Church Of St Peter

ST0740 WILLITON CP

10/273 Church of St Peter

22.5.69

GV II*

Parish church. Medieval chapel rebuilt, early C16 windows reset in South aisle added 1810, rest rebuilt 1856-9, bell-cote added 1896. Mid C19 work by C E Giles. Squared red sandstone rubble, uncoursed, quoins, Bath stone dressings, slate roofs, coped verges. West porch, bell-cote West end, 4 bay nave, North aisle, North East vestry, South aisle, South East chapel, chancel. Stone gabled bell-cote centre of 3 gables on West end, central stepped buttress flanked by lancets above single storey gabled porch with kneelers, chamfered plinth, pointed arch inner doorway, ribbed door, Medieval iron work. Left C19 2-Light window, right 2-light cinquefoil-headed hollow chamfered mullioned window under square hood mould, 3 similar on South front, C19 arched windows to chapel, another C16 mullioned window South side of chancel, 3-light East window, fisheye window in gable end of vestry, 3-light shouldered mullioned window below, North front cinquefoil-headed door and 2-light window to vestry, large stepped buttress at junction with aisle linked to similar at West end by projecting plinth forming seat, two 2-light windows left and one right of gabled North porch carried on deep curved brackets with larger ovolo moulded plinth, all with chamfered corners, double gate, pointed arched plank inner door. Interior: rendered. Mid C19 roofs arch braced nave, scissor truss aisles, barrel vaulted chancel, and chancel arch with decorative capitals. Circular piers without bases in South aisle, others C19. Font, alabaster dated 1666. Lectern, 3 bays of cinquefoil-headed tracery perhaps from the rood screen removed in 1856. Poor Box dated 1680. Early C17 chest. Altar table in South aisle probably C17. This was a chapel of ease and did not become a parish church until the C18. (Buckler drawing of earlier church in Local History Library, Taunton; Armstrong, The Parish of St Peter Williton, 1982).

Listing NGR: ST0754740750