The parish church of ST. GILES consists of a chancel with a north vestry and organ-chamber, nave, south porch, and west tower.
The tower dates from the 16th century—the first half or middle—but the remainder of the building has no ancient features except the jambs of the east window and the rubble walling, which may be 14th-century work. The building was restored in 1870: this seems to have included the rebuilding of the south wall of the nave and the complete renovation of the windows and doorways of the nave and chancel, and new roofs and furniture. The resetting of a number of carved stones in the tower walls, most of them apparently of the 14th century, may perhaps indicate an earlier tower.
All the windows and other details are modern unless otherwise described.
The chancel (about 19 ft. by 15 ft.) has an east window of three trefoiled lights and tracery: the jambs of one chamfer are ancient, probably 14th century. In the north wall is an archway to the organ-chamber and vestry and east of it a recess with a credence shelf. On the south side is a window of two trefoiled ogee-headed lights and a quatrefoil. The walls are of medieval red rubblework with heavy angle-dressings at the east angles.
The pointed chancel arch is entirely modern.
The nave (49 ft. by 22 ft.) has four north and three south windows of two trefoiled lights and varying tracery. The pointed south doorway is of two chamfered orders. Just west of the third north window is a straight joint marking the jamb of a former north doorway. The north wall is of ancient rubble, but the south wall and porch are of modern coursed yellow stone.
The gabled roofs are modern.
The vestry and organ chamber has a two-light traceried east window, a north window of one light, and a west window that was like it but is now reduced for a monument to Charles Jennens, 1773, who was a benefactor to the church.
The 16th-century west tower (about 10 ft. square) is built of red sandstone ashlar and is divided into two stages, the lower a tall one, by a moulded string-course. It has a plinth of two courses, the upper moulded, and a plain parapet. At the west angles are diagonal buttresses of four stages with moulded offsets to each of the stages and at the east are north and south square buttresses. In the south-west angle is a stair-vice (not projecting) with a four-centred doorway in the inner splayed angle. The 16th-century arch to the nave has responds of two chamfered orders, the inner with a plain moulded capital. The neck-mould is continued in the outer order, which is stopped out to square immediately above it. The two-centred head is of two chamfered orders, both stopped out to square at the springing.
The old west window is set very much to the north of the middle of the wall because of the stair-vice: it is of two plain pointed lights and spandrel in a four-centred head with a hood-mould and a three-centred rear arch. In the south wall is a modern four-centred doorway; it has wide inner splays, which may indicate an earlier doorway or an altered window.
The second story has a small round window—probably a later piercing—just below the string-course on the south side, and a loop-light to the vice. The bell-chamber has two-light windows like the lower west window. There are about a dozen reset carved stones in the tower walls; these include beast-heads or grotesques (perhaps gargoyles) in the middle of the intermediate string-course on each face, a number of human-head corbels, mostly defaced, one of them a woman's head with a 14th-century head-dress, and a half-hexagonal base of a niche carved with a priest's or monk's head and shoulders. Also a small trefoiled ogee head of a light now reglazed for the vice.
The font and other fittings and furniture are modern.
In the quatrefoil of the south chancel-window is a 14th-century white and yellow angel with green wings, holding a censer. The infilling is of ruby glass.
There are three bells: the second by Newcome of Leicester 1612, the other two by Thomas Hedderley of Nottingham 1783 and 1785.