Parish Church of St Giles

The Parish Church of St Giles is a late Perpendicular Gothic church, largely dating from the 15th century, with earlier elements and 19th-century additions and alterations. The building is constructed of coursed and squared stone with leaded roofs.

The church features a prominent six-stage west tower with clasping buttresses, decorated with blind traceried arcading and quatrefoil bands. The tower includes outer and central pilasters, canopied niches holding statues, paired ogee windows (mostly blind) on the fourth and fifth stages, paired ogee lights to the bell chamber, crocketted pinnacles to the parapet, and heavy octagonal angle turrets also adorned with blind tracery. The aisles are defined by tall buttresses topped with crocketted pinnacles. Deep, moulded arched doorways are located in the northwest and northeast bays, each featuring a statue within a canopied niche. A plainer, south porch was added in 1822 and forms the western bay of the aisle. The aisles have four-light Perpendicular windows, while the clerestory windows are two-light, with a single Decorated window in the southeast aisle. The chancel is of Perpendicular style, with hood moulds and elaborate corbels above the three and four-light windows.

The nave incorporates an aisled western bay (an ante-nave) added during a 15th-century remodelling. A Decorated arcade of six bays features octagonal piers and double chamfered arches. The nave roof has cambered trusses with cusped braces and decorated spandrels. A square, panelled ceiling is present, with bosses at the principal points and in the centre of each truss. Heavy stone corbels are positioned between the arches, some supporting statues, believed to have been added or replaced in 1867. The chancel arch is hollow chamfered and rests on corbels with a traceried canopy forming the lower part of the respond. This area was formerly the east wing, and remnants of its tracery are visible. A depiction of the Day of Judgement was uncovered above the arch in 1867. A low wrought iron chancel screen, made by the Davies brothers, is also present. The chancel has a shallow kind post roof and an apsidal sanctuary containing richly worked stone sedilia and a reredos by Thomas Graham Jackson, dating from 1914, with statues in canopied niches on either side. A stone effigy of Bishop Bellot, who died in 1596, is incorporated into the sill of the south window. A north aisle chapel was dedicated and furnished as a war memorial chapel in 1919.

The church’s stained glass includes medallions from a 1841 scheme by David Evans in the north chancel, east windows from 1914 by James Powell and sons, and three north aisle windows by Tower (dated 1898, 1910, and 1913). Glass by Burne-Jones, originally from a demolished church, was removed in 1988. A West tower window contains a memorial to the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, designed by Clayton and Bell in 1894. South aisle windows are from a series, largely by Tower (dating from 1891, 1902, and 1920), with one signed by Kempe.

The church also contains notable monuments, including a wall tablet by Roubiliac to Thomas and Arabella Middleton (died 1754 and 1756), and others by Westmacott (William Lloyd, died 1793, and Ann Fryer, died 1817), P M Van Gelder, C Bromfield, and Roubiliac (Mary Myddleton, died 1742).