St Peter, Westleton

St Peter’s is a Grade II* parish church on The Street in Westleton, Suffolk, in the Diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich and the Yoxmere Confederation. Its thatched nave and chancel and lack of a standing tower make the exterior unusual in the county.

Overview

Historic England records an early-fourteenth-century parish church of nave, chancel and south porch in random flint, with remains of plaster on the north and west of the nave, a thatched roof to nave and chancel, and plaintiles to the porch. At the west end are the roofed-over remains of the original tower, which collapsed in 1770, and of a later successor demolished in the mid-twentieth century after a wartime landmine made the stump unsafe; they have been replaced by a brick bellcote. Nave and chancel are each of three bays. Windows are mainly restored two-light openings with Y tracery; the five-light east window with intersecting tracery was renewed in 1977.

Fittings include a fifteenth-century octagonal font, a set of sixteen nave benches with poppyhead ends installed in 1857, traceried remains of a fifteenth-century screen in the north stalls, a fine early piscina, and a fourteenth-century Purbeck marble slab with the canopied indent of a priest. Local accounts date the present church to a rebuild of about 1340 on an earlier site. The listing is graded II* for surviving medieval fabric.

Further Information

• Historic England list entry 1283793
• British Listed Buildings: St Peter's Church, Westleton
• Suffolk InfoLink: St Peter's Church, Westleton