Church Of St Mary

Church of St Mary

A limestone ashlar parish church with lead and plain tiled roofs, located on the south side of Frampton Middlegate Road. The building dates from the late 12th and early 13th centuries, with significant 14th-century additions. A restoration was undertaken in 1796, followed by a major restoration in 1890 by the architect Hodgson Fowler. The church comprises a western tower with broach spire, nave, chancel, aisles, north and south porches, vestry, and south transept.

The western tower is late 12th century at its base and early 13th century externally, featuring clasping corner buttresses, thin central pilasters, and chamfered string courses with a human head corbel table. The tower is topped by a fine 13th-century broach spire with three tiers of lucarnes in the principal directions, each with paired pointed openings. The lower set has shafted reveals with dogtoothing. The west doorway is pointed and double-stepped with a plain hood, above which sits an early 18th-century door with raised and fielded panels bearing a cross saltire motif. Above this are a pair of tall lancets with double chamfered heads. To the right projects a slightly facetted stair tower with two round-headed lights. The belfry stage features paired louvred lancets with triple shafts and triple chamfered heads to the outer arches, flanked by single chamfered blank arches; this fenestration pattern is repeated on the other tower faces.

The aisles contain 14th-century three-light windows with cusped curvilinear tracery and gable buttresses with trefoils. The north aisle, dating to the 14th century, retains a single original three-light reticulated window and three 19th-century copies. To the east is a recut five-light late 14th-century window with rectangular surround. The gabled north porch, dated 1891, has a moulded outer door with a cusped niche above. The inner 14th-century doorway features a continuously moulded ogee surround with a niche above containing a plaque commemorating the 1891 restoration. Within are double 18th-century doors with six raised and fielded panels. The north wall displays two fragments of 13th-century grave cover, and late 18th-century brick patching and buttresses are evident east of the porch.

The 14th-century chancel has a moulded plinth and fleuron cornice with a single three-light curvilinear window to the north and two to the south, each with two tiers of mouchettes and a quatrefoil to the head. A 19th-century brick vestry adjoins the chancel. The chancel east window matches those to the sides but is a 19th-century restoration; the chancel has been substantially shortened. On the south side is an ornate 14th-century priest's door with a moulded ogee head and crocketed hood with finial. The 14th-century south transept has angled buttresses; on the south-east one is a man's head with an inscription above. To the east is a three-light reticulated window, and to the south a large five-light similar window with cusped tracery and simply chamfered surround. The south aisle contains three 19th-century three-light reticulated windows. The restored 14th-century gabled south porch has a moulded outer doorway with filleted shafted reveals; the inner doorway is continuously moulded, with a trefoil niche above dedicated to the Moores of Wyberton, dated 1881. Beyond the porch is a 14th-century three-light reticulated window.

Interior

The tower arch features 12th-century responds with scalloped capitals and a double chamfered pointed arch, matched by side arches; the rear arch of the west door is round-headed. In the west wall of the nave is evidence of an earlier roof pitch. The five-bay early 13th-century nave arcades have tall round shafts, moulded octagonal and circular abaci, and double chamfered arches. The arch-braced nave roof contains much original 14th-century timber and is carried on massive trusses supported by figured corbels. At the western ends of the aisles are strainer arches, one with an octagonal corbel. At the east end, the springing of matching arches can be seen, though they now vanish. The south aisle roof has moulded principals and straight braces. In the north wall is a 14th-century doorway to the rood loft, and at the south side a small window in a rectangular surround. The south transept contains two altar niches, statue brackets (one with a king's head), and a square aumbry in the south wall. Medieval floor tiles are present. The double chamfered 13th-century chancel arch has narrow engaged octagonal responds. In the chancel, the rear arch of the priest's door features fleurons and foliage with a crocketed ogee hood. Beyond is a contemporary sedilia originally of two bays, also with crocketed hood and carved cusps. On the north side is a doorway with a moulded surround and hooded ogee head, presumably leading to a vanished chantry. To the east is a tomb niche with a crocketed ogee head, finials, and leger slab.

Fittings include a 15th-century wooden screen of five bays with ogee heads and panel tracery, reset as a rood screen; a 17th-century octagonal panelled pulpit with guilloche arches, removed from Bourne Abbey church in 1891; a fine three-tier candelabrum surmounted by a Coney rabbit, the gift of Coney Tunnard in 1722; Commandment boards; and an ironbound 15th-century chest. A transitional circa 1200 octagonal font features intersecting blank arcading to the sides and hobnail decoration to the top.

Monuments include a 14th-century effigy of a civilian in the south transept and six ledger slabs in the nave floor, two with brass matrices. The chancel contains a white marble wall plaque in the Greek taste, a sarcophagus of Samuel Tunnard (died 1818), and a monument to Hannah Tunnard (died 1816).