Listing Text

ATHELHAMPTON
SY 79 SE

9/1 Parish Church

- II

Parish church 1861-2 by Hicks of Dorchester. Coursed rubble-stone walls
with freestone dressings. Clay-tile roof with stone gable-copings and
moulded kneelers. Gabled bellcote at west end with buttressing. Two
trefoil-headed openings, two bells, quatrefoil in head over. Nave has
buttresses with 2 set-offs at each corner. Nave has 3 windows to north,
each of two trefoil-headed lights with a quatrefoil in head (plate
tracery). West window of 2-lights with trefoil heads and a quatrefoil over
all under a super arch. The chancel has two single light lancets with ogee
trefoil heads. East window of 3-lights with trefoil heads, with trefoils
and cinquefoils over. Keeled label with head-stops. North porch with steep
gable and cross-in-wheel head. Entrance has chamfered jamb and segmental
pointed head. Inner order dies into the jambs. Doorway into nave, pointed
arch, plank door and ornamental strap-hinges, C19. Interior: nave of 4
bays with arched scissor-braced roof carried on naturalistically carved
stone corbels. Chancel arch carried on short corbelled responds, the arch
being of large trefoiled form with naturalistic foliage in the spandrels and
carved terminal bosses. Chancel roof of hammer beam construction with high
collars carried on carved capitals, corbelled. Pulpit: access through
chancel arch jamb to 3 sided corbelled stone pulpit, with a stone lectern
having carved corbel; main face has an Agnus Dei carved in spur-trefoil.
Monuments, chancel north wall, both being marble tablets with Gothic Bath
stone framing: (1) to Mary, widow of George J Wood died ... 1880 (2) to G
J Wood born Upwey 1807, died Athelhampton 1867. Stained glass, east window
in memory of Emma wife of H P de la Fontaine (crucifixion, SS Mary and
John). Nave north wall, window to Cecil de la Fontaine died 1916, (St
George and Dragon, and emblems of King's own rifle corps. Font, cylindrical
stone bowl, with carved rushes and lilies, cylindrical stem and water
holding base, later C19. Nave door, plank with ornamented iron strap hinges
and vertical iron bar adjoining. Stone carver, Burge of London. (RCHM
Dorset III, p9(1). Dorset County Chronical, 2nd January 1862).

Listing NGR: SY7710494138