Parish Church Of St Mary

PARISH CHURCH OF ST MARY

This church comprises a 14th-century west tower, a nave rebuilt in 1828 by architect James Trubshaw, and a chancel of 1877. It is built of dressed and coursed sandstone with a plain tile roof.

The plan consists of an aisled nave with opposing north and south porches, a west tower, and a small projecting chancel. The early 14th-century tower features angled buttresses and a hexagonal stair turret at its north-west corner. The recessed spire is decorated with four regularly spaced bands of crockets and lucarnes on alternating faces. Battlemented parapets were added to the tower during the 1828 construction phase.

The long, wide nave is designed in typical Commissioner's Gothic style, though it was not funded by the Commissioners. It has a series of six long two-light windows with one reticulation unit at the top, alternating with shallow chamfered gabled buttresses. The nave features battlemented parapets and octagonal angle pinnacles. The later 19th-century chancel has stepped buttressing, a large Decorated east-end window, and plain parapets. Figurative stops ornament the drip moulds to most doorways and windows throughout the church.

The interior nave comprises a series of thin octagonal piers supporting a Tudor-arched roof with intersecting rafters and purlins. Colonettes extend below the roof springing, supported by rounded corbels. The north and south galleries retain their early 19th-century box pews. The chancel features a closed boarded roof with a central perforated closed truss supported on corbelled brackets, with a hammer-beam profile framing accommodating the east window at the chancel gable.

Among the fittings are a stone octagonal font dated 1839 and a wooden octagonal pulpit richly carved with Perpendicular motifs and open-work panels, accredited to Trubshaw. Notable monuments include a 16th-century alabaster chest tomb with a recumbent figure of a Lady, probably of the Kynnersley family. A further chest tomb commemorates Thomas Kynnersley and his wife, dated 1550, with an incised slab and baluster-pilasters interspersed with kneeling figures. The north aisle contains an elaborate alabaster war memorial listing the fallen from both World Wars and more recent conflicts.

The church was built in the 14th century, probably as a rebuilding of an earlier structure. This work has been attributed to the famous medieval mason Henry Yevele. In 1648, following the Battle of Preston, the Duke of Hamilton, commander of the Scottish Engager Army, was taken prisoner at Uttoxeter. Scottish soldiers imprisoned in the church during August of that year caused considerable damage to the building.

The nave was rebuilt in 1828 by James Trubshaw (1777–1835), a local architect and engineer from a family of masons. Trubshaw trained under James Wyatt at Fonthill Abbey, Buckingham House, and Windsor Castle in the late 18th century before returning to Staffordshire, where he worked on many notable projects including churches, bridges, and private houses. He frequently collaborated with his son-in-law Thomas Johnson, as he did at St Mary's.