It's a fairly run of the mill building in a pleasing churchyard and I liked it a lot; such a shame it's needlessly inaccessible.
ST ANDREW. Externally all Perp, of different materials and dates, with windows with two-centred arches and panel tracery, and four-centred arches, and also - in the tower W - uncusped. The bell-openings of the tower may well be post Reformation. E.E. S doorway and E.E. S arcade piers. But the spacing of the bays is too wide for E.E. work, and the arches are Perp. So is the W respond. The N arcade is Perp throughout, with capitals to the shafts towards the openings, a moulded continuous order, and the outer order or hood-mould given its own minor shafts with capitals towards nave and aisle. In the S aisle the Perp windows are set internally in much wider blank arches. Perp one-bay N chapel. The chancel roof has figures against the wall-posts. - FONT. Octagonal, Perp, with plain quatrefoils. - PLATE. Plate of 1656-7; Flagon of 1744-5 ; two Cups of 1828-9. - BELL. One bell is of c.1400, by William Dawe.
ABBOTS RIPTON. Its Moat Farm has timbers of Shakespeare’s day and an ancient gargoyle watching all who pass; and there are charming 16th and 17th century cottages by the church, which is a dignified place among the trees, with ancient stone heads looking out from its windows. The tower, about 400 years old, looks down on a nave, aisle, and porch of the 13th century, and has a bell which was ringing over these fields long before the tower was built, for it was made about 1400, another being dated 1671. There is a font with carving of the 15th century, a 13th century piscina, an Elizabethan altar table, and a window glowing with shields in fragments of 15th century glass; but perhaps its best possession is a group of figures looking down on the chancel, six men and women who have been holding up the beams since the 15th century, four more on the splendid timbers.
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