Z66 Notes on the Churches in the Neighbourhood of Warminster. 



Norton Bavant. All Saints. 



This Church consists of chancel with vestry on south and organ 

 chamber on north, nave with chapel projecting from the middle of 

 the south side, western tower and a north porch near the west end 

 of the nave. With the exception of the tower the entire Church 

 was re-built in 1840 in the poorest style of that period, when every 

 structural feature was renewed with the exception of the archway 

 into the chapel, which was either retained or reinstated ; the good 

 seventeenth century iron gates were also retained. This archway is 

 of fourteenth century date. The chapel is known as the Benet 

 Chapel, and " is supposed to have been built by John Benet, buried 

 in the middle of it in 1461^' (Cauou Jackson, Wilts Arch. Mag., 

 X., 298), but this date is too late for the construction of the arch. 

 The brass of " Johnes Benet and Agnes his wife " still remains in 

 the centre of the pavement, and another on the west wall of Thomas 

 Benet, of Westbury, and Margaret, his wife. (There is also a brass 

 to the latter in the north chapel of Westbury Church, giving the 

 date of his death as 1605.^) 



The tower is divided into three stages internally, although the 

 lower two are undivided by any string-course on the outside. These 

 two stages, with the stair-turret to the same level, are the work of 

 late in the fourteenth century, and were constructed without but- 

 tresses. 



The archway opening into the nave is constructed of chalk. It is 

 of two orders of chamfers continued down the jambs and terminating 

 in a long stop of very unusual form at the lower ends. The middle 

 stage of the tower was (like that of Langley Burrell, where there 

 exists an aumbry) constructed for and apparently used as a priests' 

 chamber : it is provided with a fireplace having an opening 3ft. 4in. 

 wide and 2ft. 9in. high, with mouldings carried round and a lintel 

 1ft. Sin. deep enriched with three sunk and carved quatrefoils. The 

 fact that the flue terminates abruptly at the commencement of the 

 upper stage indicates either that the tower was only two stages high 

 when left in the fourteenth century, or that the upper stage was 



* Kite's Brasses of Wilts, p. 78. 



