Today, by the chancel step, is the lectern, a replacement in 2009 for an oaken eagle stolen in 2001, which shows on the right side the Torlesse arms and on the left the Howard/Tendring blazon:  and on the south side the pulpit of oak, Caen stone and Languedoc marble installed in 1865.  The appearance of the church today is a product first of the dreadful damage wrought by “Colonel” William Dowsing, “Commissioner for the Destruction of Monuments of Idolatry and Superstition” on 19th January 1643 – “We brake down an 100 Superstitious Pictures (i.e. the stained glass) and took up 7 superstitious Inscriptions on the Grave Stones (i.e. the brasses), Ora pro Nobis.”, and second of the extensive remodelling undertaken in 1865.   It is extremely interesting that Miss Frances Torlesse (1839-1935), the Rev.Martin’s youngest child, wrote in her memoirs BYGONE DAYS (1914) “it is indeed much to be regretted that the process of church restoration was not understood at that time, for many precious relics of the pre-Reformation building were destroyed, among them the stairway to the rood loft.”   Sketches of the church’s appearance before the 1865 works, including box pews and a Christopher Wren-style reredos, are hanging on the pillar by the south door.

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However, it is worth noting that on 13th July 1686 “it was ordered in a towne meeting that Isaac Jacob and John Wilsher shall scrape off all the decayed places of the playstering within the church, and to playster the same, and to wash and stope all the holles (holes), and to scrape the pillows, (pillars), and to white the church all over with Spanish white, and to paint it round with a wainscotte cullow (colour) laid in oyles, and the pillows five foot and two inches (160 cm) from the ground, and to black the heads of the pillows, and to paint the funte (i.e. font) with a marball cullow in oyle,  Secondly, to playster the north and south side of midell aisle of the church above the leads (i.e. the clerestory), and to repair the pillows of the windows, and to make new pillows where they shall be wanting above, and to finish in the glasse when it is set up above, for eighteen pounds.”   There is no record of when this paint was removed, possibly in 1865, but there are still traces of it in, for example, the deep grooves in the font.

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Between November 1964 and January 1965 extensive restoration work was carried out in the nave and aisles.   Rotten and worm-eaten timber floor and pews were removed, a layer of rubble and dust dug out, a layer of concrete poured, and the wood-block flooring was placed over it.   The digging revealed that round each of the pillars of the nave, on both sides, there was a crust of mortar and rubble mixed, and that there was a line of this material between each pillar, possibly to prevent sideways movement of the pillars during construction.   Mr.Peter Hunt, who discovered this, also scrabbled underneath one of the pillars, which showed it was standing on bare earth, without a foundation.   In the clearing process two slabs of York stone were uncovered:  the larger, found close to the chancel step, had matrices for three figures; the smaller found some 15m from the step, had a matrix for two conjoined figures.   These slabs were later incorporated in the Mannock chapel floor. Looking west from the chancel arch, to quote the late Norman Scarfe, “Stoke achieved interior perfection, at the way the roof, arcades, tower arch and, indeed, the elevated font, are brilliantly related to each other”   John Constable is quoted as saying of the tower arch that “its lofty and slender proportions are the crowning beauty of the whole interior”, and indeed it is difficult to overpraise its exquisite elegance.