The Willoughby Group of Parishes Website

Mumby St Thomas Church

The earliest part of the church are the arcades. First North then South, both 13th Cent. with double chamfered arches. The N/W respond is still purely Norman (scalloped capital) and the North piers are circular with elementary upright stiff-leaf capitals and circular abaci.

The South capitals are much freer stiff leaf varieties, the abaci are octagonal and the East respond is keeled. On the North side the hoodmould stops still include one of the long-snouted Norman monsters. Another is a beast devouring a man's head. The South side has leaf stops and dogtooth on the hoodmoulds themselves. These two arcades are three bays long but a fourth was added on both sides shortly after and the chancel arch goes with this.

The South doorway, on the other hand, belongs to the earlier parts of the South arcade. It is nice, with its two orders of shafts, the dogtooth bands between them, the stiff-leaf capitals and the dogtooth in the arch. Decorated North aisle windows (reticulation in the East window). Perpendicular West tower is quite stately. It is of ashlar. Early English clerestory with pairs of small lancets of greenstone. The church was restored in 1843-4 and the chancel rebuilt in 1847.

The font is decorated octagonal, tall bowl and in each panel a different motif of flowing tracery, set between thin buttress-shafts.

Most of the motifs are familiar from windows but one or two are pure fancy. The screen has fine, two-light divisions consisting of a Y and cusped ogees in either half of the Y. Coving and loft are not original but make the whole more impressive. Some tracery now used in the bench ends of the chancel seats. The stained glass East window, by Mayer & Co. In 1867, still pictorial. Churchyard cross- the octagonal base and the lower part of the shaft remain- probably 14th century.

(Bib) The buildings of England - Lincolnshire.
    Nikolaus Pevsner and John Harris, revised by Nicholas Antram 1989.
    Penguin