A church on this site has existed since at least 1086 and was recorded in the Doomsday Book. It is most likely to have been a Saxon wooden church on the same site as the present church. The first stone church on the site was built circa 1220 by the Normans, and this was replaced by a 14th-century Gothic church using the same plan as the Norman church. This Gothic church was built between approximately 1340 and 1380 in the transitional style between the Decorated and Perpendicular Gothic styles. Parts of this building can be seen in the present, most notably in the lower parts of the transepts and nave and the lower portion of the tower. This building was extensively rebuilt and extended from circa 1437, which included adding a clerestory to the nave, three chapels added and the central tower raised to its present height of 84 feet. In the middle of the 16th century, the southporch was built with a small room above it and the chancel was extended eastwards to its present length. By 1847, major restoration was required and was lead by the Rev. Stafford Brown. The nave roof was renewed, a new large west window created, the east wall of the chancel buttressed and the gallery removed. In 1968, it was found the stability of the entire building was at risk because an old culvert had broken, and water had saturated the clay into which the foundations of the church were built. Cracks in the stonework was appearing and the tower was leaning. 150 concrete piles were driven into the ground to a depth of up to 40 feet, and connected with new cross beams to stabilise the building.
Bells
The central tower, with its unusual rectangular shape, contains the third heaviest peal of eight bells hung for change ringing in the world, after Sherborne Abbey, Dorset and St Peter's Cathedral, Adelaide, Australia. They are popular with visiting bell-ringers. Prior to 1921, the tower contained a ring of six bells cast by six different founders between 1671 and 1738. John Taylor & Co of Loughborough, Leicestershire, were chosen to overhaul the bells in 1921 and it was proposed to augment them to eight by casting two new trebles, recasting two of the original six and retuning the other four. It was found when they had been removed to the foundry that none of the original bells could be satisfactorily retuned, so the foundry, with permission from the church authorities, recast all six bells and augmented them to eight, producing the octave the tower contains today. The tenor now weighs 35 long hundredweight and strikes the note C#. There is also an unused bell that hangs in an old wooden frame above the peal of eight, and dates from around 1600.
