Church Of St Mary In The Wood (Congregational)

The Church of St Mary in the Wood, a Congregational Church, was built in 1878 by Lockwood and Mawson. It features hammer-dressed stone with ashlar dressings and a Welsh blue-slate roof, designed in a cruciform shape. The church has an aisleless nave, transepts, and a shallow east end, with a tall south-west corner tower in a simple Early English Gothic Revival style.

The four-stage tower has angle buttresses that rise to form octagonal corner turrets, flanking a pedimented gable with a clock set between, which conceals the base of a broached stone spire. The bell stage has two-light shafted openings. The west end of the nave features recessed paired doorways with rich foliate carvings and a large naturalistic rose in the tympanum. The west window has four cusped lights with cinquefoils above two pairs and one at the apex. The three-bay nave is articulated by offset buttresses and has a three-light window on the ground floor with trefoil-headed lights, along with a gallery featuring arched lights. The second bay includes a gabled dormer with a larger three-light window topped with a quatrefoil.

On the north elevation, there is a projecting canted corner bay attached to the first bay. The tall gabled transepts have tall three-light windows to illuminate the gallery, with diagonal buttresses. The west window features four trefoil-headed lights surmounted by a large rose window.

Inside, the church has a gallery on three sides supported by cast-iron Doric columns, with tiered pitch-pine box pews. These columns also support an arch-braced roof with braced wall ties resting on stone corbels. The chancel arch springs from short marble columns, and there is an elaborate carved pulpit decorated with panels of Perpendicular tracery. The choir stalls feature poppy-heads, and a large Royal Coat-of-Arms dated 1664 is painted on wooden panels from an earlier church on this site. The location has been significant as a Presbyterian church during the Commonwealth and has been a Congregationalist church since around 1800.