Church Of St Lawrence

Church of St Lawrence

This is a medieval parish church of the 13th to 15th centuries, located on the south side of Moat Lane in Towcester. The building was substantially restored in 1835-6 and again in 1883 by architect J.L. Pearson. The nave roof dates from 1958. The church comprises a 5-bay chancel, vestry, north and south chancel chapels, nave with north and south aisles, a south porch, and a west tower. The walls are built of coursed limestone and ironstone rubble with coursed squared limestone, and the roofs are lead.

The chancel features a 5-light Perpendicular east window and 3-light Decorated windows to north and south with curvilinear tracery. The clerestory has 3-light windows with cinquefoil-headed lights and 4-centred heads. Rectangular crypt windows to the north-east and south-east have chamfered stone surrounds. The vestry to the north has a chamfered Tudor-arched north door and a 2-light chamfered mullion window to the right with cut spandrels. The chancel chapels continue the aisles and overlap the chancel. The north chapel has a 3-light east window with simple 18th or early 19th-century tracery with crown glass quarries, and 3-light windows to the north with cinquefoil-headed lights and 4-centred heads. The south chapel has a 4-light east window with a Tudor-arched head, wide outer cinquefoil-headed ogee-arched lights and inner pointed trefoil-headed lights. The north aisle has a chamfered pointed arched door to the west in a wider part-blocked doorway, and a projecting stair turret stands between the north aisle and chancel chapel, formerly serving a gallery of the rood screen. The south porch has a many-moulded south door with hood mould, and a doorway with hollow chamfer and sunk quadrant inner moulding and hood mould. The porch features 2-light Decorated windows to north and south with pointed trefoil-headed lights and 4-centred heads.

The tall 3-stage west tower has a many-moulded west doorway with fleurons to a deep hollow-chamfered surround with an ogee-arched hood mould within a panelled recess with a moulded straight-headed surround. The original double-leaf studded doors remain. Above is a 3-light Perpendicular window. The walling at this level is banded with limestone. A small 2-light window to the south of the middle stage has cinquefoil-headed lights. The bell-chamber has 2-light openings. Diagonal buttresses and a battlemented parapet crown the tower. Plain stone-coped parapets run along the rest of the church. The chancel has set-back buttresses, and offset buttresses serve the south aisle and chapel and the south-west angle of the south aisle. All windows except those to the crypt have hood moulds.

The interior reveals the building's architectural history in detail. The chancel features 17th-century tie-beam trusses and purlins. The sanctuary is raised over a stone-vaulted crypt with chamfered ribs and ridge ribs and slender square piers without capitals. A tomb recess lies to the east and an aumbry to the north. Two-bay arcades between the chancel and chapels have double-chamfered arches. The northern arcade employs an octagonal pier, while the southern uses a circular pier with four circular shafts in diagonals. The mid-19th-century chancel arch incorporates two Romanesque shafts: the northern one is circular with lozenge decoration, and the southern one is octagonal with zig-zag ornament. The south chancel chapel contains a wide ogee-arched niche between the south windows with a cinquefoiled head and crocketed hood mould. This niche features a Pelican in her Piety painted on the back wall and a small image bracket just below the sill. The arch to the south aisle is double-chamfered with its innermost order resting on carved figure corbels.

The nave has 4-bay arcades with octagonal piers, polygonal responds, and double-chamfered arches. Three of these arches incorporate re-used 13th-century capitals, one decorated with waterleaf ornament. The tower arch is triple-chamfered with its innermost order on polygonal responds. An octagonal font with a panelled bowl sits on crocketed nodding ogee arches.

The stained glass includes fragments of 15th-century work in the east window of the south chapel, including arms of Archdeacon Sponne from the Talbot Inn. The east window dates from 1885, and other 19th-century stained glass windows are located in the south aisle.

The church contains several notable monuments. A table tomb of William Sponne, chaplain of Henry VI, rector of Towcester and archdeacon of Norfolk (died 1448), retains a restored effigy with a cadaver below. An alabaster wall monument to Jerome Farmore (died 1602) features small kneeling figures facing each other at a prayer desk in scalloped niches, flanked by Corinthian colonettes. A marble wall monument to Mary Hastings (died 1686) has Corinthian columns supporting volutes either side of an urn. A stone wall monument to Mary Hodges (died 1759) displays a broken segmental pediment framing an urn and is signed J.n. Middleton. A veined marble mid-18th-century wall monument to William Benson features cherubs' heads and an urn finial.