Church Of St Mark

Church of St Mark

This is a parish church dating from 1809, built on a site first recorded in 1272. The north aisle was added in 1859. The building is constructed from roughly squared and coursed red, yellow, and grey sandstone with grey sandstone ashlar dressings. The 1859 addition uses snecked grey sandstone with ashlar dressings. The roof is slate, hipped to the east.

The church is designed in a late 13th-century Gothic style, with a 2-bay nave and chancel in one, and a 3-bay lean-to north aisle. The west end has a chamfered plinth with ashlar pilaster strips clasped around the corners and supporting a coped parapeted gable end. A painted wooden square bellcote sits on the west end, featuring louvred round-arched openings (segmental to the east) and a pyramidal cap with weathervane. Round-arched cast-iron windows are found throughout. The east window was formerly a Venetian design with side-lights now blocked, featuring imposts, plain architrave to the arch, and projecting keystone. The west doorway is round-arched with imposts, projecting keystone, and a boarded door. A now illegible square datestone sits in the west gable end.

The aisle has a chamfered plinth with buttresses featuring offsets, coved eaves, and parapeted verges. It contains paired trefoil-headed chamfered lancets. The east end of the aisle has a small chamfered trefoil window, whilst the west end has a window with 2 trefoil-headed lights and circular plate tracery with chamfered reveals. A Caernarvon-arched doorway to the left has chamfered reveals and a boarded door with strap hinges.

Interior features include a north aisle arcade from around 1859 comprising a circular pier with octagonal base and moulded capital, double-chamfered arches, and hoodmould with carved stops. Aisle windows have chamfered segmental rear arches. The nave has a flat ceiling with coved cornice. The lean-to aisle roof has chamfered arch-bracing springing from stone corbels. The east window has an early 19th-century panelled soffit and reeded surround with rosettes at impost level and at the apex.

The church contains a plain 12th-century tub font with holes for former top fixing and a large circular base. Two steps up to the sanctuary are panelled at the rector's expense in 1847. There are plain 19th-century communion rails and a reredos with fluted pilasters and cornice. The communion table is partly made up from 17th-century panelling. A square pulpit features reeded pilasters, frieze and dentil cornice. A west gallery from 1809 stands on two columns with plain panelling and dentils. Early 19th-century box pews, some reusing 17th-century panelling, fill the nave. An organ with quatrefoil frieze and painted pipes is present, with a quarry tiled floor below.

The east window contains stained glass said to come from the old church, depicting the arms of members of the Scriven family. Monuments include an early 18th-century tablet beneath the gallery with guilloche-ornamented pilasters and coved cornice; a tablet on the south wall to William Yeats, died 23rd January 1783; a hatchment on the north wall; and other late 18th and early 19th-century tablets. The pulpit and reading desk are said to incorporate 17th and 18th-century panelling. A baluster-shaped font of around 1829 that was recorded as existing is no longer evident; a photograph from 2nd September 1930 shows the 12th-century font standing outside the church at the west end, brought inside around 1939. A church was first recorded on this site in 1272.