There was presumably a church at Berwick cl120 served by
the clerk of St Leonard who held land and tithes as a tenant of Shaftesbury
Abbey's manor of Tisbury. A priest
held the church as the abbey's tenant cl130.
There was then no right of burial at Berwick and bodies were taken to
Tisbury. The church later had all
rights, from 1299 or earlier, abbesses presented rectors, and the living
remained a rectory. The inhabitants
of Sedgehill, who had been buried at Shaftesbury, become parishioners of Berwick
in 1395 when a graveyard at Sedgehill was consecrated and the church there was
annexed to the church of Berwick as a chapel. In the early 12th Centurv the priest holding Berwick church held with it 1/2 hide with feeding rights, wood for his fire, and other things from the manor, and he was entitled to all tithes from Berwick. From 1395 the rector presumably had the income from Sedgehill. The rector had all tithes and 5 acres of glebe in Berwick in 1677 and 1705 when he was also entitled to all tithes from Sedgehill. At inclosure c1822 the tithes from Berwick were exchanged for 104 acres; the glebe in Berwick was sold in 1912. In 1783 a curate living at Chicklade served Berwick, Fonthill Bishop and Fonthill Gifford, holding a Sunday service at each. Communion was celebrated at Berwick four times a year with no more than five or six parishioners. In the late 19th Century the church's fortunes revived - possibly due to parochial dissension at Fonthill Bishop - but in 1914 Berwick, reluctantly breaking the old links with Sedgehill, was united with Fonthill Bishop. The living had been held with Sedgehill for two hundred years, although the Rector lived at Berwick until the latter part of the 18th Century- when the vicarage burned down.
Plate was taken for the king in 1553 and a chalice left.
New plate consisting of a chalice, a paten and two flagons was given in
1677. In 1969 a flagon was sold to raise money to repair Fonthill
Bishop church; the remainder of the
plate is in the care of the Redundant Churches Fund. Two bells hung in the church in 1553. They were replaced by a bell cast by William Cockey of Frome
in 1725 and another dated 1766, cast by Robert Wells of Aldboume, both
apparently rehung in the early 19th Century. The registers date from 1723. In 1967 the church, which had become a chapel of ease, was finally closed and all services in the united parish are now held at Fonthill Bishop, half a mile to the east. The hamlet at Berwick could no longer support its own church and in 1973 it was declared formally redundant. Although its architectural merits are modest, its situation, forming the centrepiece of a group of farm buildings hidden from the Hindon to Fonthill road by a grove of trees, and its history, combined to ensure its preservation. and the church was accordingly vested in the Redundant Churches Fund on 9th June 1976. The Fund has carried out a substantial programme of repairs involving the removal of a lean-to boiler house and completely re-tiling the roof. The Exterior of the Church St Leonard's Church, so called in the 13th Century, is of flint and limestone-rubble with ashlar dressings, and consists of a chancel and a nave with a south porch surmounted by a low tower. The general texture of the walls shows medieval masonry surviving intact to a considerable height. Chilmark stone is used for the dressings and some infilling of the walls. The nave is 12th Century. The chancel was possibly rebuilt in the early 14th Century when the porch and tower were added and new windows set in the nave. In 1861 the chancel was rebuilt and the church was provided with new roofs, windows, and interior fittings.
The short, stocky tower, which also forms the south porch,
has a pyramidal roof which is actually lower than the ridge line of the nave
roof. Its upper stage is decorated
with alternate bands of Chilmark stone and flints.
There is a blocked Norman doorway on the north side, its lintel decorated
with a band of rosettes.
There is a big sundial above the belfry window and there
are the remains of other sundials on both the buttresses of the porch. The churchyard contains a table tomb of about 1700 on which the inscription is unreadable, and a Tisbury stone cross erected in 1921 as a memorial to those fallen in the Great War. The Interior of the Church
Inside there is little to suggest the Norman origin of the
building except the font. This is merely a massive stone cut to give a stemlike
support to a heavy circular bowl and devoid of any ornamentation.
The brass cover is unusual and of much later date. The remaining fittings are unexceptional and date from the 1861 restoration. Memorials
The most notable feature of the interior is a memorial to
George Howe on the north wall. There
are the figures of husband and wife in relief with their arms crossed over a
skull and below there are the figures of three children.
Above the tablet is an open pediment with an achievement of arms flanked
by swags of fruit. The central
figures are ingeniously framed by curtains pulled aside and knotted so as to
form a continuous border. The
effect is enhanced by the soft colouring of the alabaster of which the monument
is fashioned. The inscription,
which is hard to read, runs as follows.
Above the inner door there is a beautiful Norman sculptured
relief of the lamb of God within a beaded circular border.
This is clearly part of the original building, which, happily, the 19th
Century restorers felt was worthy of preservation. |
