Top Churches in the East Midlands

All Saints' church is all that remains of the Medieval village of Kedleston, razed in 1759 by Sir Nathaniel Curzon to make way for the magnificent Kedleston Hall.Today, the hall is a beautiful National Trust property and you can easily combine a trip to both attractions at once. The Curzon family has lived at Kedleston for 700 years and their stunning memorials – created by several famous designers including Robert Adam – fill the church. The grandest was erected in 1909, commissioned by Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India, for his wife Mary. A dazzling marble tomb –- with lifesize figures and watching angels –- floats on a sea of green translucent quartz in its own little chapel with superb stained glass windows. Another monument from 1456 shows Sir John Curzon in full armour with his wife and their two dogs. Essentially 13th-century, with a classical east end, All Saints is filled with fine fittings including oak box pews, pulpit and communion rails. However, its oldest feature is the Norman south doorway which has zigzag moulding and grotesque birds heads.Look out for the carving of the fiendish little cares of horseman and wild beasts that glare out at you just above the door!

The charming red-brick chapel of St George stands alone amid acres of corn and oilseed rape with only a few trees for company. It is situated beside one of Lincolnshire’s lost villages – an old Saxon settlement long since buried. The name 'Goltho’ is said to be Saxon for 'where the marigolds grow’. Inside, the church has an atmosphere of calm and simplicity, with rustic wooden pews, an altar screen and a simple two-decker pulpit.

Sumptuous memorials to 300 years of the Robinson family fill the south chapel of Medieval St Andrew’s, which lies next to the Robinson seat of Cranford Hall. There are also memorial brasses to various Fosbrokes, who were here for three earlier centuries. This Jane Austen type image is, however, only a part of the story: a Norman arcade, additions from every subsequent Medieval century, some Flemish glass and a complete set of furnishings from the incumbency of a 19th-century member of the Robinson family give this church a rich and varied history.

St Peter’s stands in a pretty grass churchyard in Northampton town centre, beside the buried remains of a Saxon palace. This 900-year-old Norman church is filled with glorious carved treasures. Inside, great Norman arches of plain and banded stone rise and flow with zig-zag waves. They are supported by beautiful carved capitals, each overflowing with foliage, scrollwork, birds and beasts –- look for the man being swallowed by (or emerging from) a monster. These carvings were plastered over in the 17th-century and were carefully unpicked with a bone knife in the early 19th-century by local antiquarian Anne Elizabeth Baker, a labour of love lasting 11 years. Other highlights include a handsome brass lectern and carved wooden pews and monuments – including the bust of William Smith, the father of British geology. Outside, strange half-human faces glare out from under the eaves, together with cruder, timeworn figures. There are other delights to be found include the 14th-century font, a 12th-century grave slab with astonishingly clear relief carving and some fine Victorian stained glass.

This 13th-century estate church in Deene Park is the church of the Brudenell family, who bought Deene Park in 1514 and have lived there ever since. It contains many monuments to Brudenells, including one to James Brudenell, 7th Earl of Cardigan, who led the Charge of the Light Brigade. In 1868 the widow of James Brudenell commissioned T H Wyatt to rebuild much of the church. There is a splendid tomb of the 7th Earl and his wife in the South Chapel. The church is a large building constructed using local stone and Collyweston slates, with a tall west tower and broach spire which probably date from the 13th-century or earlier. Inside, the nave and aisles are austere but the chancel was sumptuously furnished and decorated by G F Bodley in 1890.

Completed in 1833, this splendid classical building with its domed tower was designed by Sir Robert Smirke for the 4th Duke of Newcastle as a mausoleum for his wife. The nave is separated from the mausoleum by an elegant Ionic reredos screen. Inside there are some stunning marble effigies.