Church Of St Mary

Church of Saint Mary

A parish church declared redundant in 1972, the Church of Saint Mary at Barnetby le Wold is a substantial medieval structure with later alterations spanning from the 11th century to the 20th century.

The building is constructed of ironstone, chalk and limestone ashlar and rubble, with red and yellow brick, partly cement-rendered to the nave and tower. It features limestone and ironstone ashlar dressings. The roof is slate over the nave and pantile over the chancel.

The plan comprises a west tower of two stages, a three-bay nave, and a three-bay chancel. The tower has a plinth and quoins, with a round-arched west doorway incorporating a later keystone, a small west lancet, and a moulded string-course. Small round-headed belfry openings face west and south, with a square-headed opening to the north.

The nave displays quoins to the south side. The north side is much patched, with portions of two arcade arches still visible. A 15th-century three-light window with segmental arch and Perpendicular tracery survives, alongside two plain wooden mullioned three-light windows. The south side features two plain buttresses flanking a round-headed gallery window with raised keystone and imposts, a narrow round-headed 11th-century window with monolithic lintel bearing a carved lion in relief, and a large 16th- to 17th-century square-headed south-east window with four crudely pointed and trefoiled lights.

The chancel has quoins, a sill string-course, and a chamfered plinth to the north. It contains a lancet, a blocked pointed door and twin lancet to the south, and a round-headed east window with re-used moulded ashlar sill and chamfered jambs beneath a brick arch with ashlar key and imposts. The gable is constructed of red brick with tumbled-in yellow brick and upper sections rendered.

Interior features include a pointed double-chamfered tower arch partly obscured by the gallery, with chamfered jambs, plain chamfered imposts, and an inner order on corbels. The nave contains a blocked round-headed door to the south and a blocked arcade of pointed double-chamfered arches on filleted quatrefoil piers with plain moulded capitals and octagonal bases. The respond has plain chamfered jambs and inner orders on moulded and carved corbels, much weathered. A pointed double-chamfered chancel arch has an inner order on a large filleted shaft to the south with plain moulded capital, and a plain moulded corbel to the north, possibly a capital to a former narrower shaft. Flanking the chancel arch at the east end of the nave are a pair of re-set chamfered stones, perhaps former imposts, decorated with palmette ornament.

The chancel contains a blocked south door, roll-moulded jambs to the twin lancet and east window, and an ovolo-moulded timber tie-beam with cyma stops, inscribed "R K 1664". The roof above comprises a later five-bay coupled rafter oak roof with pairs of pegged collars. Beams in the tower are dated 1610. The nave roof dates to the late 18th or early 19th century.

A raked west gallery supported on a pair of wooden columns features fielded-panelling and a moulded rail with a dated plaque to the front. Chancel rails were made from a former 15th-century oak rood-screen, with two bays flanking a central opening, moulded posts with plain capitals on the outside, and two pairs of truncated shafted posts linked by sections of plain and moulded rails. A broken ashlar mensa slab lies at the east end.

The interior also contains a late 18th- to early 19th-century octagonal painted wood panelled pulpit with moulded cornice, the marble back-plate of a 17th- to 18th-century wall tablet, a base of a font in the nave, and a carved stone infants coffin in the tower.

The very fine Romanesque lead font formerly from the church is now in Scunthorpe Museum. The church was vested in the Redundant Churches Fund. At the time of resurvey it was disused with windows in disrepair. A drawing by C. Nattes dating to around 1795 survives in the Banks Collection at Lincoln City Library.