Church of St Peter, Hornblotton

Church of St Peter
Yellow stone building with red tiled roof and square tower with short spire. Foreground is grass with gravestones.
Location within Somerset
General information
Town or city Hornblotton
Country England
Coordinates 51°06′17″N 2°35′01″W / 51.1046°N 2.5835°W / 51.1046; -2.5835
Completed 1874

The Church of St Peter at Hornblotton in the parish of West Bradley, Somerset, England, was built in 1872–74 by Sir Thomas Graham Jackson, for the rector, Godfrey Thring replacing a medieval church on the same site. It is a Grade I listed building,[1]

The Victorian building is on the site of an earlier church which had fallen into disrepair, from which a stump of the tower remains in the churchyard.[2] The piscina and a memorial in the vestry, were reused from the original church.[3]

One of the features of the church is an early electric clock and the first in England to have a striking mechanism. It was controlled from a master clock in the nearby house. The clock mechanism was taken to the Science Museum in London for restoration in 1984.[4][5] It was made by Charles Shepherd who also made the Shepherd gate clock mounted on the wall outside the gate of the Royal Greenwich Observatory.

The interior walls of the church are decorated with sgraffito which is produced by applying layers of plaster tinted in contrasting colors to a moistened surface, or in ceramics, by applying to an unfired ceramic body two successive layers of contrasting slip, and then in either case scratching so as to produce an outline drawing. The decoration includes representations of Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah and the Annunciation.[6] The technique is attributed to the Arts and Crafts Movement and, at Hornblotton, have been created by cutting away the upper coat of white cement and leaving exposed the strawberry coloured undercoat of plaster including terracotta patterns of sunflowers and leaves.[7]

The parish is part of the Six Pilgrims benefice within the deanery of Bruton and Cary.[8]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Church of St Peter". Images of England. English Heritage. Retrieved 4 October 2008.
  2. ↑ "Hornblotton Church". Phil Merryman. Retrieved 1 October 2011.
  3. ↑ Dunning, Robert (1996). Fifty Somerset Churches. Somerset Books. pp. 164–167. ISBN 978-0861833092.
  4. ↑ "Hornblotton Clock". Phil Merryman. Retrieved 1 October 2011.
  5. ↑ "Electric turret clock by Shepherd, 1883.". Science and Society. Retrieved 1 October 2011.
  6. ↑ "Hornblotton Church Interior". Phil Merryman. Retrieved 1 October 2011.
  7. ↑ "Hornblotton Hall and St Peter's Church, Hornblotton, Somerset". Doc Brown. Retrieved 1 October 2011.
  8. ↑ "St Peter, Hornblotton". Church of England. Retrieved 1 October 2011.
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