Building record 0235500000 - Church of St Laurence, Church Walk

Dimensions - Length 17m, Width 10m.
Plan Form - Subrectangular.
Grade II+. Parish church. C14 nave, aisles, chancel and tower, altered late C15, much restored 1884-9. Late C15 S porch added. N chapel and vestry 1889. Course rubble stone, tiled roof of nave and chancel lead roofs to aisles, W tower of 3 stages has battlemented parapet 3-light cusped perpendicular openings to bell-chamber, moulded Decorated doorway and 2-light window about west much restored. Nave has plan parapet, 2 3-light late C15 cusped windows and small central quatrefoil window to clerestory. S aisles has 4-light cusped Perpendicular windows flanking porch and in E end wall, and 2-light Decorated windows to right and in W wall, much restored. S door has moulded 2-centred archway. Fine C15 porch with battlemented parapet, finials, butresses and 4-centred arch on slender shafts to front with moulded purlins, ridge and carved bosses. N aisle has restored Perpendicular 3-light windows, small 2-light Decorated windows to left and, in W wall, and small 2-centred arched doorway. Chancel has 5-light Perpendicular window to E, and 4-lighht Perpendicular and 2-light Decorated window to S, and small Perpendicular doorway all restored. Interior: tower has 2-centred double chamfered arches on semi-octagonal responds to nave and aisles. Nave has 4-bay arcade of similar arches on octagonal piers with moulded caps. Similar arch to chancel. S chapel has pisicnia with 2 ogee cusped arches on corner of window reveal. N aisles has fragments of C15 wall paintings of St Thomas of Canterbury and St Christopher. Aisle roofs partly original. Chancel has decorated cinquefoil piscina with carved spandrels, restored sedilia and aumbrey, and C19 wall paintings. Altered C17 pulpit. Late C19-C20 glass. Other fittings c1900. Small brasses to Thomas Figge 1578 and Dorothy Barnard 1634 (B9)
'Monsterous' carved heads on porch; list of vicars 1326-1841 (B1).
Watching brief carried out in May 2002 by AS&C during service trenching for a drainage pipe recorded two courses of ashlar blocks approx 0.17m deep with a cream mortar near the northwest corner of the church representing the upper foundation courses of the church wall. See report for detail (B10).
In April 2010, Archaeological Services & Consultancy carried out an excavation at St Laurence's Meeting Room, in advance of a new extension. The excavation uncovered a number of archaeological features that included articulated Christian human burials dating from the late-Saxon to the post-medieval period, and a number of medieval and post-medieval linear ditches, gullies and pits. The excavation has identified a number of phases that can be linked to Anglo-Saxon and later activity on the site of St Laurence's Church, the alteration of the churchyard boundary and the land being divided up into medieval burgage plots (B11).