"This is a pleasantly situated building, by the road bridge across the brook at the west end of this attractive village, albeit that there is almost nowhere safe to park for anyone arriving by car. The church itself includes many features of interest, yet they present themselves in a hotchpotch of styles and periods which it is almost impossible to draw together into a unified account. The oldest of these is a little Norman window in the N. wall of the chancel while the greatest number are probably Decorated, but there is really no way of describing the building except by means of an external circuit.
The church plan is unusual for except in the lean-to, nineteenth century S. vestry (by the Rev. Ernest Geldhart of Little Braxted, Essex), it is mediaeval in all its parts, yet it consists of a chancel and aisled nave, with a northwest tower in the angle between the N. aisle and nave, and a porch to the west of this, which is formed of two parts, the first aligned in the usual way (i.e. at right angles to the aisle), but with the second, more northerly section, deflected some 30° eastwards, in the direction of the village. The tour around this building will be conducted anticlockwise, beginning from the west.
The northwest tower rises in four stages to stepped battlements decorated with flushwork arches, supported by a diagonal buttress at the northwest angle and by a buttress at right angles between the tower and nave W. wall. The lancets in the three lower stages of the tower to the west suggest these parts are thirteenth century in date, although the bell-stage with stepped flushwork arches is clearly Perpendicular. The attractive three-light W. window to the nave is Decorated in style and formed of intersecting ogees with a double-cusped elongated octfoil and two large mouchettes in the head, but the Y-traceried W. window in the S. aisle alongside, is thirteenth century work again, and there is a similar S. window immediately around the corner, to the west of the aisle S. doorway, which has a fourteenth century profile. After this, continuing eastwards, there are two, two-light Decorated S. windows lighting the aisle, the first with curvilinear tracery beneath a two-centred arch and the second with reticulated tracery beneath a triangular-pointed arch. However, much finer than these, is the Perpendicular clerestory of the nave, above and behind, formed of seven two-light windows (above the apices of the four-bay S. arcade and three pairs of spandrels in between), with supermullioned tracery and split “Y”s, and with blank tracery carved in ashlar above and two tiers of flint flushwork between. This clerestory is the one part of the church that is reasonably firmly dated, for an inscription on the N. side records the names of Margaret and John French, who died in 1500, who are believed to have paid for the work. However, continuing around the church from the S. aisle E. wall, this is pierced by a three-light window with intersecting ogees that form a circle at the top, containing a quatrefoil, but it is a less assured design than the somewhat similar W. window to the nave, and it is probably neither precisely contemporary nor by the same hand. The chancel has a two-light Decorated S. window with drop tracery beneath a segmental arch, to the west of the vestry, and an externally-renewed Y-traceried S. window, lighting the sanctuary, to the east. The chancel E. window combines three lancet lights with cusped intersecting tracery, suggesting a date around 1300. The N. wall of the chancel is pierced by a still greater multiformity of windows, comprising from east to west: (i) a three-light window beneath a three-centred arch, with stepped castellated supertransoms, with the central one stepped down; (ii) a two-light window with a variant of reticulated tracery; (iii) the little Norman window already referred to, very small and high up; and (iv) a window like the first, but with the central supertransom stepped up and with the whole window bricked up for the lower third of its height, and now partially obscured by a projecting, brick rood stair turret in the angle between the aisle and chancel. The N. aisle E. window with three-lights and reticulated tracery has also been encroached upon by this turret. Lastly, there are two N. windows in the N. aisle, both two-light, the first with curvilinear tracery and the second with supermullioned tracery with split “Ys. The clerestory on this side of the building comprises five windows, above the apices and intervening spandrels of the three-bay N. arcade (since the tower takes the place here of the westernmost bay of the S. aisle opposite). The N. porch is faced with knapped flint and has flint flushwork on the leading edges of the buttresses, a renewed canopied niche above the doorway, and three-light side windows with stepped supertransoms, cusped only at the heads of the lights. The outer doorway carries a casement moulding filled at intervals with carved shields. Above the hood-mould, worn traceried spandrels are enclosed by a label."
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