St Chad

To the west is a rather battered incised slab another vicar, John de Gere who died around 1300. He is shown dressed in full Eucharistic vestments. Under the harmonium is a further slab to a rector and a late fourteenth century slab to Richard de Beauchamp. There are other monuments too. On the north wall of the chancel is a fine 15th century brass of a man in armour and his wife in butterfly head dress. They are believed to be John Whichcot and his wife Elizabeth Tyrwhit. She was an heiress and her marriage to John, a Shropshire gentleman, brought the manor of Harpswell into the Whichcot family. The manor remained in their hands until the 19th century and opposite the brass is a marble tablet to their descendant Thomas Whichcot, who died in 1776. Thomas Whichcot was evidently an ardent supporter of the Protestant settlement. There is a prominent royal arms of Queen Anne, one of the finest sets of royal arms in the county. On the face of the tower is an inscription recording that he paid for a clock to commemorate the Duke of Cumberland's defeat of the 'rebels', particularly Bonnie Prince Charlie, the Stuart pretender to the throne, at the battle of Culloden in 1745. Medieval bench ends (one decorated with the five wounds), fragments of medieval glass and a Norman arcaded font also contribute to a building of great interest.