Church of Saint Mary the Virgin is a Grade II* listed building in the Central Bedfordshire local planning authority area, England. First listed on 22 October 1952. A Victorian Church.

Church of Saint Mary the Virgin

WRENN ID
spare-footing-root
Grade
II*
Local Planning Authority
Central Bedfordshire
Constituency
Mid Bedfordshire MP: Blake Stephenson (Con)
Country
England
Date first listed
22 October 1952
Type
Church
Period
Victorian
Address
Church of Saint Mary the Virgin, Potsgrove
OS grid reference
SP 951 298
Coordinates
51.95902, -0.61658
Source
Historic England listing

Also on this page: flood risk · radon risk · weather exposure · detailed attributes ↓

Description

The Church of Saint Mary the Virgin is a former parish church, now redundant, dating from the 14th century and significantly altered by J.D. Sedding between 1880 and 1881. It is constructed of coursed rubble, primarily ironstone with some clunch, and features ashlar dressings and clay tile roofs. The church consists of a chancel and nave, with a northwest bell-turret.

The chancel has a five-light depressed two-centred-arched east window with panel tracery. Both the north and south elevations have two two-light pointed-arched windows, each displaying a variety of tracery. The nave features three windows on the south elevation and two on the north elevation, all of two lights, pointed-arched, and with various tracery designs.

The north doorway is pointed-arched and adorned with carved heads of a man and woman as dripstone stops. The south doorway is also pointed-arched, located under a gabled porch with a pointed archway, similarly featuring carved heads as stops. The west elevation of the nave has a two-light pointed window above which is an ogival-headed niche containing a statue of the Virgin and Child.

An octagonal ashlar bell-turret with a stone spire rises from the northwest corner of the nave roof. The turret has two tiers of openings on each side, with lower rectangular openings and upper ones featuring trefoiled heads. The spire includes lucarnes on alternate sides and is topped with a cross finial.

Inside, the church is quite plain but retains a 15th-century roof in the nave. The west nave window is entirely composed of fragments of medieval glass.

Local climate

Church of Saint Mary the Virgin sits in a drier-than-average part of the UK, with an average of 720 mm of rain a year. This makes it drier than 84% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is lower than that of 84% of listed buildings.

It experiences an average of 33 freeze-thaw cycles a year, fewer than 54% of listed buildings. Of these, 16 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.

Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.

More on this building

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