Church Of Ss Mary And Thomas A Becket

Church of SS Mary and Thomas a Becket

Parish church built in 1837 with a later vestry, designed by Thomas Foster. The building is constructed in squared sandstone and sandstone ashlar with Welsh slate roofs and is designed in the Early Gothic Revival style.

The church comprises a west tower, four-bay nave, one-bay chancel and south vestry. The tower has four stages with advanced embattled parapets set on a corbel table. Full-height clasping buttresses and steeply gabled angle buttresses rise at the north-west and south-west corners. Each face of the top stage contains three deeply recessed chamfered lancets with continuous label and stops. The shallow third stage has a clock face set in a moulded roundel on the north side. The second stage has a tall central lancet with label and stops on the north, west and south sides. The ground stage on the west side has a lancet with label and foliated stops; the south side has a similar feature now blocked by a memorial plaque. A north doorway has a continuously chamfered arch with two-centred head, label and foliated stops. The door features vertical fillets, strap hinges and a second set of central hinges.

The nave has four tall chamfered lancets with moulded labels and foliated stops to both side walls. Gabled angle buttresses and a corbelled eaves cornice are present throughout. Kneelers mark the roof edge. The chancel is lower but incorporates similar buttresses and eaves details. Its north side has a deeply moulded niche with trefoiled head and continuous roll moulding that ends in pendants to each jamb below the projecting part-octagonal cill. A roll-moulded label is stopped by imposts. The east elevation has three stepped chamfered lancets, the central one wider than the flanking pair, with continuous label and two foliated stops. A low gable runs into horizontal coping above very large kneelers. To the left is a two-centred arch of the vestry doorway with label and head stops. The south elevation of the vestry has one small chamfered lancet with label and head stops.

Interior of the tower features cantilevered stone two-flight stairs with rectangular-section spindles and a wrought iron hand rail. A cylindrical newel post supports the structure. On the east wall are two small stone tablets for Titus and Thomas Neve, who died in 1733 and 1736 respectively. Opposite is a donations board for the poor of Much Birch. The doorway into the nave has a two-centred head that is continuously and deeply chamfered. The two-leaved door has a semi-circular head with fillets continuing into a pointed tympanum formed by the arch soffit.

The chancel features a painted pointed barrel ceiling. Each side contains a large painted quatrefoil with four cherubs floating amid clouds in a blue sky, with foliated designs to the outsides of the main quatrefoils. The east window contains stained glass in roundels depicting The Last Supper, Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane and The Crucifixion, with the inscription: BEHOLD THE LAMB OF GOD / THIS DO IN REMEMBRANCE OF ME.

The mensa has consecration crosses and five supporting trefoiled ogee-headed panels in oak. An early 19th-century seat has straight recessed mouchettes and a gabled back with rosettes. A second chair has scissor legs, a twisted stretcher, arm rests each with three drilled holes and a back with nailheads to the margins. A chamfered two-centred chancel arch has continuous chamfers. The nave has a plain plaster ceiling. Fluted corbels with ball-pendants carry wall-posts and arch braces which disappear into the ceiling.

The font is octagonal sandstone with a moulded base and stem with straight incised mouchettes to each side. The bowl has curved underside and rosettes, with a frieze inscribed: MDCCCXXXVII: DEO et eccles: Birchenis DD: et D John Dec;ber et anno sac. An oak cover in the form of a crocketted corona with ogeed heads and cross surmounts the font.

Several small wall monuments are present, mainly of 19th-century date. On the centre of the north wall, a monument in grey and white marble for Sarah Elliott, died 1825, features a draped urn, cornice and apron. A brass plaque is on the south wall. A marble plaque on the west wall commemorates seven who fell in the First World War. The north wall bears a plaque for William Dyke and Dennis Creed, aged 20 and 17, who drowned in the River Wye in 1911.

Pews and choir stalls are largely 19th-century oak with quatrefoil decoration and open cinquefoil motifs to benches. The communion table is 17th-century with large turned legs and moulded rails, the side rails featuring a characteristic frieze of small round-headed niches. A probably late 19th-century organ has exposed pipes and pine ogeed panelling. An early 20th-century traceried oak pulpit stands in the chancel.

The chancel painting, executed in 1942, is said to be the work of Italian prisoners of war.