Church of St. Thomas a Becket

The appearance of the interior is a very remarkable and complete survival of an extremely early Norman Revival scheme of decoration in a pre-ecclesiological interior. It is in fact a Georgian preaching box plan with Norman enrichments and as such is probably unique from the early 1830s. This must reflect both Wyatt's interest in and respect for the C12 Norman work and his determination to match its character. The nave is plastered and painted with a wide span king post roof with additional queen struts, close boarded above. Fine late Norman style chancel arch of two orders with outer dogtooth, but the colonnettes are renewed. Remarkable timber galleries of 1832 cantilevered from the wall on large carved brackets and with a continuous Norman arcade as a front. Pews and pulpit of the same period, of differing elaboration all complete. Two fonts, a plain C15 one in the baptistery and a disused one with C19 interlace stem and charming possibly recut Romanesque bowl. The only alteration to the nave is the partitioning off of part of the west end. The chancel has stripped stone walls with largely recut rere-arches and an arch-braced collar-beam roof. The east wall can clearly be seen to be a late Victorian rebuild. Arcaded Norman style altar frontal. East window of 1957 by Celtic Studios.

Built mainly of red sandstone, but with repairs and refacing in much paler buff sandstone. Originally squared coursed semi-ashlar, but now much worn apart from the repairs. Welsh slate roofs. Aisleless nave with west door in semi-porch, west bellcote, chancel with south porch into vestry. Two storey nave with a cill band for the upper windows. West semi-porch with three orders of ¾ columns set within a flat topped side buttressed stone structure. There is some genuine Norman work here, the orders, but the original door to the church was the north one so this must be a Wyatt invention perhaps reusing the orders from the north door where they have been replaced with definite C19 work. Above the porch is an arched window and above that a clock in a circular stone frame. A Prichard-Seddon type bell-cote perches on the gable apex. This has a single bell in an east-west opening and a pyramid slate roof with windvane above. The north wall has corner buttresses, a small arched window at the west end (introduced in 1832) and a large central doorway with Victorian colonnettes but the original arches, Victorian door. This door has 1832 pews built against it on the inside so it was probably closed up then. Two arched windows on the upper floor flank the doorhead and another to the east, continuous cillband. Steeply pitched roof above. The chancel has a Victorian Norman style door, a central buttress and two replaced windows. The east end has buttresses on either side and a Victorian 3-light window with plain arched lights and dripmould. Lower roofline than nave which allows the nave to have a small arched window in the peak of the gable. Both nave and chancel gables have apex crosses. The south wall of the chancel is similar to the north but is partly covered by the vestry which is single storeyed in a matching Norman style and has an elaborate arched priest's door facing west and a decorative corbel table, roof hidden behind parapet. The south wall of the nave repeats the north, but without the central doorway.