Church Of St Mary

The Church of St Mary is a building with a history spanning from the late 12th century to the 19th century, located in Morley, Woodkirk. It was mentioned in the Domesday Book around 1086 and granted to the Priory of Augustinian Canons at Nostell between 1121 and 1127. Following the Dissolution in 1539, the church passed into the ownership of the Saviles family.

The church comprises a late 12th-century tower, a nave rebuilt around 1832, and a chancel rebuilt and extended in 1834 by Joseph Furness, a local mason. The tower is embattled, the upper portion dating from 1911, and built of large dressed stone; the rest of the church is of hammer-dressed stone with a stone slate roof. The architectural style is Gothic Revival.

The west tower has a battered plinth and roll-moulded strings. The west face features a lancet window in the first stage, a clock face in the second, and two-light plate tracery belfry windows recessed within elliptical arches, with colonnettes and cushion-headed capitals. Corner pinnacles adorn the battlements. An earlier steeply-pitched roofline is visible on the east face. The nave has three bays of two-light windows with trefoil heads and curvilinear tracery; a gabled porch of 1911 sits between the first two bays. The north façade of the nave features three semicircular relieving arches, possibly remnants of earlier church elements related to a now-gone aisle arcade, blocked with two-light traceried windows. The chancel, set back from the nave and sharing a continuous roofline, contains five bays, with a three-light window with intersecting Y-tracery in the first bay and other windows similar to those in the nave. A priest’s door, with a small Y-traceried window above, is located in the fifth bay. A five-light east window exhibits intersecting Y-tracery. A small, gabled north vestry with a chimney and coped gable has been added.

Inside, the nave and chancel are separated by a semicircular arch. The oldest feature is the tower arch, two-centred with chamfered octagonal piers and moulded capitals. A moulded plaster cornice runs along the top of the walls, and a flat ceiling with a rose dates from the 1830s. Within the chancel stands a fine Jacobean pulpit, octagonal with interlaced guilloche decoration and arcaded panels. Reused 15th-century bench ends form the choir stalls, displaying rectilinear tracery and carved poppy-heads. The vestry’s walls are panelled with remnants of finely carved 17th-century box pews. Fragments of medieval stained glass are incorporated into a window above the priest’s door, while other 19th-century stained glass memorial windows are also present. Memorials from an earlier church are also visible, with a notable example to Christopher Hodgson, dated 1726. A Royal Coat of Arms (on canvas) depicting George I is also displayed.

Archaeological investigations have revealed a courtyard of over 50 feet square, with associated buildings, a garden, an orchard, a stone dovecote, and fishponds serving as reservoirs for watermills below the church. St. Michael's, East Ardsley, was a dependent chapel of Woodkirk.