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St Katharine

St Katharine

Gatton, Surrey

St Katherine's, Merstham is an example of an ambitious evolved Medieval church with a fine C13 tower and much surviving internal fabric including late Medieval roof structure

Architectural Features

C14 or C15 S porch

Exterior: The S side is the show front with 2 flights of steps up to the gabled S porch which has a moulded outer doorway, square-headed hoodmould and carved spandrels

C19 S aisle with carved cornice with fleurons

The N chapel has triangular-headed windows with cusped light to N and E. The church is a good C13 4-level tower with C19 angle buttresses and a substantial broach spire

The tower has tall C13 lancet windows at each stage, a probably C16 3-light W window, and a fine C13 trefoil-headed W doorway with an order of toothed ornament on slender shafts with bell capitals and a door with medieval ironwork

Interior: Chamfered chancel arch on semi-circular responds, remnants of C13 blind arcading on N and S chancel walls

The chancel has a plaster vault with a classically moulded wallplate, probably C17, and a single beam with bar step stops on the N, but cut back on the S. Asymmetrical arches into the N and S chapels, perhaps to accommodate a rood screen across the whole width of the church

C13 double piscina in E wall on a corbel carved with stiff-leaf foliage

1903 choir stalls, the ends and frontals carved with blind tracery

Polygonal timber pulpit of 1885 with open traceried sides on a stone stem

Circa C13 font with square bowl with trefoils carved in the corners, arcaded on 3 sides only, on a cylindrical stem with corner shafts

Monuments include mutilated C15 secular effigy and C15 and C16 brasses

Fragments of medieval glass in the E window of the S chapel