Church Of St Mary

The Church of St Mary is a Grade II* listed building located in Penwortham. The west tower dates from the 15th century, while the nave with low aisles was designed by E.G. Paley in 1855, and the chancel is from the 14th century. It is constructed of stone with a slate roof. The tower features battlements and diagonal buttresses, a west doorway with a moulded arch and hoodmould, and a moulded dripstone band on the west front. Above the doorway is a three-light first-floor window with perpendicular tracery and a hoodmould, along with an ogee-headed niche adorned with crocketed pinnacles. The belfry has arched and traceried two-light louvres with hoodmoulds and is capped with battlemented coping and pinnacles.

The nave has five arched two-light windows on each side, showcasing curvilinear tracery. The aisles, which are buttressed at the corners, feature windows with various forms of tracery. A prominent gabled porch with a moulded arch is located at the second bay of the south aisle. The low chancel is made of coursed rectangular blocks and has angle buttresses, arched windows with simple cusped tracery, and a roughly square window on the north side with cusped jambs and head. There is also a narrow arched priest's door in the south wall, now blocked, with a datestone above it inscribed with the initials F I A 1653, believed to belong to John and Anne Fleetwood.

Inside, the nave arcade consists of four bays with columns that are alternately round and octagonal, featuring moulded capitals. The roof is a depressed kingpost design, while the chancel has an arch-braced roof. The font, dated 1667, is square with chamfered corners and rests on a square pillar. The church contains various memorial tablets, including one in the south aisle dated 1863 to John Horrocks (died 1804) and another in the chancel to Christopher Musgrave of Edenfield, Cumbria, who died in 1735, made of black slate with arms at the head. There are also fragments of early stained glass in the chancel windows.