St Andrew

About

St Andrew's is the Grade II* listed Anglican parish church of Dowsby, a village in the South Kesteven district of Lincolnshire, on the western edge of the Fens near Bourne. Unlike its neighbours in the South Lafford group, Dowsby's parish sits within the Billingborough Group of the Lafford Deanery, Diocese of Lincoln.

Dowsby takes its name from the Old Scandinavian "Dusi+by," meaning "farmstead of Dusi," recorded in the Domesday Book as "Dusebi." Inside the church, the vestry holds a recumbent effigy believed to be Etheldreda Rigdon, later re-carved in Elizabethan dress, along with six 1682 monumental brasses to the Burrell family.

History

The church's origins reach back further still than its Norman core: four fragments of Anglo-Saxon cross, carved with cable and interlace moulding, are built into the outer north wall of the south aisle, evidence of an even earlier church or cross on the site. The main body of the church dates from the 12th century onward, developed through the Early English and Perpendicular Gothic periods, with a mid-13th-century three-bay north arcade and a slightly later 13th-century south arcade.

The tower was added in the 15th century, complete with a polygonal stair turret and, later, a clock set beneath the bell openings. The church was substantially rebuilt and enlarged in 1864, when the north aisle was reconstructed and the east end of the south aisle rebuilt around the salvaged Anglo-Saxon stonework.

St Andrew's was designated a Grade II* listed building on 22 January 1987. The churchyard also holds a listed group of six table tombs to the west of the tower. Inside the church, a brass war memorial tablet and a church clock, unveiled by the Marquis of Exeter in 1923, commemorate the parish's dead of the First World War.