The Anglican Church of St Nicholas at

Saintbury Saintbury is a village and civil parish in the Cotswold District of Gloucestershire, England. The population of the civil parish at the 2011 Census was 83. Saintbury was mentioned in the Domesday Book (1086) as ''Suineberie''. The Church of St N ...

in the

Cotswold District Cotswold is a local government district in Gloucestershire, England. It is named after the wider Cotswolds region and range of hills. The council is based in the district's largest town of Cirencester. The district also includes the towns of ...

Gloucestershire Gloucestershire ( , ; abbreviated Glos.) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by Herefordshire to the north-west, Worcestershire to the north, Warwickshire to the north-east, Oxfordshire ...

, England, was built in the 13th century. It is a grade I

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Hi ...

History

Parts of the current building, including the

nave The nave () is the central part of a church, stretching from the (normally western) main entrance or rear wall, to the transepts, or in a church without transepts, to the chancel. When a church contains side aisles, as in a basilica-type ...

, north

transept A transept (with two semitransepts) is a transverse part of any building, which lies across the main body of the building. In cruciform ("cross-shaped") cruciform plan, churches, in particular within the Romanesque architecture, Romanesque a ...

and tower, date from the 13th century but some aspects, such as the Norman south door with tympanum, provide evidence of an earlier church on the site. The north door is also Norman and above it is a circular

Anglo-Saxon The Anglo-Saxons, in some contexts simply called Saxons or the English, were a Cultural identity, cultural group who spoke Old English and inhabited much of what is now England and south-eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. They traced t ...

tide dial. The

chancel In church architecture, the chancel is the space around the altar, including the Choir (architecture), choir and the sanctuary (sometimes called the presbytery), at the liturgical east end of a traditional Christian church building. It may termi ...

was added in the 14th century. The last service was held in the church in 2009 and it is now in the care of the

Churches Conservation Trust The Churches Conservation Trust is a registered charity whose purpose is to protect historic churches at risk in England. The charity cares for over 350 churches of architectural, cultural and historic significance, which have been transferred in ...

. The lead from the roof was stolen in 2017.

Architecture

The

limestone Limestone is a type of carbonate rock, carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material Lime (material), lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different Polymorphism (materials science) ...

building has stone slate roofs. It consists of a

which a north

and porch,

and tower. The spire above the tower can be seen for miles on the Cotswold escarpment. A stone carving on the wall of the church has been suggested to be a

Sheela na gig A sheela na gig is a figurative carving of a naked woman displaying an exaggerated Human vulva, vulva. These carvings, from the Middle Ages, are Grotesque (architecture), architectural grotesques found throughout most of Europe on Architecture ...

. The interior includes

box pew A box pew is a type of church pew that is encased in panelling and was prevalent in England and other Protestant countries from the 16th to early 19th centuries. History in England Before the rise of Protestantism, seating was not customary in c ...

s and wall paintings, with some

Arts and Crafts The Arts and Crafts movement was an international trend in the Decorative arts, decorative and fine arts that developed earliest and most fully in the British Isles and subsequently spread across the British Empire and to the rest of Europe and ...

features, by Ernest Gimson, Alec Miller and Charles Robert Ashbee, which were added in the early 20th century. The octagonal

font In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a ''typeface'', defined as the set of fonts that share an overall design. For instance, the typeface Bauer Bodoni (shown in the figure) includes fonts " Roman" (or "regul ...

and

altar rail The altar rail (also known as a communion rail or chancel rail) is a low barrier, sometimes ornate and usually made of stone, wood or metal in some combination, delimiting the chancel or the sanctuary and altar in a church, from the nave and ot ...

s are from the 15th or 16th century. The double

piscina A piscina is a shallow basin placed near the altar of a church, or else in the vestry or sacristy, used for washing the communion vessels. The sacrarium is the drain itself. Lutherans and Anglicans usually refer to the basin, calling it a pisci ...

is thought to date from the reign of

Edward I Edward I (17/18 June 1239 – 7 July 1307), also known as Edward Longshanks and the Hammer of the Scots (Latin: Malleus Scotorum), was King of England from 1272 to 1307. Concurrently, he was Lord of Ireland, and from 125 ...

. The wall paintings depicting passages from the

King James Bible The King James Version (KJV), also the King James Bible (KJB) and the Authorized Version (AV), is an Early Modern English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England, which was commissioned in 1604 and published in 1611, by ...

date from 1634.

References

{{reflist Church of England church buildings in Gloucestershire Grade I listed churches in Gloucestershire

History

Architecture

See also

References