Peak Experience

This church dates back to Norman times, although parts of it have been rebuilt more than once since.

 

A picture of fennybentley church A picture of the fox stealing a goose carving

 

Enter the chancel through the rood screen, dating from the 1500s.  If you look carefully at its carving, you’ll see a little fox stealing a goose – a reference to the Dean of Lincoln who was entitled to the church’s income!  The screen itself was put up in thanksgiving for the end of the War of the Roses.

 

The chancel also contains the alabaster tomb of Thomas Beresford (died 1473) and his wife Elizabeth – their shrouded effigies surrounded by their 21 shrouded children.

 

A picture of the tomb of Thomas Beresford A picture of the ceiling

 

Alice M. Erskine painted the aluminium ceiling in the northeast aisle in 1895.  Its installation predated, by two months, industrial production of rolled sheet aluminium in England.  So the ceiling, the first of its kind in England, was probably made from sheets produced in a pre-production run by the British Aluminium Works in Stoke on Trent.

 

The church is kept open.  There is a pub across the road from the church and another just outside the village.