The Parish Church of St Mary

The Parish Church of St Mary is a church with origins dating back to the 12th century, featuring a north-east transept chapel added around 1280. The majority of the structure was built in the early 14th and 15th centuries. The tower was rebuilt after a collapse in 1520, which also required significant rebuilding of the nave. The church is constructed from magnesian limestone and has a lead roof.

The building has a six-bay aisled nave with a west door and a south porch, a central tower, three bay transepts with a south-east aisle and a north-east chapel, and a five-bay aisled chancel with a square east end and a north chapel.

The west front features polygonal angle buttresses with pierced upper stages that flank a heavily shafted and moulded west door. Above this door is a panelled west wall with a seven-light sub-arcuated Perpendicular window and an openwork parapet. The large south porch has two-light Y-tracery windows and a crocketed ogee gable at the entrance. The church has offset buttresses and embattled parapets throughout, with crocketed pinnacles except on the chancel. The aisle windows of the chancel, south transept, and three west bays of the nave display intersecting tracery, while the clerestory windows and the east bays of the nave aisle feature Perpendicular tracery. The five-light sub-arcuated Perpendicular east window is notable, and the central tower has an oculus on the lower stage and four-light Perpendicular belfry openings.

Inside, the church has a two-storey elevation in the nave and chancel. The original ceilings include one in the chancel dated 1445, which depicts 40 English kings. The early 15th-century choir stalls feature 23 carved misericords. There is an octagonal marble font from 1530 and several notable monuments from the 18th and 19th centuries. The church also contains good 19th-century stained glass, including an east window by Clayton & Bell and a west window made by Hardman to a design by Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin.

Significant restorations took place in the 1840s and 1850s by Augustus Welby Northmore and Edward Welby Pugin, as well as further work from 1864 to 1867 by Sir Gilbert Scott.