St Andrew's Church, Wood Walton

St Andrew’s Church stands alone in fields two kilometres north of Wood Walton in Cambridgeshire. It is built of limestone rubble with terracotta roof tiles and has a west tower, north and south aisles, and a chancel with an organ chamber. The tower rises in three stages with diagonal buttresses and a battlemented parapet. A south porch shelters an empty niche that once held a statue of Saint Andrew. The church is Grade II* listed and cared for by the Friends of Friendless Churches. The building’s history is recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086, when it probably had only a nave and chancel. A south aisle was added around 1250 and a north aisle about 1330, along with a rebuilt chancel. The tower dates from the 14th century, and the clerestory was added in the 16th. Edward Browning of Stamford restored the church between 1856 and 1859, adding a vestry and rebuilding walls. A 14th-century stained glass window with images of Saint Catherine and Saint Lawrence is on loan to Ely Cathedral. Inside, the arcades show different styles: Early English on the south and Perpendicular on the north. The floor is paved with 19th-century tiles, and the font copies 15th-century designs. Several monuments honour the Hussey family, and early stone coffin lids lie in the church. Four bells hang in the tower, two cast by Joseph Eayre and two by Thomas Mears II. The church once appeared in a 1984 Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense episode. Repairs completed in 2013 have stabilised the structure, and the church is no longer on the Heritage at Risk Register.