St Bartholomew, Shapwick

St Bartholomew’s is a Grade I parish church on Church Street, Shapwick, Dorset, beside the River Stour, with twelfth-century fabric and a fourteenth-century west tower of banded ironstone and flint.

Overview

Historic England lists a church of twelfth-century origin, altered and enlarged in the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, restored with the chancel largely rebuilt in the nineteenth century. Walls are of stone and flint with tiled roofs. The plan comprises nave, chancel, west tower, south porch, north chapel and north porch. The fourteenth-century tower has a plain parapet and two-light Perpendicular belfry windows. The north chapel is fifteenth-century, extended eastward in the sixteenth. The listing notes a twelfth-century north arcade, some sixteenth-century bench ends, an octagonal font, and that the north chapel apparently belonged to a local priory.

Dorset Heritage Explorer dates the chancel rebuild to 1878. Local church notes record heathstone, greensand, chalk and flint in the fabric and that William Wake, later Archbishop of Canterbury, was born in the parish in 1657. The church is in the Diocese of Salisbury.

Further Information

• Historic England list entry 1323469
• British Listed Buildings: Parish Church of Saint Bartholomew
• Bridge Benefice: St Bartholomew’s