Piper photographed Warmington church, Peterborough for Juliet Smith’s Northamptonshire & the Soke of Peterborough: A Shell Guide, published in 1968. The guide notes the church as 'one of the most famous of Northamptonshire's Early English churches, [having] a broach spire with very prominent lucarnes which give it a slightly lumpy appearance' (a broach spire has no bottom parapet; a lucarne is a dormer-type opening).

While Piper’s focus had shifted to wider themes after the war, he continued to explore historically important and ecclesiastical locations with experimental and energetic techniques. Piper’s largest and most distinctive church tower works were created in the 1960s and painted around the same time as the animated Brittany series of oils Warmington Spire, 1964 is injected with a similar energy. Thick splashes of gesso build up the surface of the canvas while enthusiastic, abstracted brushstrokes surround the outline of the tower. In isolating the spire and presenting this on a large-scale, Piper depicts the impressive structure with strength and prominence while its delicate, linear form recalls his detailed wartime drawings as part of Kenneth Clark’s Recording Britain scheme, which aimed to record and celebrate the country’s natural beauty and architectural heritage. These semi-abstracted, frontal viewpoints show further influence from Piet Mondrian’s early 1900 Impressionist depictions of the gothic church tower at Zeeland in the Netherlands.