Church of St Laurence, Hilmartin

The Church of St Laurence is the Anglican parish church of the village of Hilmarton, in Wiltshire, in the Diocese of Salisbury. A place of worship with origins in the twelfth century, much restored in the Victorian age, it is a Grade I listed building of real historical and architectural interest — a venerable country church preserving, beneath its careful nineteenth-century restoration, a wealth of medieval fabric and fine furnishings.

The church is first mentioned in records in 1291, when it was assessed for taxation. In the fourteenth century the parish also had two free chapels, at Corton and Witcomb, as well as a chapel attached to the manor of Beversbrook; the chapel at Corton survived until the Reformation. A vicarage had been ordained at Hilmarton by 1291, presumably because the rector could not always reside there. The patronage long belonged to the lords of the manor, until in 1396 the advowson passed to Bisham Priory, which was permitted to appropriate the church. After the Dissolution of the Monasteries, the living was granted in 1540–41 to Anne of Cleves, and from the mid-sixteenth century the advowson belonged to the Crown.

The medieval church received its dedication to St Laurence early in the fifteenth century. Its plan comprises a chancel with a north vestry and south organ chamber, a four-bay nave, a north aisle, a south porch and an embattled west tower. The oldest feature is the north arcade of around 1200, with round piers and scalloped capitals, while the nave has a fine fifteenth-century wagon roof, and the chancel walls may date from the fourteenth century. The chancel arch is crossed by a beautiful fifteenth-century screen of painted stone — an unusual survival — and in the north jamb of the arch a small passage leads from the aisle to the chancel, a feature found in a few other Wiltshire churches such as Avebury and Bremhill.

The church was so thoroughly restored in the nineteenth century that the dating of its original fabric is not always obvious. A painting of 1810 shows the embattled tower rising in two stages with a small conical-roofed turret. The tower was partly rebuilt in 1840 — an inscription proclaims that "to the glory of God this tower was restored by a layman" — and is attributed to John Shaw Junior. Further work followed under the local landowners the Poynder family: Thomas Poynder undertook a restoration around the middle of the century, and in 1879–81 a complete restoration of the whole church was carried out at the expense of William Henry Poynder under the direction of the great architect G. E. Street, who built the projecting organ chamber, rebuilt the north wall of the nave, and renewed the interior. When the nearby church of Highway was closed, its chancel beam was brought to Hilmarton.

The church is rich in furnishings and memorials. The chancel has a painted east wall with stencilled decoration and angels framing the east window, a seven-bay stone reredos, choir stalls and tiled floor of 1881. Its stained glass includes windows of 1881 by Clayton and Bell, a window by Hardman, and a striking window of 1920 depicting St George and General Gordon, signed by the firm of William Morris. The nave holds a nineteenth-century wooden pulpit, the shields of the Poynder family and various Poynder memorial tablets, and on the east wall is a fine monument with a segmental pediment and carved skulls to William Quintin, who died in 1651. The tower holds a ring of bells, one of which — the fourth, cast in Bristol around 1400 and dedicated to the patron saint — survives from the Middle Ages, its inscription preceded by a cross of unusual design.

Among the church's curiosities is a chained Bible in black-letter type, found in the parish chest in 1857 and now kept in a glass case, and the parish registers, which survive complete from 1645. A Lady Chapel was formed at the east end of the north aisle in 1955.

From its twelfth-century beginnings and its medieval painted screen, through its centuries under the patronage of manor and priory, to its devoted Victorian restoration by Street and the Poynder family, the Church of St Laurence, Hilmarton, remains a deeply rewarding Wiltshire parish church — a building that gathers eight centuries of history and craftsmanship within its walls, and continues to serve its village in the Diocese of Salisbury today.