At the time Roger de Barrowe was obtaining his licence one of those waves of building activity that swept over certain localities in the Middle Ages seems to have reached the district round Heckington. The naves of Sleaford, Silk Willoughby, Billingboro, Swayton, and Helpringham, and the whole Church of Ewerby, were rising white from the masons’ chisel in the new and graceful Curvilinear style; but it was at Heckington that this local school, through the resources of the rich and powerful abbey, were able to crown their work by one of the finest and most complete parish churches to be found in this or any other one period. The exact date at which the work was commenced is uncertain, but it appears that closely subsequent to the appropriation of the church by the abbey in 1345 the old fabric was swept away, and the foundations of the new structure laid. Richard de Potesgrave, presented to the living by King Edward in 1307, was the then vicar; his effigy lies under an arched recess on the north side of the chancel, the usual position for the founder’s tomb, and an inscription, now lost, recorded that he built the chancel of the church in honour of the Blessed Mary, St. Andrew, and All Saints, which may not necessarily mean that he provided the funds, but that the work was done under his care, just as we say that Bishop Hugh built the choir of Lincoln Cathedral. Except in the great Perpendicular structures of East Anglia, it is comparatively rare to find a parish church built at one effort, in one style, and untouched by subsequent accretions, as at Heckington—so rare, in fact, that the picturesqueness and irregularity arising from the association of various styles and dates in the majority of our churches has almost come to be looked upon as an essential part of our Gothic architecture, and one of its leading characteristics; and though it is true that the mediæval builder excelled in the charming _naïveté_ with which he superimposed his own work upon and adapted it to that of his predecessors, yet when the opportunity occurred of starting _de novo_, he built with dignity and symmetry, and devoid of intentional irregularity or straining after what we call picturesqueness. So at Heckington Church we find a perfectly symmetrical and dignified plan of apparently orthodox cruciform type, and with a western tower; while a more critical examination shows that the transepts are not in their usual position immediately west of the chancel, but separated therefrom by a short bay of aisleless nave, being, as a matter of fact, not really transepts at all, but attached chapels. And their position is therefore logical, for here the tower is, very properly for a small parish church, at the west end, while the true cruciform plan demands, nay requires it, on the crossing.