Church Of St Mary

Church of St Mary

Church. Constructed in the 13th century, with alterations in the 14th and 15th centuries. The top stage of the tower was added in the early 18th century. The entire building was restored by Sir George Gilbert Scott between 1866 and 1869. The church comprises a west tower, a clerestoried nave with north and south aisles, a south porch, and a chancel.

The exterior is built of random rubble stone with dressed stone and ashlar dressings to quoins, eaves, and gable parapets. The roofs are plain and leaded. The tower rises in three stages with massive clasping buttresses that extend to the second stage, the western buttress being particularly large and enclosing the stair turret. A weathering course divides the first and second stages, with two bands below and one above. Beneath the top stage is a hollow-chamfered band with cross-pattern panelling. The top stage has shallow panelled pilaster-strip quoins carrying a hollow-chamfered cornice, a panelled parapet, and huge crocketted pinnacles with arched niches in pedestals. The belfry openings on the top stage are large two-centred arches with Y-tracery. The second stage has smaller two-light windows from the 14th century, and the lower stage has lancet windows. The aisle west windows feature intersecting tracery to the right and curvilinear tracery to the left. The nave has a crenellated parapet and a five-bay clerestorey with 14th-century three-light windows, the central light of each rising into the apex of the arch. The north aisle has four windows and the south aisle five windows; these are 19th-century restorations of 14th-century curvilinear decorated windows. The east window of the south aisle has reticulated tracery. The south porch is gabled with a crenellated parapet carrying crocketted finials over angle buttresses flanking a double hollow-chamfered and wave-moulded arch on three orders of columns; a crocketted finial rises over the gable. The chancel has two 14th-century windows flanking a 13th-century lancet with hoodmould, with evidence of two further lancets in the east wall. The 15th-century east window was restored by Scott, with a round blank window in the gable above.

Interior: The tower arch is multi-chamfered. Four-bay arcades with double-chamfered arches rest on tall slender octagonal piers dating to the 14th century. The chancel arch is double-chamfered in a continuous moulding with a panelled soffit. The aisle roofs are 14th-century with tie-beams. The nave roof, also 14th-century, has brattished tie-beams with arcaded spandrels to the braces, which stand on corbelled colonnettes and to either side of the king-posts. The roof features a moulded ridge-piece, purlins, and various moulded bosses. The chancel roof dates to the 19th century.

Fittings and furnishings include a 13th-century piscina; a 15th-century wooden pulpit, tall with blank traceried panels; a 19th-century octagonal stone font; a 16th-century wood communion table with lion supports (now in the north aisle); and a screen with one-light divisions with ogee-headed lights, probably later 19th century (now on the north side of the chancel).

Stained glass includes a north aisle east window of 1869 by Burlison and Grylls; an east window of 1884 by Clayton and Bell; and a chancel south-west window of 1889 by Warrington. Notable sculpture includes the Wycliffe Memorial in the east end of the south aisle, a white marble relief by Richard Westmacott Junior. Late 14th-century painting survives over the north aisle doorway depicting three figures, possibly the Three Kings or the 'three living and three dead' allegory.

Monuments include an early 15th-century alabaster tomb chest in the north aisle with two recumbent effigies of a man in gown over armour, flanked by angels with shields beneath flat canopies and a depressed arch to the tomb recess with a demi-figure of an angel holding a soul in a napkin at the apex. Two brasses commemorate John Field (died 1403) and his wife (died 1418) in the north aisle, and brasses to a civilian and his wife dating to around 1470 in the nave. A large Doom painting appears over the chancel arch, showing figures rising out of tombs and a large seated Christ in majesty surrounded by angels.

John Wycliffe was Rector of Lutterworth from 1374 to 1384.