St Peter & St Paul, Bratoft, has a brick tower of 1747. The rest is of greenstone and in the Perpendicular style though restored in 1890.

Mark Acton, 2015

The rather fine windows of the clerestory in Perpendicular style date from the 1890 restoration.

May 2016

The following notes are provided in the church:

'This extraordinary and most probably unique picture is painted on six horizontal wooden planks, curving on the left-hand side to fit the chancel arch where it hung as part of a tympanum until some time between 1830 and 1879. it is 5ft 1in high and 6ft 10in wide tapering to 5ft 11in at the top.

At the bottom is an inscription:
Robert Stephenson: Spaines proud armado with great strength and power / Great Britain's stae came gapeing to devour. / This dragon's guts like Pharoas scattered hoast / Lay splitt and drown's upon the Irish Coast. / For of eight score save too ships sent from Spaine / But twenty five scarce sound return'd again.

The dragon is scarlet and fills the centre of the picture in a huge ovel sweep, encircling a small fleet and with more ships in every twist of its body and tail. Projecting from the edge of the picture into the sea around it are promontories of land labelled for lack of  sophisticated cartographical layout.

In the top left corner is Hibernia, with lower down a ship of war flying St Patrick's cross. Many smaller ships also have this flag. In the bottom left corner is France. To the top right is Scotland with a huge fleet crowded around its coast and to the lower right Angliae. Here the troops are marshalled on the shore behind a drummer and a standard. The flag has the cross of St George recognisable in the corner.

The Spanish fleet is clustered around the red dragon referred to in the inscription and in the process of being wrecked on the shores of Scotland and Ireland. Fire ships are to be seen floating into the midst of them. The English soldiers with drummer wait on the shore beside a small town.

It seems possible that the picture was painted soon after the defeat of the Spanish Armada (1588) and was repaired in the first half of the 17th century.

There are mortices in the chancel arch showing the former positions of the rood beam. The painting presumably fitted into half of the space between this and the top of the screen filling the gap left by the removal of the rood.'

The painting currently hangs on the west wall of the nave above the tower arch.

May 2016

Bratoft church has a fine range of poppy-head bench ends. This one depicts a pair of birds.

May 2016

Bratoft church has a fine range of poppy-head bench ends. This one depicts a pair of clinging figures.

May 2016

The font is octagonal in shape, Perpendicular in style, with leaves and heads against the underside and simple tracery and the Instruments of the Passion against the bowl.

May 2016