St Lawrence's Church, Mickleton

St Lawrence's stands on Church Lane in Mickleton, at the foot of the Cotswold escarpment about 3 miles north of Chipping Campden, with the gardens of Hidcote and Kiftsgate Court on the hill above. Its nave goes back to the twelfth century and its spire to the fourteenth. It is listed Grade I.

History

St Lawrence's grew over four centuries from a twelfth-century church. Historic England's listing traces two bays of the nave to the late twelfth century. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the nave was lengthened westwards, with an extra bay of about 1300, and the aisles were rebuilt on a larger scale. The west tower and its spire were built in the fourteenth century, and the chancel and the clerestory over the nave in the fifteenth. The two-storey south porch came in the seventeenth century.

Frederick Preedy restored St Lawrence's in 1868, and an organ gallery was put in at the west end in about 1931. The church serves the old parish of Mickleton as one of the churches of the Vale and Cotswold Edge team, with Chipping Campden.

What to look for

Outside, the tower carries a ribbed broach spire with four pinnacles at its base. The south porch is unusual: two storeys high, with a flat roof, three mullioned windows in its south wall and two round-headed doorways with carved spandrels, one of them blocked.

Inside, look for:

• The two late twelfth-century arcade bays, with stiff-leaf carving on the capitals
• The fifteenth-century clerestory and the oak-panelled nave ceiling
• A bound fifteenth-century parish chest below the organ gallery
• The font in the north aisle, a fifteenth-century pedestal with a bowl of about 1661
• The carved Jacobean pulpit
• Pews of the nineteenth century, some made up with linenfold panels from older ones

The monuments repay time. Edward Woodward of Campden carved the eighteenth-century tablet on the west wall of the north aisle to his grandfather Thomas, and a larger tablet with ten pairs of heraldic shields is thought to be his work. In a niche in the east wall of the north aisle is the eighteenth-century memorial urn to Utrecia Smith, which the poet William Shenstone wrote about in his poem on Ophelia's urn. There are also four hatchments, tablets to the Graves and Fisher families, a seventeenth-century tablet to John Bonner, and a twelfth-century stone crucifix below a north aisle window.

The glass is later. The east window tells the story of the Crucifixion through to the Ascension, and the Lady Chapel window, full of Commonwealth flags, was put in for the Queen's Jubilee.

Visiting

The church publishes no visiting hours, so contact the benefice office in Chipping Campden on 01386 841927 before a special trip. Services are usually held at 9.30am on the first three Sundays of the month and 11am on the fourth, with a 10am joint service here or at another church in the team on a fifth Sunday, with service details and the parish magazine in the porch. A Church Near You lists a ramp, an accessible toilet, accessible parking, a hearing loop and a welcome for assistance dogs.

Getting there

By car, St Lawrence's is on Church Lane in Mickleton (GL55 6RZ), off the main road through the village; A Church Near You lists parking. Walkers report that the lane past the church is a narrow dead end, so park on the road nearby. Stagecoach buses 1, 1A, 2 and 2A, every one to two hours from Monday to Saturday, run between Stratford-upon-Avon and Moreton-in-Marsh through Mickleton and Chipping Campden.

On foot, Mickleton, Hidcote and Kiftsgate, a 5-mile (8km) circular walk, starts and finishes on a footpath off the High Street near the church and climbs to the gardens on the hill.

Nearby

Three Ways House is a hotel in the middle of the village, a few minutes' walk away. Up the escarpment are Hidcote, the National Trust's Arts and Crafts garden, and Kiftsgate Court, which shares its name with the old hundred whose meeting place, the Kiftsgate Stone, is on the edge above Campden. In Campden itself are St James's Church and the Market Hall. Our story on the great gardens of the Cotswolds covers Hidcote and Kiftsgate.