Church of St Bartholomew, Crewkerne.

Crewkerne is a town and electoral ward in Somerset, England, situated 9 miles south west of Yeovil and 7 miles east of Chard in the South Somerset district close to the border with Dorset. The civil parish of West Crewkerne includes the hamlets of Woolminstone and Henley. The town lies on the River Parrett, A30 road and West of England Main Line railway.

The Church of St Bartholomew in Crewkerne, Somerset, England dates from the 15th century and has been designated as a Grade I listed building.

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St Bartholomew’s Parish Church stands on high ground to the west of the town. The first Saxon church was founded before the end of the 9th century as a “minster”, or main church of a Saxon Royal estate that included an area which later became the parishes of Seaborough, Wayford and Misterton. This church was replaced after the Norman Conquest with a larger stone cruciform building, with a central tower. This was almost completely rebuilt and enlarged in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. This is, for the most part, the church building visible today. It is an excellent example of the Perpendicular style with many unusual and individual features. These include the west front, the nave, the six-light aisle windows and the Tudor-style chapels and windows in the north east corner. The building material is golden-coloured Ham Hill stone, quarried a few miles north of Crewkerne.

No major alterations have been made since the Reformation in the 1530s and 1540s, but there have been many changes to the interior to accommodate various phases of Church of England worship. Among these are an oven used for baking communion bread in the south east corner of the north chapel.

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