Church Of St Mary The Virgin

The Church of St Mary the Virgin is a building of group value, originating in the 12th century with a chancel and nave, and incorporating a 14th-century tower. The church was restored and the chancel extended in 1891 by Sir Aston Webb. It is constructed of stone rubble and render, with ashlar dressings, and has a plain-tile roof with integral cover over the chancel and nave, ashlar-coped gables, and a pyramid slate roof to the tower.

The plan includes a chancel, nave, vestry, a south porch, and a west tower. The chancel features a late 19th-century Decorated-style east window and diagonal offset buttresses. The south wall has a 19th-century window of two cusped lights to the right, and a 14th-century cusped lancet set in a simple chamfered ogee-headed surround to the left. A gabled late 19th-century vestry obscures the north wall. The nave’s north wall contains two round-headed 12th-century lancets, one restored, flanking a blocked 14th-century north door with an ogee-headed arch over simple chamfered door jambs. A large buttress with offsets is to the right. The south wall holds a restored 14th-century cusped round-headed lancet to the right and a small restored Norman lancet to the left. A 12th-century south door has a plain tympanum and simple chamfered abaci and dog-tooth edging. The south porch has a tiled gabled roof on 19th-century framing set on a high brick plinth incorporating benches. The tower has slightly battered walls, a plain parapet, and a low pyramid slate roof, with a bold roll-moulded string course below the parapet and rainwater shutes below to the north and south. A cusped lancet is at the upper stage to the west; flat-headed slits are on three faces of the middle stage, and a flat-headed window is to the lower stage to the south.

Inside, the nave and integral chancel have a four-bay roof with late 17th and 18th-century king-post trusses incorporating raking struts with chamfered soffits, all supporting a twin trenched-purlin roof. A 19th-century barrel roof covers the extended chancel. A piscina is located in the west splay of the south chancel lancet. A pointed tower arch is visible, and a 14th-century octagonal font is located in the tower. A marble memorial tablet with a raised border commemorates Allan Whitefoord, who died in 1776. Stained glass by Burne Jones and William Morris, dating to approximately 1893, is in the east window.