Church Of St Mary

Parish church, Barwell. Built circa 1300-50 with late 15th-century clerestory, restored in 1854 by H. Goddard. The fabric is random rubble with freestone dressings and lead-covered roofs of low pitch.

The church comprises a 3-stage west tower, 4-bay nave with aisles, north and south porches, and 3-bay chancel.

The west tower displays a series of offsets and a moulded plinth, topped by a crenellated parapet with gargoyles at the four corners. The lower stage has angle buttresses surmounted by small diagonal buttresses extending to just over half the height of the second stage. A Y-traceried west window lights the lower stage, while the second stage has rectangular loops. The belfry lights are Y-traceried with the heads of the two sub-divisions having trefoil cusping.

The nave and aisles feature shallow buttresses at the bay divisions with offsets. The windows of the western bay are pointed with 3 stepped lights; otherwise they have 3 trefoiled lights with flowing tracery. The late 15th-century clerestory is battlemented with a hollow chamfered parapet string and continuous moulded coping around the merlons and crenels. Each clerestory window has 2 trefoil-headed lights beneath a tall 4-centred arch, with a hollow chamfered surround. A pair of 19th-century gabled porches flank the church on the north and south sides. The pointed north door has a moulded surround including convex quarter-round, concave half-round and ogee profiles.

The chancel windows have 2-light openings with reticulated tracery in the west and central bays, and flowing tracery in the east bay. The ambitious 5-light east window displays flowing tracery in an inventive pattern, though this may have been altered in the 19th century.

The interior features 4-bay nave arcades of double chamfered pointed arches on octagonal columns with moulded bases and capitals, with continuous hood moulds. The chancel arch is similar but springs from engaged half columns; the tower arch has 3 chamfered orders and no capitals. At the east end of the south aisle, a tall double chamfered arch provides access to what is now the vestry, though it may originally have served as a chapel.

The low-pitched 15th-century nave roof is carried on cambered tie beams, brattished along the top and supported by shafted brackets standing on stone corbels carved as heads. The soffit of each tie beam is carved with a boss. The lean-to aisle roofs are of similar date, also with curved bosses; the tie beams of the north aisle roof are supported on brackets springing from stone corbels carved with naturalistic foliage. A 19th-century chancel roof is of similar construction to that over the nave.

The church contains a plain cylindrical medieval font, raked Sunday school seating of 1854 in the north aisle, and 19th-century pine pews. A 20th-century ogee-headed doorway in the south-east corner of the north aisle gives access to a newel stair that originally ascended to the rood loft. The altar, reredos, altar rail, choir stalls and pulpit are all of late 19th or 20th-century date, featuring trefoil-headed panelling, naturalistic foliage and poppy-heads. The church retains a 14th-century Easter sepulchre with a segmental pointed arch, and sedilia and piscina with 2-centred drop arches and a continuous hood mould. Commandment boards flank the east window.

The monuments include that of John Turkeray (died 1613), an aedicule combining Renaissance and Gothic detail with 2 Tuscan columns and an open pediment surmounted by 3 obelisks. The trefoil-headed panel inside contains a brass plate depicting Turkeray, who was parish priest, preaching from a pulpit to his assembled wife and children. A brass plate to Richard Brereton (died 1659) shows the engraved figures of Brereton and his wife standing with their sons and daughters behind the respective parents. At the back of the Easter sepulchre are brass plates to Susanna Stafford (died 1676) and Mary Seagrave (died 1730).