St Leonard, Wollaton

St Leonard’s is a Grade II* parish church on Wollaton Road, Wollaton, Nottinghamshire, in the Diocese of Southwell and Nottingham, long associated with the Willoughby family of Wollaton Hall.

Overview

Historic England lists the Church of St Leonard and attached boundary wall (list entry 1255283, designated 11 August 1952). The chancel dates from about 1200 and was remodelled in the fourteenth century; nave and tower are late fourteenth-century; the north aisle is about 1500; the Willoughby mausoleum and south aisle of 1885–87 are by Charles Hodgson Fowler, who also restored the church then (further restoration 1968–70). The mausoleum became a south chapel in 1924. Materials are coursed squared stone and ashlar with ashlar dressings and slate roofs. The plan is chancel, south chapel, nave with clerestory, aisles, and a two-stage west tower with a set-back octagonal spire. A coursed stone boundary wall runs about 60 metres along Wollaton Road.

The church is notable for Willoughby funerary monuments, including memorials to Sir Richard Willoughby (d.1471) and Sir Henry Willoughby (d.1528), and for the monument to Robert Smythson, architect of Wollaton Hall. The Southwell and Nottingham Church History Project records about two dozen monuments from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries and the fifteenth-century Wollaton Antiphonal, later placed on loan to the University of Nottingham.

Further Information

• Historic England list entry 1255283
• St Leonard’s, Wollaton
• Southwell Churches: Wollaton listing