Church History

The church of ST. ANDREW consists of chancel 31 ft. by 16 ft. 6 in., central tower 11 ft. 3 in. by 10 ft. 8 in., with short broach spire, clearstoried nave 43 ft. 6 in. by 15 ft. 6 in., north aisle 8 ft. 3 in. wide, and south porch 8 ft. 6 in. by 9 ft., all these measurements being internal. Externally the tower is about 2 ft. longer from north to south than from west to east, its north and south walls being nearly 4 ft. thick. The width across nave and aisle is 26 ft. The east end of the aisle, which covers the tower on its north side, is used as a vestry.

The building throughout is of rubble, and the walls internally are stripped of plaster. There is a plain parapet to the aisle, but elsewhere the roofs are eaved and of low pitch. The chancel is covered with modern slates; the nave is leaded, and the porch has stone slates.

About 1200 a north aisle was added to the nave, the wall of which was pierced by the existing arcade of two bays, and at the same time, or very shortly after, a new chancel was probably built round the old one. The new chancel was of the same external width as the tower, the east and west arches of which were replaced by larger pointed ones, but of these only the west arch remains unaltered. About 1220 the upper stage of the tower and the spire were added, but no other work of importance appears to have been undertaken until the 14th century, when the church was in a great measure rebuilt and assumed more or less its present appearance.

This rebuilding, or remodelling, was begun about 1340–45 by the widening and extension eastward of the aisle, which was made to overlap the tower on its north side, the intention being also to lengthen the nave westward by a bay. The work was started at the east end of the aisle and set out in four bays,  but when the north-west corner was reached and the westward extension thus begun the work was suddenly stopped. The new aisle was then probably roofed and the old west wall temporarily built up to the north wall, the rest of the work being left unfinished. At the east end the northeast corner of the nave had to be rebuilt and a new arch was cut through the north wall of the tower at its west end to give access to the extended aisle.  If, as is not unlikely, the stoppage of work was due to the Black Death (1349) its beginning cannot have been very long before the middle of the century, and it was probably about 1370 before it was resumed. The original intention may have been to rebuild the arcade to correspond with the bays of the aisle, but this was not done, though the arches appear to have been altered to a pointed shape at this time. The north-west angle of the nave was left standing and the western extension made by building a plain narrow arch against it in continuation of the arcade, the old west wall being taken down after the completion of the new one, and the western portion of the south wall of the nave rebuilt. Very shortly after the remainder of the south wall also was rebuilt, a buttress having first been set out near to its east end, where probably the old wall was becoming insecure, and the porch and clearstory erected.

The chancel was also rebuilt and enlarged in the latter half of the 14th century, possibly at the same time as the nave, or shortly after. It was widened by building the new south wall outside the old one, covering the south-east angle of the tower, but the west wall was rebuilt on the old foundations. Of the former chancel nothing remains.

No structural changes of importance were made in the 15th century, though a new window appears to have been inserted in the aisle, and a rood-loft, of which traces remain,  was probably first erected. In the 16th or early 17th century,  new windows were inserted in the bell-chamber and in the lower stage of the tower, and the east tower arch was remodelled. The porch is said to have been rebuilt in 1622, and in 1699 a singing gallery was erected at the west end of the nave.  The chancel was restored in 1863, and the nave in 1864. At a later restoration, in 1880, the porch was again rebuilt. 

The chancel has a modern pointed east window of three lights with reticulated tracery, but the lateral windows, two on each side, are of the 14th century and square-headed. They are of three trefoiled lights, placed high in the walls  and without hood-moulds, those on the south side having geometrical quatrefoil tracery, the other with curved, or flowing trefoils. The hollow moulding below the eaves is enriched with ball-flower. The eastern angles have diagonal buttresses to about half the height of the walls, and along the east end is a sill string chamfered on both edges.  

There is a plain pointed doorway in the south wall, and in the usual position internally an ogee-headed piscina with fluted bowl and triple sedilia with plain continuous chamfered arches. The modern open timber roof is of four bays. At the south-west angle of the chancel outside is cut the date 1707, recording some repairs done in that year. 

The pointed east arch of the tower opening into the chancel is of two orders, the outer square and the inner chamfered, but remains as altered in postReformation times, with moulded imposts. The 13thcentury west arch of the tower is of the same character with original chamfered imposts, and the chamfers of the inner order ending in broach stops on the east side.  Both arches are without hood-moulds. The later arch between the tower and the vestry is of three chamfered orders dying into the wall. Externally the tower consists of a lofty lower stage and a bell-chamber, the windows of which, as already stated, are later insertions and of two rounded lights; the lower window in the south wall is of the same character.

On the north side the 12th-century walling remains up to the bell-chamber string, but on the south it reaches not quite so far;  the quoins of the north-east angle stand free,  while those of the south-east, though covered at the angle, are seen from the chancel. The tower is without buttresses or a vice, access to the bell-chamber being by a doorway high in the north wall, reached by a ladder from the vestry. The spire is only about 20 ft. high and rises directly from a simple moulding without the intervention of a corbeltable or cornice, and has plain angles and a roundheaded gabled light in each of the cardinal faces; it terminates in a stone finial and cock vane.

The late 12th-century nave arcade is of ironstone and consists of two wide arches of two moulded orders,  with hood-moulds towards the nave, springing from canted responds and a dividing octagonal pillar, all with moulded bases and water-leaf capitals.  The outer order has a keel-shaped edge-roll and the inner order a deep soffit hollow between two bold keelshaped mouldings.  The narrower 14th-century western arch is of two orders, without hood-mould, the outer square and the inner chamfered, on chamfered imposts.

With the exception of a re-used lancet window, now blocked, at the west end of the aisle, the nave and aisle externally are almost wholly of the 14th century. The south doorway has a pointed arch of two orders, the inner hollow chamfered and the outer moulded, the moulding being carried down the jambs in the form of attached filleted shafts with impost capitals; the hood-mould has head-stops. On either side the doorway in the south wall is a square-headed window of three lights similar in character to the north-east window of the chancel, with flowing trefoil tracery, but the large three-light pointed west window is modern. In the upper part of the south wall are two widely spaced  square-headed two-light clearstory windows, and the hollow moulding below the eaves is enriched with ball-flower.

On the north side the same disposition of clearstory windows obtains, but the eaves moulding is plain. The low-pitched nave roof is of four bays, the two western bays, except for the tie-beam,  being old, with curved wind-braces.

The aisle has a keel-shaped string at sill level, and in each of the three eastern bays is a pointed window of three trefoiled lights, the first having reticulated tracery, the second, the 15th-century window already mentioned, with vertical tracery, and the third a modern copy of the first. In the westernmost bay is a restored pointed two-light window with quatrefoil in the head. The hollow moulding below the parapet is enriched by widely spaced carved heads.

The font is modern and in the style of the 14th century. The pulpit and reading desk are also modern, but they embody portions of a 15th-century oak screen with trefoiled openings. An alabaster grave slab, taken from the chancel floor during the last restoration, now forms the altar slab.

In the chancel is a large 14th-century coffin lid with matrices of a cross and the head of a priest, bearing the inscription in Lombardic characters: ‘. . . erd de Wileby gist ici Deu d. sa alme eyt mercy.’ There is also a fragment of a second coffin lid with stem of a cross.

A mural monument in the nave records the burials in the church of a number of lords of the manor and their descendants from 1650 to 1761. There are also monuments to William Roberts (d. 1726), Edward Roberts, sometime rector of Thistleton (d. 1739), and other members of the Roberts family, and to three men of the parish who fell in the war of 1914–18.

The registers before 1812 are as follows: (i) baptisms 1558–1684, marriages 1557–1677, burials 1556– 1678; (ii) marriages 1686–1753, burials 1678–1812; (iii) baptisms 1684–1812; (iv) marriages 1754–1812. The first volume was rebound in 1884. The entries before 1599 are copies.

With acknowledgement to British History Online