St Laurence's Church, Northfield

St Laurence’s Church stands in Northfield, a Birmingham suburb near nail maker’s cottages, the Great Stone Inn, the old school and the Village Pound. The church occupies a conservation area and dates from the 12th century, with Early English work still visible inside. A rare 14th-century timber porch shelters the south door, and the tower shows the gridiron linked to the martyrdom of St Laurence. The north aisle was added in 1900 by George Frederick Bodley, while the chancel and tower survive from the 12th or 13th century. A Lady Chapel sits in the south aisle and a chapel to St Laurence in the north aisle. The church’s clock, installed in 1888 by J. B. Joyce & Co, was controlled by Lord Grimethorpe’s gravity escapement and had a zinc-and-iron pendulum weighing two hundredweight. The ten bells were increased from eight in 1999, and a new ground-floor ringing chamber was built at the tower’s foot. A memorial organ was given by Herbert Austin and Lady Austin in memory of their son, Vernon James Austin, and opened in March 1937. The Compton Organ Company built it on the extension principle with three manuals and pedals. Visitors find windows by Hardman & Co that replicate 13th-century designs, depicting scenes from the life of Christ. A single window by Pugin and Kempe is also present. The churchyard extension holds sixteen war graves, one from the First World War and fifteen from the Second. The site may once have held a Saxon church, as a priest in Nordfeld is mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086.