Away from the red village overlooking the River Medina, its church stands among the trees on a hill with a fine view of the distant downs. We come into it by a doorway with a Norman arch on two little pillars to find ourselves in a nave with arcades by the earliest English builders, the arches on the south having a graceful line of moulding round them. The chancel is 15th century; the panelled pulpit is 17th century and has a graceful carved canopy. The dignified reredos is carved with trefoils, and the plain altar was made of old oak from Carisbrooke. An oil painting of the Baptism is thought to be the work of the 16th century artist Bassano. On the windowsill we found a wooden frame, painted with cherubs, skulls, and crossbones, in which is a beautifully written manuscript poem to two children of the 17th century, and in a glass case is kept the old clarinet which helped the village choir to keep in time in the far-off days. One of the wall-monuments is unusually rich in the gruesome things so fashionable in the 17th and 18th centuries; it has a grinning skull at each side, a skull and a heap of bones below, and a winged hourglass to remind us that time flies.

Text courtesy of: Southern Life (UK)