Church of St Mary

Church of St Mary, Billingsley

This is a small parish church containing fabric from the 12th century and later periods, though it was largely rebuilt in 1875 by Robert Griffiths in the Decorated style. The building is constructed of stone rubble with freestone dressings, a timber-framed porch, and tiled roofs.

The plan consists of a nave and chancel with a west end bellcote and south porch. The most significant external feature is a blocked 12th-century doorway in the south wall of the nave, which has a roll-moulded round-headed arch with colonnettes bearing cable mouldings and carved capitals, and a tympanum decorated with hatched triangles. The timber-framed porch, positioned west of this doorway, has bargeboards with blind quatrefoils in roundels. Though the porch has been restored and rebuilt with taller north and south side walls, the surviving flamboyant heads to the timber-traceried sides appear to be original, as does the timber arched outer doorway with carved spandrels. The porch roof and bargeboards are restored. The doorway into the church is round-headed with two roll-moulded round-headed arches and is supposedly of 1875, though it may be the north door recorded by Glynne that was repositioned. The remainder of the exterior, dating from 1875, may replicate early window forms. The west window is a two-light design in Geometric Decorated style with tracery below a large bellcote featuring trefoil-headed openings for two bells and a steep stone superstructure with iron cresting and weathervane. Other windows comprise a mixture of Geometric style-traceried designs and lancets. A chimney stack projects through the east end of the nave roof on the south side.

Inside, a small 12th-century style round-headed chancel arch of two orders appears to have been thoroughly recut or replaced in the 19th century. The chancel is fitted with a 19th-century canted timber roof divided into panels and encaustic tiles. The north wall of the chancel contains a feature considered to be a 14th-century Easter sepulchre, a gabled Gothic recess with its gable decorated with crockets and filled with pierced Geometric style tracery. A chest beneath the recess displays a tier of blind trefoil-headed arcading, and the structure is flanked by massively tall pinnacles on either side of the gable. The circa 12th-century font has a large plain bowl with a square-section moulding above a later stem. The nave is fitted with a 19th-century arch-braced roof with a ridge board and one tier of purlins. A Jacobean pulpit and reader's desk are combined in one piece with carved decoration below the cornice and tiers of panelling. The church is furnished with 19th-century benches with ends featuring concave shoulders.

The church was described in 1846 before restoration by Sir Stephen Glynne.