Church of St Lawrence, Alton

The Church of St Lawrence, Alton is an Anglican parish church in Alton, Hampshire, England. It is a Grade I listed building and is notable both for the range of its architecture and for being the site of the concluding action of the Battle of Alton during the English Civil War.HistoryThe Church of St Lawrence, like many older English churches, is an amalgam of styles resulting from repeated additions and extensions being made down the centuries. In the words of William Curtis:Anglo-SaxonAnglo-Saxon settlement in Alton began in around AD 500 and there was certain to have been a church in the township. There are no remnants of this structure left, except for the baptismal font that is now situated in St Lawrence's. The font is fashioned from one massive block of stone and crude axemarks may be seen on it, showing its primitive workmanship. When the church was restored in 1868 the font was discarded in favour of one of a more contemporary design; it ended up in Cirencester, but was purchased for £10 in 1934 and brought back to St Lawrence's, where it stands at the west end of the south nave on a mill wheel, symbolising Alton's status as a centre of the paper industry. It has been in use as a font since 1950.NormanThe present-day church had its origins in the Norman period, with building probably starting at some time not long after 1066. The conventional date for the founding of the church is 1070, and the church celebrated its 900th anniversary in 1970. This early church took the shape of a cross, the four Norman arches that formed the tower being described in Pevsner as "emphatically Early Norman, say around 1100". These arches, built of stone probably from Selborne or Binsted, are situated midway down what is now the southern nave, and some remnants of the original door may be seen in the wall behind the 19th-century font located in the centre of the arches. At the top of the pillars supporting the arches are designs fashioned by French craftsmen with axes, including a wolf eating a bone (pictured, left), a pelican, several winged cherubs, a demon and a pair of donkeys.