Church of St George

Church of St George

This is a parish church with Saxon origins, largely rebuilt in 1829 by John Turner while retaining the late 13th-century chancel and reusing medieval stonework. The building is constructed in roughly coursed red sandstone rubble for the chancel, with a mixture of yellow and red coursed limestone for the 19th-century work (yellow predominating on the south side), and an ashlar porch. It has low-pitched slate roofs to the nave and aisles, and machine tiles to the chancel. The plan comprises a nave, chancel, north and south aisles, a south-west tower, and a south porch.

The tower rises in four unequal stages with angle buttresses. The first and second stages have broad lancets with hoodmoulds on the south side, and there is a roundel to the third stage. The belfry has tall louvred lancet openings with a corbel table and parapet above, surmounted by a brass weathercock. The west door is plain and narrow with a pointed arch.

The nave is lit by a clerestory of five lancets with hoodmoulds, separated by shallow pilaster buttresses on the north and south sides, with a further blind bay to the west on the north side. The west wall contains two tiers of triple lancets with hoodmoulds. Plain corbel tables and parapets run along the north and south sides.

The aisles comprise five bays with four pairs of lancets similar to those in the clerestory but linked by a continuous hoodmould. Gabled buttresses support the outer walls, and a gabled ashlar porch sits in the west bay on the south.

The chancel, dating from the late 13th century, has three bays on a chamfered plinth with stepped buttresses between the second and third bays from the west. Windows on the north and south walls contain plain Y-tracery with hoodmoulds, the central window on the south positioned at a higher level above a pointed priest's door. The east window is of circa 1300, featuring intersecting tracery of five lights pierced by an elongated quatrefoil above, with a small lancet opening below the apex. Two stones in the east wall display 12th-century chevron moulding, evidently reused from an earlier church on the site.

Interior

The south doorway has wide pointed double doors with six carved quatrefoils (circa 1830) on the outside and an original lock. A tall broad arch at the west end leads not to the tower but to an organ gallery. The nave has a plain square panelled roof in five bays with principals resting on stone corbels, dating from circa 1904. The chancel roof is of trussed rafter construction with scissor bracing and quatrefoil carving to the cornice, dating from circa 1300 and restored in 1904. The chancel arch was rebuilt circa 1830 but its broad, tall, pointed form with bold quadrant mouldings probably copies the original late 13th-century arch.

A 13th-century trefoil-arched piscina is set into the chancel wall. The north wall contains an aumbry with a shouldered arch and an oak door inscribed HP/WR/HH/1652. The five-bay nave arcades have wide pointed arches supported by quatrefoil-section piers with fillets on tall octagonal bases. Many bases have been much recut, with the exceptions being the eastern responds and the first capitals from the east (in red sandstone), which may date from the 14th century.

Fittings and Furnishings

A plain 12th-century round font has deep scalloping beneath the bowl and a moulded rim and base. The wooden pulpit dates from 1904. A marble and mosaic reredos by G.E. Street dates from circa 1866. 17th-century oak panelling in the chancel was placed there circa 1917, with additional Jacobean panelling used in the screen below the organ gallery. Six glazed medieval floor tiles are set in a wooden frame on the south chancel wall. A wooden screen across the chancel with openwork tracery in the style of G.E. Street dates from 1904, as does the stained glass in the east window, commemorating the reconstruction of the chancel at that time. Two parish chests are present: one of early 17th-century date at the east end of the south aisle, and another at the west end inscribed I B R P WAR 1700. An iron-bound chest with small painted panels (probably decorated in the 19th century) dates from the early 17th century but is of continental origin.

Monuments

The church contains a good collection of 17th- and 18th-century wall tablets and memorials. Notable examples include a memorial to Thomas Davies (died 1674), a London merchant, featuring a good mid-18th-century design with a segmental pediment and two flanking standing figures above a carved sailing ship, located on the north side of the chancel. Other significant monuments are to Richard Ward Offley (died 1762) on the north side of the chancel, and Reverend Henry Baldwin (died 1737) on the south side. A small brass tablet on the north wall of the chancel commemorates Owen Davis (died 1596). In the nave, on the east wall south side, there is a memorial with folded drapery to William Boycott (died 1707).

Historical Context

Originally a Saxon minster church, the parish of Pontesbury was formerly divided into three portions, an arrangement dating back at least to the 13th century and persisting until 1909. The church stands within a roughly oval-shaped enclosure, a feature characteristic of early ecclesiastical foundations.