Church Of St Mary

The Church of St Mary, Godmanchester, is a very large medieval parish church, dating from the 13th century with substantial 14th- and 15th-century rebuilding. The west tower was rebuilt in 1625, and the church was restored by George Gilbert Scott in 1853.

The church is built mainly of stone rubble with many pebbles, with ashlar dressings and an ashlar west tower. The roofs are lead and the spire is stone. It comprises a chancel with northeast vestries and organ chamber, a nave with north and south aisles, two-storey north and south porches, and a west tower.

Exterior

Externally, this is a very large church, predominantly of late medieval appearance, with a tall tower and spire from the early 17th century. The chancel has a very shallow-pitched roof, low clasping buttresses, and low buttresses below the sill of the 19th-century triple lancet east window. The north chancel window is a two-light window with cinquefoil-headed lights. A lancet in the northeast vestry may be reset from the chancel. On the south side, the chancel has a moulded plinth, low shallow buttresses, and three two-light windows with cinquefoiled lights and Tudor arches under brick relieving arches. There is a low chamfered priest's door. One of the buttresses has an elegant late 13th-century mass dial in the shape of a rose window. A round rood stair turret with a conical stone roof stands in the southeast angle between the chancel and south aisle.

The nave has Tudor-arched, two-light clerestory windows of the early 16th century. The north aisle has diagonal buttresses and three-light, high transomed Tudor arched windows with Perpendicular tracery. Arches in the masonry above the windows are the remains of earlier windows in the aisle. The north aisle west window is of five lights and has a small blocked opening above it. The two-storey north porch has diagonal buttresses and a 13th-century doorway with engaged shafts with capitals. There is a tall slit window on the east side of the upper storey and a single light in the gable.

The south aisle has a diagonal southeast buttress and a massive five-light transomed east window with cusped lights below the transom. There are deep buttresses with set-offs on the south side and two-light south windows similar to the east window. The grand two-storey south porch was probably raised in 1669 (a date on the roof) and has diagonal buttresses. These are lozenge-shaped on plan up to the springing of the arched doorway, but square above that with a groove for rainwater and a gargoyle at the junction. The large doorway has a triangular-headed arch with a baluster finial to the hoodmould, and is flanked by vaulted, gabled statue niches. There is a square-headed window in the gable, and the west and east walls each have a pair of two-light Tudor arched windows with cinquefoiled lights. The south porch has an internal doorway with nook shafts, flanked by statue niches and a late medieval door. The south porch roof is dated 1669.

The remarkable four-stage Gothic Survival west tower with a tall stone spire is dated 1625, replacing an earlier tower of unknown, but possibly 13th-century, date. It is very tall with angle buttresses with multiple coped offsets and stringcourses extending around the buttresses and a polygonal southeast stair turret. The stair turret rises above the embattled parapet and has slit windows. The west doorway has renaissance mouldings to the responds and a date plaque over. There is a pair of Tudor-arched two-light west windows, similar single windows to the north and south faces of the stage above, and large paired transomed two-light belfry windows. The parapet has corner pinnacles and fleur de lys cresting to the merlons. The tall stone spire has three tiers of lucarnes.

Interior

The interior is plastered and painted. The late 15th-century chancel arch is double chamfered with the inner order on shafts with moulded capitals and bases; it reuses many stones from the 13th-century chancel arch. Above the arch are the tops of two blocked 13th-century lancets, with the scar of a former, more steeply pitched roof above them. The triple lancet east window has internal shafts and mouldings. There is a 14th-century door to the 14th-century northeast vestry, and a 13th-century door is visible inside the 19th-century vestry. The 19th-century chancel roof is shallow pitched and has semi-circular wall shafts with moulded capitals.

The north and south aisles have tall five-bay arcades of the very late 15th or early 16th century. The piers have half-round columns with moulded capitals and double chamfered arches on the east and west faces. The arch mouldings are continuous on the north and south faces of the piers. There is a string course below the clerestory. The shallow pitched late medieval nave roof has arched braces on carved stone corbels. The north and south aisle roofs are also late medieval. There are tie beams with arched braces on carved stone corbels on either side, but short posts against the arcade walls rise above the tie beam to support the roof on the inner sides. The late 15th- or early 16th-century east window of the north aisle, which is similar to that on the south aisle, now opens internally without glass into the north organ chamber.

The tower arch is triple chamfered and the piers have stiff leaf capitals. The tower roof is presumably from 1625, and is divided into panels by moulded joists and supported on stone corbels.

Principal Fixtures

The church contains an octagonal 13th-century font with a square bowl with chamfered corners with very worn corner carvings. There is a piscina in the north aisle. Choir stalls have shouldered ends and poppyhead finials. The rear row of stalls is 15th century with carved, shouldered arm rests and twenty misericords. One has the initials W S on it, perhaps for William Stevens, vicar 1470-81. The misericords may have come from Ramsey or Huntingdon abbey after the dissolution, but it is also possible that they were made for the church. The 19th-century nave benches have square ends with blind tracery panels flanked by small buttresses.

The elaborate timber chancel reredos by Bodley has a crow-stepped gabled frame with gilded cresting and five canopied niches, including a central niche with a figure of the crucifixion and flanking niches with the Virgin, St John and angels. Crested timber panelling extends around the sanctuary. The sanctuary floor has 19th-century encaustic tiles. The Perpendicular style chancel screen by Bodley of 1901 has a coved cornice and cresting and unpainted rood figures. The south aisle chapel has a reredos and altar by Martin Travers (died 1948), who is buried in the churchyard.

There is good 19th- and 20th-century stained glass including a window by Morris and Company in the south aisle, several by Kempe in the north and south aisles, and the 20th-century south aisle east window by Burlinson and Grylls. Some medieval painting is visible on the splays of the 13th-century windows above the chancel arch. Cast iron Royal Arms of George III. Monuments include an early 16th-century brass and a late 17th-century wall tablet to Thomas Bailiff and his wife.

History

The church has pre-Conquest origins, but nothing remains from this period. The building was apparently wholly rebuilt in the 13th century, by which time it had reached its present large size; the chancel and parts of the west end of the nave and aisles are of this date. A north vestry was added to the chancel in the mid 14th century, and the arcades, aisles, clerestory and porches were rebuilt in the late 14th and early 15th centuries. The chancel arch was also enlarged at this time, and the nave and chancel roofs raised, blocking 13th-century windows in the nave east gable wall. The west tower was rebuilt in 1625, replacing an earlier tower of unknown, but possibly 13th-century, date. There was further work on the roofs in the 17th century (the south porch roof is dated 1669). The roofs and parapet were repaired in the early 19th century, and the church was restored by Sir George Gilbert Scott in 1853. The vestry was rebuilt, and the organ chamber and choir vestry were added in 1860. There was more restoration in 1885. Furnishings by Bodley were installed in the early 20th century, with further restoration on the chancel in 1912 and more refurnishing after the First World War by Martin Travers. Additional restoration was carried out in the early 1970s by Marshall Sisson, and the church was reordered in the 1990s.

The town of Godmanchester has Roman origins and was a prosperous town throughout the middle ages, although it did not formally become a borough until the early 17th century. A priest and a church are mentioned at Godmanchester in Domesday book, but no fabric of that date remains. The church belonged to Ramsey Abbey before the Conquest, but was in royal possession in the late 11th century. In the mid 12th century it was given to Merton Abbey (Surrey) and was held by them until the Reformation, at which time the rectory was granted to Westminster Abbey. It is likely that the very substantial size of the church is related to the prosperity of the town throughout the middle ages, and, with the exception of the chancel, not the benefactions from Merton. By the late 14th century there was a chantry and at least three religious guilds in Godmanchester, and by the Reformation there was also a grammar school taught by the chantry priest. This abundance of clergy serving the chantry and the guilds may account for the presence of the misericords, an unusual feature for a parish church. The presence of the initials W S for William Stevens, vicar at the time that much of the work was being carried out on the church in the 15th century, suggests that they were made for the church and not brought in after the Reformation. The continued use of the gothic style for the tower, rebuilt in the early 17th century after the medieval tower became structurally unsound, is interesting and significant as it indicates a desire to build in keeping with the rest of the church, even as domestic architectural fashion was moving towards more Classical styles.