Church of St Thomas a Becket

Church of St Thomas a Becket

The church is built of squared blocks of coarse red sandstone, with smaller quantities of conglomerate and fine-grained limestone in grey and red. All masonry is laid in snecked courses, though the Victorian restoration work of 1853 can be distinguished by its regular, rhythmical setting compared to the irregular earlier work. Medieval dressings are in sandstone whilst Victorian ones are in Bath stone. The roofs are covered in concrete tiles.

The building comprises a nave with north aisle only, a misaligned chancel separated from the nave by a square tower on the same alignment as the chancel, a square projecting stair turret on the north side, a two-storey south porch, and a vestry against the north wall of the chancel.

The south wall has three bays with the two-storey porch in the centre. The porch is probably 15th century and has a two-centred arch with dripmould and a flat-topped Perpendicular window above with cusped heads and two quatrefoils in the top corners, with dripmould over. The gable is coped with an apex cross. The return walls are blind, though there is evidence of an east window having existed. Diagonal corner buttresses support the porch, which was originally taller. On either side are two-light Decorated style windows in three-centred heads with central quatrefoils, repeated three times on the wall of the north aisle. The west wall has uneven coped gables. The west window of the nave is larger and more elaborate than that of the aisle, though similarly designed with two lights and cusped heads.

The square tower has three stages with a string course between the second and third. It has quoins and Victorian stepped buttresses at each corner. The ground stage on the north side is hidden by lean-to sheds, while the south wall has an inserted medieval window. The second stage has slit windows on both north and south sides. The bell stage has a small opening on each face, though these are largely obscured by the clock face. A castellated parapet on brackets crowns the tower. The stair turret, with only one visible slit window, stands higher than the tower and is also castellated.

The chancel has a Victorian vestry with a two-light window on the north wall and a small window to the chancel itself. The south wall has a two-light Decorated window with quatrefoil heads and a priest's door with a hollow chamfered surround. The east wall has a three-light window with triple quatrefoils over trefoil-headed lights. The gable is coped with an apex cross.

The nave, aisles and tower are plastered and painted, whilst the chancel was stripped in 1927. The interior has a three-bay two-centred arcade with arch moulding dying into octagonal piers. The nave has an unceiled barrel roof, the chancel has an arch-braced collar beam truss, and the aisle has a simple roof; all date from the 1853 restoration. The chancel roof rests on six corbel stones carved as heads, possibly recut medieval ones.

All furnishings are Victorian or later. The pipe organ was presented by Captain Liddell of Shirehnewton Hall in 1908. The north aisle furnishings date from 1967, and the reredos was introduced from St Woolos Cathedral in 1968. The church contains six bells: three dated 1756 and one added in 1918. All were restored and re-hung in a new frame in 1997 when two new bells were added. The clock is a memorial to the First World War.