Uploader's Comments

The chancel offers several points of interest. The present blank east wall is not bonded into the adjoining walls, and may be later than the rest of the building. The evidence of the masonry outside, however, does not suggest a very much later period, and what the intentions of the first builders were is by no means clear. The lower parts of the north and south walls at the east end, for a distance of about 3 ft. 6 in., project 8 in. in front of the face of the wall proper to a height of 5 ft. 4 in. above the floor of the altar space, which is 5 in. above the general floor level of the nave and chancel. These projections are finished off at the top by a chamfered cornice or impost mould, which, however, along with the upper part of the projection, stops at a distance of 11 in. from the east wall, and the whole terminates westward in dwarf shafts with cushion capitals. The shafts have since gone, but the capitals remain. It is possible that by this arrangement it was intended to carry a platform for the altar and so give room for a half-subterranean relic chamber below, but of such a chamber there is no trace. The chancel, too, may have been planned to extend further east, but whether with an apsidal or an ordinary rectangular end it is impossible to say. The chancel may have been remodelled in the 13th century when the north window was inserted, the original arrangement being then lost. The east wall may date from this period, the old stones being used in its reconstruction. There is a small remnant of wall painting on the east wall. Also a "set back" 11 feet above the sanctuary floor, the reason tor which is not clear. The stone reredos, built in "Norman style", by the Hay family who owned the whole parish in the latter half of the last century, was erected to the memory of a child, Douglas Erroll Hay, who died in 1886.