Description

TL 86 SE NOWTON

4/21 Church of St. peter
-
14.7.55
II*

Parish church. C12, C13 and C14; much restored and enlarged in 1843. In
random flint, extensively repointed, with freestone quoins and dressings. Old
plain-tiled roofs: a small pitched dormer on each side of the nave roof, and
Victorian ornamental ridge-tiles. Simple Norman south doorway, and a C12
north doorway, with keeled roll-moulding and one order of shafts with volute
capitals, incorporated into a north aisle in Victorian Romanesque style. A
small plain Norman window has also been reused at the east end of this aisle.
Early C13 chancel. 2-light ogee-headed windows to north and south, and a 3-
light east window with intersecting tracery and mouchettes. Angle buttresses
at the east end. Unbuttressed C14 tower in 3 stages: plain base; freestone
quoins, dressings and string-courses; stone facing to the crenellated parapet,
which has damaged pinnacles at the corners. A 2-light window with flowing
tracery to the lowest stage of the west face, a single cinquefoil-headed
window in the second stage, and a 2-light cusped Y-tracery window to each face
of the top stage. A canted stair-turret on the south side with a conical
roof. Very little original work survives inside: most of the fittings, and
the north arcade in Romanesque style, date from the 1843 restoration.
Extensively restored screen. A simple trefoil-headed piscina, and a stone
reredos with cinquefoil panels, in the chancel. A high canopied niche on each
side of the east window. Steeply-pitched roofs to nave and chancel: arch-
braced, with mouldings to purlins and braces; 4 bays to nave, 2 bays with
lower collars to chancel; shields at the intersections, and curious lozenge-
shaped carved bosses added later. A feature of the church are the numerous
small roundels of engraved C16/C17 Flemish glass in the nave and chancel
windows, about 75 in all, set into brightly-coloured surrounds of C19 stained
glass. These were brought 'from monasteries in Brussels' in the early C19 by
Orbell Ray Oakes, who lived at Nowton Court. Various memorial tablets on the
walls, mainly to the Oakes family; the marble monument to Elizabeth Frances
Oakes, d.1811, by John Bacon Jnr. shows a draped female figure kneeling beside
a sarcophagus.

Listing NGR: TL8633060467

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q17545469

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  Kent: West and the Weald: The Buildings of England (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Old House Handbook: A Practical Guide to Care and Repair
• 
  Liverpool: Pevsner City Guide (Pevsner Architectural Guides: City Guides)
• 
  Devon (Pevsner Buildings of England)
• 
  Kent: North East and East (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Warwickshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)