Church of St Peter

Church of St Peter

A simple Decorated style church of Grade II* status, comprising a four-bay nave with a south porch, a shorter and narrower chancel at the east end, and a south vestry. The church is built of rubble masonry with rendered walls and freestone dressings. A slate roof with stone copings and crosses at the gable apexes tops the structure. The west end of the nave is crowned with an ashlar bellcote, while the east end features tall angle buttresses with helm caps.

Access to the church is gained through the south porch, which has an outer elliptical-arched doorway with moulded jambs. The inner doorway, dating to the 15th century, is round-headed with a chamfered surround featuring a broach stop on the right-hand jamb and a hoodmould above.

The south wall of the nave contains mid-19th-century windows. West of the porch is a single trefoil-headed light; east of the porch are two paired trefoil-headed lights set in square frames. The north wall has four windows: the easternmost is a 15th-century paired trefoil-headed window in a square frame with a moulded hoodmould, and immediately to its right is a blocked pointed-arched north doorway dating probably to the 14th century. The second window from the west end is a re-set 13th-century chamfered lancet, while the remaining windows are mid-19th-century trefoil-headed lights.

The chancel features a 14th-century east window of three trefoiled ogee lights with tracery set in a two-centred arch and a moulded label with human head stops. The north and south walls of the chancel have similarly detailed early 14th-century windows. The easternmost windows consist of paired trefoil-headed lights with trefoils in two-centred heads, each with a moulded label bearing human head stops. The westernmost windows are single trefoiled-headed lights, with a similarly detailed example in the south vestry.

The nave roof comprises four bays with exposed 19th-century rafters and arched collared trusses with braces descending to plain corbels. The chancel roof spans six bays with similarly detailed trusses but featuring cusped cross braces above the collars. The chancel is raised one step from the nave through a single hollow chamfered pointed arch with a 19th-century wooden screen. This screen has a lower section of recessed panelling separated by tall moulded columns supporting a moulded rail over a plain entablature articulated by widely spaced floriate bosses. The central part features a carved floriate four-centred arch in its upper section, with flanking bays decorated in Perpendicular style carving.

The chancel and sanctuary floors are paved with encaustic tiling. The sanctuary rail is moulded with turned balusters and trefoil pierced brackets. Beneath the window in the north wall of the chancel is a pointed-arched recess containing a 14th-century tapered gravestone decorated with a floriated cross having a circular head, flanked by a running leaf pattern on either side of the stem. The inscription reads: HIC / JACET / DD' / BARKER / CVI' / AIE PPICIET / D[EVS], broken off at the foot.

In a similar recess in the south wall is a gravestone featuring an effigy in high relief depicting a priest in mass vestments, his head resting on a cushion beneath an ogee canopy and holding a chalice in his hands. The mutilated inscription on the edge reads: +HIC / IA[C/ET / DNS / MATHEVS / AP / ELY] * / CAPELLANVUS / BEATE / MA[RIE] / * / / AIA / QCIESC/VQ / DIXERIT / P[] / AVE / MARIA / HA/BERI / QVIQVU / [CETV] / ***IES / IDVLGE/CIA / DE / RO ..., also dating to the 14th century.

The octagonal pulpit has four recessed facing panels beneath a Perpendicular style frieze and moulded cornice. The font is a circular gritstone bowl set on a square base, dating to the 12th century, with three rectangular carved panels (a fourth panel is blank). One panel displays a crude interlaced cross with Stafford knots at the intersection; another features two vertical rows of incised interlaced and loop work; the third bears a Maltese cross formed of triangular knotwork with a central ring.