Church of St Mary

The Church of St Mary is a parish church built in 1856 by George Gilbert Scott. It is constructed from pink sandstone ashlar with plain tiled roofs, featuring coped verges and crosses to the gables. The church is built in the Decorated style and consists of a nave, chancel, west tower, a south porch, and a north organ chamber.

The three-stage tower has prominent stepped angle buttresses and a hexagonal stair turret to the south-east corner. It is topped with an embattled parapet above a carved cornice, with gargoyles at the corners. The belfry windows are deeply chamfered two-light openings with quatrefoils above, while the west window is of three lights.

The buttressed nave has three bays, with windows featuring trefoil-headed lights and quatrefoils, all with hood moulds. A gabled stone porch is located in the first bay from the west on the south side, with a cusped lancet window immediately to its left.

The two-bay chancel has Decorated-style windows similar to those in the nave. A priest’s door is located on the south side, featuring a ball flower moulding to the innermost order. The large East window is of three cusped lights with elongated quatrefoils above. A lean-to organ chamber is attached to the north side.

The interior features a tall, narrow pointed tower arch with ball flower ornament to the soffit. The nave has an arch-braced roof with a central purlin in three bays. The wide pointed chancel arch has carved foliage decoration to the corbelled responds, and the chancel has a panelled roof in two bays. All fittings and furnishings, including a richly carved font, a stone pulpit with green marble columns, and stained glass are from the mid-19th century or later. There are no monuments of note. The church was founded in the mid-19th century by Revd. Alexander Buchanan, the “squarson” of nearby Hales Hall.