Church Of St Mary

SO 37 NE 8/171 21.3.68

HOPTON CASTLE C.P. HOPTON CASTLE, Church of St Mary

GV

II

Parish church. 1870-1 by T. Nicholson on medieval site. Roughly coursed rock-faced limestone rubble with chamfered plinth and ashlar dressings; graded slate roofs with ornamental cresting and foliated iron crosses to gables. Nave with west bellcote, chancel, south porch and north vestry; Decorated style. Nave in 3 bays with broad cusped lancet to centre and window of 2 cusped lights with head-stops and quatrefoil above in gable breaking eaves to right. Gabled porch in west bay has moulded ogee arch to outer tie beam and rubblestone side walls; Decorated-style south doorway with hoodmould and head-stops. Gabled external west bellcote has twin cusped openings housing bells and stone crosses to east and west sides; shaft supporting it has tall cusped lancet with hoodmould and head-stops. North side similar to south without porch but plus integral stone stack with octagonal shaft to north-east corner. Chancel. South side has broad trefoil-headed lancets with continuous moulded cill band. East window of 3 cusped lights with 2 quatrefoils flanking central sexfoil has hoodmould and head-stops. North side has trefoil-headed lancet with lean-to vestry to west. This has trefoil- headed doorway on north and broad cusped lancets to east and west. INTERIOR. Trussed rafter roof with scissor bracing in 12 short bays to nave with trusses to either side of easternmost windows resting on carved stone corbels; similar roof in 9 bays to chancel. Pointed chancel arch has hoodmould with head- stops and elaborately carved Byzantine-style corbelled responds. Fittings and furnishings including pews, choir stalls, elaborately carved stone pulpit and font, encaustic tiles to floor and reredos and harmonium all apparently of roughly the same date. Stained glass in east window in memory of Henry Yelverton Beale (died 1869) with similar glass in other chancel windows. No monuments of note. Originally a dependent chapelry of Clun, Hopton Castle became a separate parish in C13. B.o.E. p. 153; D.H.S. Cranage, The Churches of Shropshire, Part 5 (1901) p. 402.

Listing NGR: SO3634478252