Church Of St Nicholas

The Church of St Nicholas is an Anglican parish church with origins in the 14th century, significantly restored by H Perry of Blandford in 1860. It is constructed of local grey lias stone, with dressings of Doulting stone, and has a plain clay tile roof with bands of scallop tiles, coped gables, and finials.

The church has a two-cell plan, comprising a two-bay chancel and a three-bay nave, alongside a south porch and a west tower. The chancel has a plinth, angled corner buttresses, and a 3-light east window with 14th-century style tracery and arched head-stops. A pointed, chamfered arched doorway without a label is located on the south side, in the west bay. The nave has a plinth and bay buttresses, featuring 2-light windows matching the chancel east window, with arched head-stop labels on the south and foliage stop on the north. The south porch has a coped gable with a finial, a plinth, angled corner buttresses, and a finely moulded, pointed archway with a head-stop arched label. Inside is a moulded 4-centre arched doorway leading to a 19th-century door. The three-stage tower incorporates some 14th and 15th-century fabric, with string courses, gargoyles to the uppermost stage, and a battlemented parapet screening a pitched clay tile roof to the stair exit. A moulded, almost semi-circular arched west doorway gives access, with an early door remaining. Above is a 2-light 14th-century traceried window. The tower's upper stages feature single cusped lancet windows without labels to the south face, and small 2-light 14th/15th-century traceried windows with pierced timber baffle boards. Each window has a chamfered timber central mullion and stone tracery above.

Inside, the church is largely 19th-century in character and quite simple. The chancel has a braced king-post roof truss with exposed rafters, a 14th-century piscina, a large quarry tiled floor from the 20th century, and a wide 14th-century chancel arch. The nave has similar roof trusses with concealed rafters. A narrow 14th-century tower arch is present to the west, with early bell capitals to single side shafts. Fittings include a 17th-century altar table, and a fine hexagonal tulip-bowl font with ribs to the angles, on a chamfered square plinth and base, likely dating from the 13th century. Other furnishings are of 19th or 20th-century origin. Memorials include two 18th-century Keinton slabs with incised lettering and decoration on the south wall of the nave. The first recorded incumbent was in 1312.