Church of St Lawrence

St Lawrence Church stands in the Gloucestershire town of Lechlade, beside the upper Thames. Built of Taynton freestone, the present church replaced an earlier one in 1476 and was enlarged after a fire in the early 16th century. Its most striking feature is the eight-sided spire above the three-stage west tower, supported by diagonal buttresses and crowned with pinnacles. Inside, the nave has a clerestory and four-bay aisles, while the chancel chapels flank the chancel and vestry. The tower contains a ring of bells, the oldest dating from 1590 and the most recent added in 1966. The church is Grade I listed and praised in Simon Jenkins’s England’s Thousand Best Churches. It was once one of the few English churches offering sanctuary and its dedication was changed in 1510 by Katherine of Aragon. In 1815 the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley visited the churchyard and composed A Summer-Evening Churchyard, Lechlade, Gloucestershire; a path there is now called Shelley’s Walk. The building also houses a 13th-century piscina, a brass chandelier of 1730, and a carved figure of St Agatha in the north aisle. Visitors find a spacious nave with a west gallery added in 1740 and a pulpit set on a medieval base. The east window is framed by a wooden reredos carved with the Lamb of God. Medieval brasses and marble monuments stand among chest tombs to local families in the closed graveyard. The church remains closely linked with St Lawrence Primary School and the South Cotswold Team Ministry.