Church of Saint Peter

Church of Saint Peter

A parish church of rubble stone with slate roofs of small silvery slates, comprising a west tower, nave, chancel, south porch and north aisle.

The plain embattled tower features moulded courses over the ground floor and under the battlements, with a pointed west door and small pointed cusped 19th-century single bell-lights. The nave and chancel have 19th-century coping and cross finials.

On the south side of the nave is a small post-medieval 2-light flush chamfered window set high to the left. A moulded segmental pointed late medieval south doorway with double studded plank doors opens into a large timber porch built on low stone walls. The porch has cusped bargeboards and retains some old timbers, including an east-side post with an attached shaft (copied on the west side) set under an arch-braced collar truss. The wind-bracing has been renewed. A large late medieval flat-headed 3-light window to the right displays cusped tracery with superimposed rood lights above a lower red stone 2-light with flat head and ogee tracery, surmounted by an upper plain post-medieval 2-light. A large stepped buttress sits at the southeast corner of the nave.

The chancel has a battered wall base. On the south wall are a 2-light window with cusped heads to the left, a narrow moulded Tudor-arched door with pyramid stops, and a large 2-light window to the right with square head and cusped lights. The east end has a 19th-century Perpendicular style pointed window with panel tracery, while the north side of the chancel features a square-headed Perpendicular cusped single light.

The north aisle, added in 1871, is constructed in rock-faced grey and purple stone with angle and centre buttresses. It has paired lancet windows at each end, two windows and a door on the north side in purple stone with stone voussoirs.

Internally, the walls are whitewashed. The west end retains an original pointed west door, now opening into the tower, with a chamfered surround and cambered rear arch. Above this is a red sandstone pointed door to the tower ringing floor with pyramid stops to the jambs.

The nave has a late 19th-century boarded roof in 4 by 4 large panels, with 19th-century renewed window rear arches. A recess with a Tudor-arched head accommodates the large south window. The 19th-century 2-bay north arcade is in Bath stone with 2-chamfer round arches on round columns. An original rood-stair doorway with segmental-pointed chamfered detail stands to the north, and the former outside rood projection remains intact, though a passage has been cut through to a vestry at the north end of the aisle, leaving the rood stairs intact only above head height. The 19th-century chancel arch in Bath stone is continuously chamfered.

The chancel roof is 6 by 4 panels, partly of late medieval date, retaining an original moulded wall-plate and some original moulded ribs. A trefoil-headed piscina decorates the south wall. The font has a hexagonal bowl with chamfer band over a deep splay, mounted on a shaft with ogee relief tracery and shields, with malt-shovel panels on the base. A pitch pine 19th-century 5-sided pulpit stands on a bracketed base, with pitch pine bench pews throughout. Late 17th or early 18th-century turned oak altar rails are present. A large carved reredos in limed oak, dated 1923, displays late Gothic style favoured by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, with figures of Saints Peter and David on opening wings flanking a centre group of the Crucifixion with Saints Mary and John. Each figure occupies a traceried niche, with the central Crucifix taller than the rest. A pitch pine screen in the aisle to the north vestry features Gothic panels with column shafts.

Monuments include a plain early 19th-century plaque in the nave north wall to William Morgan (died 1778) by Tyley of Bristol. A small Baroque monument with curved pediment and winged cherub head commemorates Frances Frampton (died 1665) and is located in the vestry. In the chancel, a 19th-century plaque marks Rev. Robert Frampton (died 1685). A rustic monument to Elizabeth Watkins (died 1806) features a broad plaque with two arched pieces over a cornice and a pair of winged cherub heads leaning towards each other. Another rustic monument to William Tyler (died 1695) displays scrolls and rope-mould around its plaque. The south wall carries a plaque to Elizabeth Morgan of The Hill, Clytha (died 1812).