Monument record WKS 005 - Church of St Andrew

A church is mentioned at Wickham Skeith in the Domesday book, 1086. Church of St Andrew. Consists of chancel, nave, N & S porches, C14 decorated W tower. Details in (S1)(S2).

Monitoring identified the wall foundations of an earlier nave, together with its clay floor, discovered during work to re-order the west end of St Andrew's church. The current nave dates to the first half of the 15th-century, but the tower was constructed during the second half of the 14th-century and the chancel, which includes a priest door in a decorated style, and the south porch which re-uses earlier windows, provide evidence of the previous building. A church is listed for Wickham Skeith in the Domesday book The flint foundations indicate that the earlier nave was c.1m narrower than its successor; its floor was 650mm below the present internal ground level and was formed from beaten clay with mortar. The early floor was cut by a sequence of unmarked graves, including one which is believed to have been a burial that occurred within the earlier church, and two small burnt pits; make-shift crucibles created to recover the lead glazing strips from windows which were being dismantled or repaired (in the post-medieval period). In the churchyard, the former south boundary ditch was recorded within the excavations for a septic tank; the ditch had been infilled in the 1920's when the graveyard was enlarged from 1 to 1.6 acres (S3).