen-broach brass chandelier with a dove finial hangs in the church.

The church contains several monuments. An alabaster wall monument to Reverend John Perkins, died 1728, is flanked by panelled pilasters with a carved apron and urns with flame finials, and is signed by John Hunt of Northampton. A veined marble wall monument commemorates John Jephcott, died 1743, Reverend Henry Jephcott, died 1798, and her husband, died 1801. Early and mid-19th-century wall monuments with white marble inscriptions on black marble grounds include two signed by Whiting of Northampton. The vestry door is illustrated in J.H. Parker's "An Introduction to Gothic Architecture" in editions from 1849 onwards.