Holy Rood, Empshott

Holy Rood at Empshott, Hampshire, is a Grade I parish church in the Diocese of Portsmouth: a complete thirteenth-century building with early seventeenth-century furnishings and a later exterior.

Overview

Historic England lists a complete thirteenth-century parish church with early seventeenth-century alterations and furnishings and a nineteenth-century exterior. The plan is a four-bay nave with aisles, an aisleless chancel (formerly with north and south chapels), a Victorian south vestry, a west bell-turret and a west porch. Walls are malmstone, mostly rubble, with reused aisle windows made narrower in the seventeenth century; the porch was rebuilt from the south side. Lancets are used throughout, under a tile roof. The bell turret has a nineteenth-century shingled broach spire over a seventeenth-century timber-framed lantern, glazed above, with the lower framing exposed inside the west wall.

The interior has pointed arches with dogtooth hoodmoulds, stiff-leaf capitals, and round, octagonal and clustered columns. A Norman Purbeck square font with arcaded panels rests on a drum with corner columns. Seating is mostly fifteenth-century. In 1624 a screen with open strapwork (now at the west end), communion rails, pulpit, chairs, a desk and a chest were installed. The Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture dates the nave arcades to about 1200 and notes major campaigns about 1624–26 and 1867–68. The church is open daily from dawn to dusk.

Further Information

• Historic England list entry 1094477
• Victoria County History: Empshott
• Hawkley.org: Empshott church