Church of St Dingat

Church of St Dingat

A parish church of modest proportions, very attractively sited, which although now mostly of 19th-century construction retains something of its irregular medieval character. The building is constructed of sandstone and conglomerate rubble (known as "pudding-stone") brought to courses, except the tower which is regularly coursed; it has freestone dressings and graduated stone slate roofs. The plan consists of a relatively low nave with a south porch and an added transept at the east end of its north side, a lower chancel, and a three-stage west tower.

The west tower has diagonal buttresses, a cornice with sunk moulding, and stepped battlements. It features a large two-centred arched and double-chamfered west doorway with a hollow-moulded hoodmould. The second stage has a trefoil-headed single-light window. The slightly set-back belfry stage is defined by string-courses and contains a two-centred arched belfry window of two trefoil lights with a quatrefoil in the head. The south side has a square-headed window of two trefoil lights to the first stage but is otherwise the same. The north and east sides have only cusped lancet belfry windows.

On the nave's south side is a Victorian gabled porch with medieval-style timber-framed superstructure including arch-bracing to a brattished tie-beam and cusped bargeboarding. The inner doorway is two-centred and arched. To the left is a single-light window with Perpendicular tracery. To the right is a small two-centred arched window of two trefoil lights with a quatrefoil in the head. Further right is a large square-headed three-light window with cusped ogee-headed lights and shallow Perpendicular-style tracery in the head. At a high level to the right of this is a very small cusped-ogee arched window reproducing the lighting of a former rood loft. The chancel has a 19th-century two-centred arched priest door and a window of two trefoil lights, plus a large three-light east window with tracery.

On the north side the nave has three Victorian lancet windows with trefoil tracery. The transept at its east end has a two-centred arched north window with intersecting tracery and a very small two-centred arched doorway in its west wall.

The interior contains a simple nave with a good medieval-style five-bay crown-post collar-rafter roof. The rafters of the two western bays are exposed while the others have a wagon-roof board ceiling. There is a moulded two-centred tower arch and a similar chancel arch. The chancel has scored stucco lining to the walls and two arch-braced roof trusses.

The north transept, which effectively serves as the Bosanquet chapel, contains four benches with poppy-head bench-ends. Its east and west walls are lined with seven monuments commemorating various members of the Bosanquet family of Dingestow Court, dating from 1806 to 1975. The principal monuments are: a white marble tablet on the west wall in a Gothick frame with a long inscription commemorating Samuel Bosanquet of Forest House in Essex and Dingestow Court, died 1806; a large Gothic arch in the east wall containing a standing monument with a seated figure of Faith comforting a grieving woman collapsed across her lap, commemorating the Right Honourable Sir John Bernard Bosanquet, died 1847; and a monument to Samuel John Anson Bosanquet, Lieutenant RNVR, only son of Sir Ronald and Lady Bosanquet, killed on active service in 1944 aged 33, who was father of the present owner of Dingestow Court. The south wall of the nave contains a monument to Samuel Richard Bosanquet, died 1882.