St Margaret, East Wellow

St Margaret’s is a Grade I parish church on Hackleys Lane, East Wellow, Hampshire, in the Diocese of Winchester, best known as the burial place of Florence Nightingale.

Overview

Historic England dates the chancel and nave to the early and late thirteenth century, with some fourteenth-century detail, a sixteenth-century south aisle, a nineteenth-century vestry and minor twentieth-century change. Walls are mixed flint and stone with stone dressings; the roof is tiled, with a catslide over the aisle and two dormers that once lit a gallery. The plan is an aisleless nave and chancel, a narrow three-bay south aisle, south porch and north vestry, under a square western bell turret carried on three massive posts.

The interior keeps much medieval plaster, with wall paintings including rosettes in squares, consecration crosses, a St Christopher on the north wall, a seated lady, and fragments of the martyrdom of Thomas Becket. Jacobean woodwork panels the chancel; there are Jacobean communion rails and a panelled pulpit with tester. The fourteenth-century porch is timber-framed, with an arch-braced opening and cusped bargeboards. In the churchyard, a separate Grade II Gothic monument 18 metres south of the church commemorates the Nightingale family, including Florence Nightingale (1820–1910).

Further Information

• Historic England list entry 1339214
• Parish site