<p style='text-align: justify;'><p>Added to list by Ethel Fegan 1936. St Lawrence’s church has a reset door of c. 1200 and C13 narrow lancet windows in the chancel but most of the church was late C14, with windows in the S aisle and in the chancel, all clearly shown by Relhan, are perhaps C15. The S porch had already been reconstructed in Relhan’s time, with a round-headed arch and a sundial, as seen today. The church was severely criticised by the Archdeacon after a Visitation in 1627, as the steeple was <i>'ruinated and fallen down'</i>, and the church walls, roof, and windows were decayed. By Relhan’s time the steeple had gone, leaving a stumpy W tower which was buttressed and decorated with corner pinnacles, and has a stair turret. All this remains today, but it doesn’t look as if much action was taken, beyond the essential, to restore the building. Interestingly, it was Oliver Cromwell’s family which had acquired Spinney Abbey and therefore had rights to appoint the minister and other responsibilities for the church, but the C17 communion table seems the only item that could be connected with their Puritan interests although the remains of Oliver Cromwell’s son Henry (d. 1674), described by Cole 1769 as ‘<i>the usurping lieutenant of Ireland who lived at Spinney Abbey’</i>, his widow, son and grandson, originally lay in a vault near the altar and were placed under marked floor slabs c<i>.</i> 1880. In the mid C18 the lead on the roof was sold and replaced with tiles. In 1844 the church was restored by WH Young for the Incorporated Church Building Society, when windows were unblocked and reglazed, there was further work 1879-80, and repairs to the roof from 1987. In the churchyard Relhan shows a table tomb by S door, which covers a vault for the local Rayner and Hatch families, and this survives<i>. </i>There are also still many C18 headstones with lively cherubs, one of them with a gravedigger's tools, though in the drawing they look even more ready to fall than in most of Relhan’s churchyards. </p><p>Bradley and Pevsner 2014; VCH 2002</p></p>
