Priory And Parish Church Of St Mary

The Priory and Parish Church of St Mary in Lancaster is an Anglican parish church of Grade I listed importance, largely dating from around 1430 on an earlier site. It underwent significant development and restoration over several centuries, including a prominent west tower built in 1754–55 by Henry Sephton of Liverpool (with William Kirkby as contractor), a south porch and north chapel added around 1903 by the architects Austin and Paley, and a north refectory and office created in 1982 from the former choir vestry of 1871 and the clergy vestry of 1904. The building was restored in 1912. The medieval portions are constructed of dressed sandstone, while later work uses sandstone ashlar, with roofs of slate and lead.

The church consists of a west tower, nave and chancel under a continuous roof with clerestory and embattled parapets, north and south aisles, a south porch, a north chapel (the King's Own Memorial Chapel), and a north office and refectory.

The four-stage west tower features set-back buttresses, corner pinnacles, and an embattled parapet. The south doorway has a moulded arch beneath a hoodmould from which small swags hang—a motif repeated across all arched openings above. The second stage contains a four-light south window divided into two sub-arches with reticulated tracery and a roundel above. The third stage has round windows on the north and south sides, perhaps originally intended for a clock face, which now sits above them. Each bell opening has four lights; in the upper stage these are divided into two pairs with an angel's head in the spandrel, while below a deep unmoulded transom only two lights with cusped heads remain.

The four-bay nave and four-bay chancel are largely indistinguishable save that the plinth steps beneath the eastern bay of the nave and the nave roof is more steeply pitched. Four-centred windows in both aisles and clerestory are set under hoodmoulds with splayed hollow-moulded reveals. They are of three lights with cusped heads, and their hollow-chamfered mullions rise straight to the arch. Between them stand buttresses with set-offs, rectangular below the first set-off and v-shaped above it; the battlements rise to form diagonally-set crocketed pinnacles above them (those in the aisles have been removed). A string course runs at the base of the battlements, breaking forward into a grotesque head where it passes before the buttresses. Beneath the south aisle window in the second bay from the east is a low four-centred doorway, said by the Victoria County History to date from 1828 but apparently late 19th century in character.

The two-storeyed south porch has a taller staircase turret to the east and buttresses rising to freestanding pinnacles with crockets and grotesque heads. The doorway has moulded jambs with fleurons in the arch mouldings above; between two cusped windows stands a canopied niche containing a statue of the Virgin and Child. The east window has five trefoiled lights and Perpendicular tracery.

Internally, the four-bay nave and four-bay chancel are separated by a wide chancel arch and arches across the aisles which, like the chancel arcades, carry rich mouldings in two orders under a hoodmould. The piers in the chancel have deeply-moulded capitals and four half-round shafts with hollows between; those in the chancel arch have similar capitals and triple shafts (with hollows) on each cardinal face. The nave arcades, possibly built slightly later (evidenced by the north-east respond), have two orders of plain chamfers resting on octagonal piers with simply-moulded capitals.

The King's Own Memorial Chapel is separated from the north aisle by an arcade of four narrow bays with clustered piers having capitals carved with a 'black letter' Latin inscription. The moulded south doorway, inside the porch, is of late 12th-century date and has restored angle shafts. In the west wall of the nave is a doorway said to be pre-Conquest, discovered during the 1912 restoration, with plain square jambs (the left-hand one of fairly recent stone) and a plain lintel on shouldered corbels.

At the west end of the nave, the central part of an 18th-century gallery survives with carved Royal arms attached to its front. The open timber nave roof dates from 1912.

The fittings are notable. On each side of the chancel are choir stalls with gables encrusted with foliage carving so luxuriant that Pevsner called them 'about the most luxuriant canopies in the country.' Ten misericords survive, all mutilated to some extent. The reconstructed pulpit incorporates 17th-century woodwork, including the date '1619'. The font is of 1848, but the carved oak octagonal font cover is dated '1631'. The east window was designed by Paley and made by Wailes. The early 20th-century glass in the north chapel was made by Shrigley and Hunt, except for the west window, which is a memorial to the dead of the First World War. Three brass candelabra of Flemish design were donated in 1717. Wall tablets include one to William Stratford (died 1751) by I.F. Roubiliac and one to Sibyll Wilson (died 1773) by Fishers of York.