Art & architecture

England's oldest stone spire is largely a Victorian replacement

St Denys' Church sits facing the market place in Sleaford, Lincolnshire, and is a working Anglican parish church whose history stretches back far longer than its surviving stonework suggests. A reassessment of the Domesday Book hints that a church and priest were already present in the settlement by 1086, though the oldest parts actually standing today are the tower and its stone broach spire, built in the late 12th and early 13th centuries and among the earliest examples of that design in England. The nave, aisles and transept followed in the 14th century in the lavishly decorated Gothic style for which the church is now celebrated, with a clerestory and remodelled chancel added around 1430. Two further episodes reshaped the building: a Victorian restoration in 1853 that rebuilt the north aisle and cleared out galleries added in the 18th century, and emergency repairs in the 1880s after lightning struck and damaged the spire.

What strikes visitors and historians alike is the sheer inventiveness of the stonework, particularly the window tracery, which critics have called a prolonged delight and praised for its curving, almost playful complexity. Inside, the church holds a medieval rood screen, a loft and screen by the architect Ninian Comper, a communion rail possibly salvaged from Lincoln Cathedral and sometimes attributed to Christopher Wren, and a peal of eight bells cast in 1796 that replaced an older, smaller set. Stained glass ranges from a mid-Victorian window to later Arts and Crafts pieces and a modern 2006 memorial, while a chained library of antique books and old chests speak to centuries of continuous use. The church also carries a disputed local tradition that parliamentary soldiers used it as a barracks during the Civil War and vandalised its furnishings, a claim repairs in the 1650s seem to support but which can't be fully confirmed.

The grounds and monuments tell their own layered story: the churchyard was enlarged several times from the 14th century onward until overcrowding forced burials to move to a separate cemetery in the 1850s. Among the memorials are brasses and alabaster tombs to generations of the Carre family, wool merchants turned local lords of the manor, including one tomb attributed to the sculptor Maximilian Colt. Other plaques and statues commemorate clergymen, solicitors, local historians and even the novelist Frances Brooke, buried within the church. Even the practical history continues into the present, with 1950s electric lighting, late-20th-century restorations, and rooftop solar panels installed in 2008 that by 2011 were covering the church's entire electricity bill.

The communion rail may be the work of Sir Christopher Wren, sitting in a parish church alongside a medieval rood screen and eight bells cast in 1796.

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