"ST. MARY consists of chancel 43ft. 9in. by 19ft. 9in., central tower 13ft. sqr, short N. and S. transepts 16ft. wide, clearstoried nave of three bays 59ft. 9in. by 17ft. 6in., N. and S. aisles 8ft. wide, and S. porch 11ft. 3in. by 10ft. 3in., all these measurements being internal. The tower is surmounted by a lofty spire. The width across nave and aisles is 38ft. 8in., and the total internal length of the church is 123ft. 6in. The transepts were formerly larger, but have been reduced in length to 9ft. 6in., their end walls ranging externally with the walls of the aisles.
The west end of the nave and aisles, the south transept and the tower are faced with ashlar, but elsewhere the walling is of rubble, plastered internally. The chancel has a high-pitched stone-slated roof, but the other roofs are leaded and of low pitch, those of the aisles being continued eastward over the transepts. There are plain parapets to the chancel and aisles, but the nave roof is eaved. The north transept is now the organ-chamber, and the south transept the vestry.
The church is, in the main, a 13th-century rebuilding of a Norman fabric, which itself may have been a late 12th-century rebuilding of an earlier structure. The existing west front of the nave dates from c.1190, and some botched cheveron work re-used at the east end of the south aisle, which may have come from a tower arch, is probably not much earlier. It would appear, therefore, that a new church was begun upon a large scale, on an aisleless cruciform plan, about the end of the third quarter of the 12th century, and that the nave was completed as far as the west front, c.1190. Of this nave, the roof line still remains on the west side of the tower, but the tower was not finished and the projected transepts were left entirely incomplete. The work probably came to a stop owing to lack of funds, and was not again taken in hand until more than thirty years later, when, with the aid of indulgences, its completion was begun on a still bigger scale. Bishop Hugh de Wells's grant of a release of twenty days' penance in 1232 to those who should help in building the church mentions its 'ruinous' condition at that time, but the term, used rather vaguely in such documents, may mean little more than that the building was unfinished and in need of repair. However this may be, it would seem that the former plan was altered in favour of an aisled nave, and perhaps of transepts of a slighter projection than had been originally intended, though in their present form the transepts are of early 14th-century date.
Such a remodelling of the fabric probably involved the underpinning of the whole of the crossing, the old roof being left in place for the time being, so as to keep the nave in use until the aisle walls were completed, and by the time the nave arcades were begun, the new chancel and crossing would be ready for use, and the nave walls could be taken down to make way for the arcades. The old west wall of the nave was retained, and if the old crossing was rebuilt by underpinning while the nave roof was still on, little of the 12th-century work would be left below or above the roof line, as the old courses could be taken away piecemeal and new masonry substituted. The work, beginning with the chancel, may have spread over a number of years, the indulgence of 1232 perhaps only marking a point at which the fabric fund showed signs of exhaustion, when application for assistance would be made to the bishop. The church was re-dedicated by Bishop Grosseteste on 7 October 1240, and its general style points to its having been completed at that time or not much later, though the dedication itself affords no architectural evidence.
In the 14th century the spire was built, new windows inserted in the north aisle and at the west end of the nave, the aisle walls heightened and the porch erected; the completion or remodelling of the transepts, as already mentioned, also appears to have been effected early in this period. The clearstory was added in the 15th century, and new windows inserted in the south aisle. There was a general restoration of the church west of the chancel in 1861, under the direction of Sir Gilbert Scott, when the old west window was replaced by a new one and the upper part of the north wall of the north aisle rebuilt. An extensive restoration of the chancel by Sir T. G. Jackson followed in 1863, when the lateral windows were renewed and a then existing square-headed transomed east window of six lights, probably of 17th-century date, was removed, and a new roof erected. No ancient ritual arrangements have survived.
The chancel is divided externally into three bays by buttresses of three stages, with tall clasping buttresses at the eastern angles and a dwarf buttress in the middle of the east wall. The upper part of the walls all round has been rebuilt and the windows are all modern. Few original features have been retained. The tall lancet windows, one in each bay on either side, reproduce old work, but the three grouped lancets in the east wall with a vesica-shaped opening above are a conjectural restoration only. The chamfered doorway in the south wall, however, is original; it is in the middle bay below the window, and has a segment head, with hood-mould rounded on the upper edge. Internally there is a string at sill level all round, but at the east end only outside. The piscina and aumbry and all the chancel fittings are modern.
The four tower arches are acutely pointed, and of three orders, the two outer orders chamfered and the inner moulded, with hood-moulds on each side. They spring from clustered responds composed of a half-round column flanked by quarter shafts, all with water-holding bases and moulded capitals enriched with nail-head ornament. On the east side of the east arch there are considerable remains of coloured decoration. There is a modern flat ceiling immediately above the arches.
The nave arcades consist of three pointed arches of two chamfered orders, with hood-moulds on each side, springing from tall cylindrical pillars and from responds similar to those of the tower arches, with moulded capitals and bases, the latter on large octagonal plinths. The capitals are enriched with nail-head ornament, and the hood-moulds have a variety of stops, mostly heads. The wide outer chamfers of the arches are also stopped above the pillars in various ways.
At the west end of each aisle is an unaltered tall lancet window, with chamfered jambs and hood with head-stops, but no other 13th-century windows remain. Externally the aisles are divided into three bays by small single-stage buttresses, and a hollow moulding below the later parapets is enriched with notch-heads and four-leaf flowers. The north and south doorways are opposite each other in the middle bay; both are pointed, and that on the north side, which is now blocked, has a single chamfered arch on moulded imposts and hood with notch-stops. The south doorway has a moulded arch and jambs, the latter in the form of shafts with moulded capitals, one of which is enriched with nail-head ornament. Above the doorway is a trefoiled niche the back of which still retains traces of colour. The external sill string of the aisle, which has a rounded upper edge, is taken over the doorway as a hood-mould.
The west doorway of the nave is well known as a very interesting example of the transition from the Norman to the 13th-century style, and forms an architectural composition of great beauty filling the whole of the lower part of the wall between the nave buttresses. The doorway has a wide semicircular arch of three moulded orders and is flanked by narrow lancet wall arches, all with enriched hood-moulds, on banded jambshafts with moulded bases and early foliated capitals. The inner order of the doorway is continuous and has an edge-roll with cheveron moulding on both the wall and soffit plane, broken only by an impost. The middle order has a double cheveron moulding with square edge and a hollow enriched with a variety of small heads, while the outer order has a large edge-roll between two hollows and hoodmould ornamented with small dog-tooth widely spaced. A larger dog-tooth is carried down the jambs between the supporting shafts of the arch. The capitals of the shafts vary in design, one on the north having fully developed angle volutes; another, on the south, has somewhat elaborate foliage, the others being of earlier type. The shaft bands are thoroughly Gothic in character, but the quirked abaci are square. The side arches are of a single order with cheveron moulding on the wall plane only, upon jambshafts similar to those of the doorway, the hollows of the hood-moulds being enriched with pellets and nailheads. The whole of the work, which is rather a combination of 12th and 13th century features than a typical transitional composition, is much restored. There are stone benches below the wall arches.
There are dividing arches between the aisles and the transepts, that on the north side of two chamfered orders, corbelled out on heads. The south arch, which is higher and springs straight from the wall, has an inner chamfered order on the east side, but towards the aisle has a made-up Norman rear-arch, with cheveron moulding on wall and soffit planes, which carries a passage from the still-existing vice at the junction of the aisle and transept to the tower by means of a wooden stair communicating with the round-headed doorway already referred to over the nave arch. Externally the vice has been rebuilt and the plain chamfered doorway from the aisle restored. A second high-pitched roof line on the west face of the tower is that of the 13th-century roof, which was superseded by the present flat-pitched roof in the 15th century after the erection of the clearstory.
The transepts in their present form seem little more than extensions of the nave aisles. They have pairs of boldly projecting buttresses at the eastern angles, and the pointed window of the north transept is of two lights with forked mullion. The south transept window is of three uncusped lights, with geometrical tracery consisting of three trefoiled circles, and there is a scroll-moulded string at sill level. Both these windows have single hollow-chamfered jambs, but there is a hood-mould to the north window only. All this work dates from c.1300, or early in the 14th century; the moulding under the parapet of the north transept is enriched with ball-flowers, but on the south is plainly chamfered.
The windows of the north aisle are modern, but reproduce pointed 14th-century windows of three lights with geometrical tracery; the great five-light west window of the nave, however, was newly designed by Sir Gilbert Scott. There is a blocked doorway of uncertain date at the east end of the north wall of the north aisle. There is also a blocked 15th-century doorway in the east wall of the south transept, at its junction with the chancel.
Of the three 15th-century windows of the south aisle a square-headed one nearly over the porch is contemporary with the clearstory and of two lights. The tall segmental-headed window west of the porch is of three trefoiled lights with transom at mid-height, while that in the eastern bay is a large pointed window of three cinquefoiled lights, with battlemented transom at the spring of the arch and vertical trefoiled tracery.
The porch is without buttresses and has a later low-pitched battlemented gable and parapets to the side wall, the hollow moulding below which is enriched with various ornaments, including a portcullis. The pointed doorway is of two chamfered orders, the inner order springing from moulded corbels supported by heads; the hood has notch-stops and a head at the apex. The side windows are square-headed and of two lights, but that on the east is apparently a later renewal. There is a scratch dial on the east jamb of the doorway. The clearstory has three square-headed windows of two cinquefoiled lights on each side.
Above the crossing, the tower is of two stages, the plain lower stage being partly covered east and west by the roofs of the chancel and nave. The bellchamber stage is a very beautiful example of 13thcentury architecture, each face being slightly recessed and pierced by three tall pointed windows with richly moulded heads carried on banded shafts with moulded capitals and bases. Each window is divided into two lancet lights with a slender mid-shaft with moulded capital and base, the jambs being enriched with a double trail of dog-tooth. Between the windows a banded wall-shaft, grouping with those of the jambs, is continued upwards to the corbel table, which is confined to the recessed portion of the walling. The tabling consists of small arches enriched with dogtooth on notch-heads. The lofty 14th-century spire has ribbed angles, stopped at the bottom by carved heads, and three tiers of spire-lights, the upper and lower in the cardinal faces and the middle ones placed obliquely. The lower two-light openings are under plain gables ornamented with ball-flower and surmounted by crosses, while the middle ones, which are of two lights with a quatrefoil in the head, have crocketed gables with foliated finials. The small topmost single lights have plain gables surmounted by crosses, and the spire terminates in a cock vane. The broaches have ribbed ridges, and above each, at its junction with the spire, is a carved figure under a crocketed canopy. The symbols of the four Evangelists are carved at the lower angles.
The 14th-century font has an octagonal bowl with incised window-tracery panels, on a central cylindrical stem and rectangular legs with moulded bases.
The wooden pulpit and the screens at the east end of the aisles are modern. The altar and the pavement of the sanctuary date from 1925.
There was formerly much armorial glass in the windows of the church, but all that has survived are two shields, now in the tracery of the south-west window of the south aisle, with the arms of France ancient, and France and England quarterly. There are also some fragments of 15th-century yellow and white glass in one of the south clearstory windows.
In the floor of the nave is a medieval grave slab with incised cross, re-used in the 18th century, and in the chancel a slab with indent for inscription. The monument to members of the Caldecote family, dated 1594, in the north transept, is now hidden by the organ;another monument in the same place is to Richard Spenser, 1723. In the chancel is an armorial floor slab to Anthony Hotchkin, grocer and citizen of London (d.1763).
There is a ring of six bells, the first dated 1748, the second by Henry Oldfield of Nottingham 1609, the third by Henry Penn of Peterborough 1713, the fourth cast at Leicester in 1598, the fifth by Hugh Watts of Leicester 1601, and the tenor by Newcombe of Leicester 1606."
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