St. Dominic

Introduction

The church is built of coursed squared sandstone with ashlar dressings and a Welsh slate roof, with an aisled nave and chancel with apse and ambulatory/vestry.

Architecture and furnishings

The church is aligned north-south with the altar at the south, and has a ritual south-west tower above an adjacent gateway to the priory yard. The west front has a mid C20 porch containing re-used doors with studs and a 'D' motif in iron. The interior has polychrome brick above a boarded dado, ashlar dressings, a painted plaster apse, and a collar-truss roof. The chancel contains crocketed stalls from 1826 from Peterborough Cathedral.

The church has an 1879 alabaster pulpit with scenes of the life of Saint Dominic. A large painting by Dastis of Saint Dominic is in the Lady Chapel. The church is in the C13 style. The west front has a blind arcade above the porch containing a central gabled niche with a headless statue, and a large wheel window above flanked by carved symbols of the Evangelists.

The west buttresses, the right widened into a stair turret, have empty gabled niches. The gatehouse at the right has splayed reveals to a moulded arch under a dripmould, an empty niche above, and a blind arcade beneath a hipped roof with four top gablets. The aisles have lancets, paired on the south, and the clerestory has triple windows in bays defined by buttresses. The apse has nine high lancets.

The roofs are steeply pitched. The windows have rere-arches. The church has a marble communion rail. The chancel has a patterned tiled floor.