Church Of St Thomas Of Canterbury

ST13SE COTHELSTONE CP

3/89 Church of St Thomas of Canterbury

25.2.55

GV I

Parish Church. Some C12 and C13 work, mainly C15, restored circa 1864. Red sandstone with limestone and Ham stone dressings, tiled roofs. Nave 2 bay South aisle, South porch, West tower, heated vestry North of chancel. 3-stage tower, Victorian addition of crenellated parapet between original finials below 3 square headed openings and string course, Decorated 2-light bell-openings, diagonal buttresses, stair turret with cornical stone spire in North-east corner. 2-light Perpendicular windows in South front, 3-light at East end and North-west end of nave, 4-light to North-east. Porch with moulded pointed arch, piscina inside, pointed arch doorway into nave. Interior: rendered. Norman pillar in South aisle with Perpendicular arcades, Western respond a moulded corbel circa 1200. Good carved bench ends C16. Very fine Perpendicular octagonal font with traces of paint and early C17 carved wooden pulpit with contemporary wooden 3 bay arcade forming lecturn. Painted and gilded stone tablets in chancel, on right to John Stawell died 1661 with split pediment, putti and apron, simpler version to left John Stawell died 1603. In South chapel two fine tombs; Sir Mathew de Stawell, died 1379, and his wife Elizabeth, the latter has 2 squirrels at her feet and an angel at her head, York stone with traces of colour; Sir John Stawell, died 1603, and his wife, in alabaster. Fragments of good medieval painted glass with figures of saints in the upper lights of the South aisle windows and at South-west end of nave. (West and North windows by Clayton and Bell, 1865.) A fine collection of fittings and memorials in a largely unaltered interior. (SANHS Proceedings vol 44, 1898; G Stanwell, History of a Quantock Family, 1910) photograph in NMR).

Listing NGR: ST1813931847