Church of St Katharine

The Church of St Katharine is a Grade II* listed building, possibly originally stuccoed and colourwashed, but now thickly roughcast in grey cement. It features a four-stage tower with angle buttresses, a stone plinth, and a Bath stone parapet that is pierced with quatrefoils and formerly had angle pinnacles. The tower includes plain pointed recesses for the west door and west window, which has 1867 tracery, as well as roundels and a clock on the third stage, and plain paired louvred bell-lights at the top. There is a lean-to on the south side and a door on the north side. The church has seven-bay aisles with rubble stone buttresses, five of which are original and two are a matching copy from 1906. The north aisle has a blank west end window, and the clerestorey windows feature 1867 tracery. The chancel has a large five-light east window.

Inside, the church has an unusual and attractive stripped Gothic plastered interior with quadripartite vaulting in the nave and aisles, as well as under the tower. The nave piers are octagonal and rise without capitals to a thick clerestorey band from which the vault springs. There are plain pointed nave arches between the piers, and half octagonal piers are present on the aisle walls. The junction with the 1906 work is marked by thickened piers. Above the tower entry, there is a gallery. The chancel features a high 15th-century style roof with arch-braced collar trusses on corbels, and there is a small chapel on the south side.

Notable fittings include a porphyry Egyptian urn intended as a font in the porch, which was rejected by Bishop Burgess, and an ashlar font from 1904 in the nave, along with a fine 19th-century wrought iron baptistry screen. The timber pulpit on an ashlar base dates from 1917. A fresco from 1934 by Sister Marabel of Wantage is located over the chancel arch. The elaborate, unpainted timber chancel screen from 1919, designed by J Coates Carter, features a coved canopy and rood. The chancel also has a carved reredos with statues from 1924 by J Coates Carter and a wrought iron screen to the south chapel. Canopied stalls and a Gothic three-seat sedilia in wood, dating from around 1830, were discovered in a dealer's shop on the East coast. The stained glass is mostly from the early to mid-20th century, with one window in the north aisle west by J Petts from 1987. A monument to the Greville family from 1850, signed by Sibson of London, is located on the east wall of the north aisle.