Church Of St Mary And St Gabriel

Church of St Mary and St Gabriel

Parish church built in 1869 by James Fowler of Louth in the Early English style. The building is constructed of squared rockfaced ironstone ashlar with limestone ashlar dressings, and stone coped slate roofs with decorative clay ridge tiles.

The church comprises a western tower, nave, facetted chancel, aisles, south porch and vestry. The tower rises in three stages with a moulded parapet and stepped set-back buttresses. The belfry stage features a chamfered off set rising to a broach spire with a floriate finial. At the base of the spire are two light gabled lucarnes and small decorative gablettes positioned at the top of the spire in the four principal directions. The belfry stage has paired louvred openings with trefoils above, set in moulded surrounds with angle shafts. A stair turret occupies the south east angle. The west wall displays a two light ground floor window with sexfoil, and to the middle stage a double chamfered lancet.

The north aisle is lit by five paired pointed lights in the north wall and a similar light to the west, all featuring alternating quatrefoils and trefoils. At the east end of the nave roof stands a chimney stack with moulded top. The vestry contains two two-light windows and a pointed arched door.

The chancel features a trefoil arched eaves cornice with floriate pendants. Each wall contains a two light window with sexfoil. All windows throughout have concave chamfered surrounds and hoods with floriate stops. The south aisle matches the north arrangement with the addition of a window at the east end.

The gabled south porch displays a richly moulded outer arch with paired shafted reveals featuring stiff leaf capitals and annular bases. On either side of the porch are two fourteenth-century stone mortars with lugs. The porch includes stone side benches, single lancet side lights, and an inner doorway with chamfered surround, cable moulded hood and floriate stops.

Interior

The five bay arcades feature alternating keeled and filleted octofoil piers with moulded capitals and double chamfered arches with moulded hoods and floriate label stops. Above the piers are alternating sunk quatrefoils and trefoils. The tower arch has triple responds, moulded capitals, two chamfered and moulded orders, hood mould and floriate label stops. The chancel arch has keeled responds, stiff leaf capitals and a moulded head. At the east end of the north aisle is a pointed arch with recut thirteenth-century chamfered voussoirs and nineteenth-century keeled responds leading to the organ chamber. In the chancel north wall is a double chamfered archway to the organ chamber, with a doorway and aumbry further east, both with pointed moulded heads. The south east wall of the chancel contains an elaborate sedilia with cusped trefoil heads and crocketed gables. The moulded roof corbels are linked by a frieze of chevrons and pellets.

The chancel and tower windows contain nineteenth-century stained glass by Ward and Hughes. All fittings date from 1869 except for the chancel screen of 1884. The circular ashlar pulpit is supported on low round columns and features trefoil headed blank arcading round the sides. On the north wall of the aisle is an hatchment of 1864 to Richard Bewley Caton. The font is fourteenth-century with a plain octagonal bowl now supported on nineteenth-century marble shafts and ashlar base.

Historical context

The building was erected on the site of the Church of St Mary following the amalgamation of two parishes that had previously maintained separate churches dedicated to St Mary and St Gabriel.