Church Of St Mark

Church of St Mark

Parish church built in 1866-7 to designs by FP Cockerell, with tower battlements added around 1892. The building is constructed of rock-faced sandstone with ashlar dressings, featuring a brick interior with ashlar dressings and a Welsh slate roof with stone gable copings. It is designed in the Gothic Revival style.

The plan comprises a chancel with a north organ and vestry and south tower, an aisled nave with a south-west baptistry and south porch.

The exterior features a plinth and angle buttresses with coped offsets, with trefoil-headed lancet windows throughout. The east elevation has a string to sloping sills of three tall lancets with hoodmoulds set under a single relieving arch. The south porch contains a roll-moulded pointed open arch with inner shafts and an arch under a steep gable with gabled kneelers to the coping; the returns have paired small trefoil-headed lights. Aisle windows are paired under an eaves gutter cornice with zigzag decoration, while six-foil clerestory windows sit under a corbel table with animal masks. The west elevation features a gabled slight projection containing a pointed-arched door with zigzag moulding, enclosing two diagonally-boarded doors between shafts under a stone head with blind trefoils and a vesica. A large eight-foil window above is flanked by buttresses. The three-stage tower has an octagonal south-west stair turret with small lancet lights. The first stage has paired windows, the second is blind, and tall paired belfry openings have nookshafts and large stone louvres. A clock sits below the battlemented parapet, added after a fire in 1892 destroyed the tower roof.

The interior features brick with ashlar arcades, bands and dressings. A scissor-braced hammer-beam roof rests on stone corbels, with a diagonal-boarded ceiling. Four steps lead up to the chancel, two to the sanctuary and one to the altar. An attached arcaded feature to the east windows has clasping rings on nookshafts supporting arches with ball-flower mouldings and deep ashlar reveals. The north organ arch and south tower chapel arcade feature high relief soffit carving of symbols of the evangelists. A dripmould to the high roll-moulded chancel arch has nookshafts and a recessed inner arch on corbelled shafts with crocket capitals. The five-bay nave arcades have similar richly carved capitals, with roll-moulded arches on round piers with spurs to the bases. Clerestory windows are recessed in pointed-arched panels with ashlar arches. Aisle windows have paired arches on slender shafts. The baptistry, west of the south porch, has an arch springing directly from a brick pier. The west door has an ashlar arch to a brick panel, now blocked by an inserted temporary screen. Sill, impost and arcade bands run throughout. Aisle and nave roofs feature a pierced wood frieze.

The church contains numerous high-quality fittings. A Gothic wood reredos and linen fold panelling to the sanctuary are present. The north aisle has a delicate wrought-iron screen, removed from the chancel arch in 1970 and adapted to form a chapel. A Norman font was removed from the old parish church of St Germain at Marske-by-the-Sea and found in the early twentieth century being used as a water trough. It is square with a restored plinth, squat angle shafts with scallop capitals, and richly carved sides decorated with spirals and wheels. At the west end, in front of the doorway, stands a tall medieval cross with a foliated pierced head, probably dating from the thirteenth century, with a restored shaft. Pine pews have shaped ends, pent kneelers and roll-moulded boarded backs. Twentieth-century chairs occupy the choir. Funeral hatchments transferred from St Germain hang in the north aisle.

The stained glass is of high quality. The east window is by Heatron, Butler and Bayne, showing the Last Supper, Crucifixion and Resurrection with well-drawn figures, and was given in memory of Sophia, Countess of Zetland, who died in 1865. North aisle glass includes a west window signed by Robert Burr & Sons of Westbourne Place, Paddington and Park Street, Grosvenor Square. The west rose window is of very high quality in a medieval style, featuring geometric patterns and foliage in bright colours.

A brass plaque on the inner face of the baptistry pier states that the west window was given by parishioners and other friends to commemorate Thomas, 2nd Earl of Zetland (1796-1873), and his brother-in-law Henry Walker Yeoman of Marske Hall (1789-1875), who was Vicar of Marske.