Church of St Andrew

The Church of St Andrew is the Anglican parish church of Heddington, a village in Wiltshire, in the Diocese of Salisbury. A church of medieval origin, with fabric reaching back to the thirteenth century, it is a Grade II listed building of historic and architectural interest — a venerable country church that has served its village for the best part of nine centuries, and that still bears the marks of every age from the Norman period to the present.

A church at Heddington already existed around 1130, when it was given to the priory of Farleigh, and from the late thirteenth century it was served by a rector. The advowson — the right to appoint the rector — belonged to Farleigh Priory until the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1536, when it passed to the Crown, and thereafter descended with the manor of Heddington through a succession of families. For more than two centuries, from 1642 to 1831, every rector of Heddington was a member of the Rogers family, who held the living in an almost unbroken line. The character of the parish's ministry varied over the years: some rectors were resident and devoted, while others were absentees or pluralists — one early-nineteenth-century rector, living elsewhere, was rebuked by the bishop and told to take better care of his parishioners, restore the parsonage and either reside or appoint a resident curate.

The church received its dedication to St Andrew by 1491, and appears to have been substantially rebuilt in the thirteenth century, to which date belong the arch between the chancel and chapel and the arches and round pillars of the south arcade. The north aisle, with its octagonal pillars, was added in the fourteenth century, and in the fifteenth century the north porch and the three-stage embattled west tower were built, with crocketed pinnacles and a stair-turret, while the chancel was remodelled. The church was much altered in the seventeenth century, when the chancel arch was raised and widened, the aisles re-roofed, and two large dormer windows added to the south aisle to light internal galleries — there was still a singers' gallery in 1783. A restoration in 1840–41 removed the galleries, dormers and a circular window, remodelled the font in the Norman style, and added a dog-tooth moulding to the chancel arch. The church was further restored in 1934 under the direction of the noted antiquary and architect Sir Harold Brakspear, and the roof was renewed in 1976.

Built of rubble, much of it rendered, with ashlar facing and slate roofs, the church has a chancel with a north chapel, a nave with north and south aisles, a north porch and a west tower. The fifteenth-century gabled porch has a moulded pointed doorway with a canopied niche above and corner pinnacles, and the tower carries a three-light Perpendicular west window above a four-centred doorway, with a clock and two-light bell openings. Inside, the moulded tower arch, the thirteenth-century south arcade and the fourteenth-century north arcade survive, the windows are mostly filled with twentieth-century glass except for a Victorian decorated east window, and there is a late-eighteenth-century organ and a Norman-style font. Wall tablets in the chancel and vestry date from the seventeenth century.

The church preserves a long record of its life. Its registers survive from 1538, almost complete, and it has held communion plate of many dates, though a chalice and paten of 1703 were stolen in 1973 and a flagon sold in 1976 to fund the re-roofing. The tower holds a ring of six bells, the oldest cast by John Wallis in 1605, with three by Abel Rudhall of Gloucester in 1741. A mission hall was built at nearby Heddington Wick in 1894, where services continued until the mid-twentieth century. Since 1962 the parish has been joined with neighbouring parishes, and since 1973 it has formed part of the Oldbury benefice.

From its beginnings around 1130 under the monks of Farleigh, through its medieval building phases and its long line of Rogers rectors, to the careful restorations that have preserved it, the Church of St Andrew, Heddington, remains a much-loved Wiltshire parish church — a quiet country church that gathers the long history of its village within its ancient walls.