Parish Church Of St Mary The Virgin

Parish Church of St Mary the Virgin

This is a parish church of late 11th-century origin, extended in the early 13th century and restored in the 19th century. It is constructed of flint and pebble rubble with dressings of limestone, clunch and brick, some of which is Roman, and is roofed with handmade red clay tiles.

The church comprises a nave and chancel, with the nave and western half of the chancel dating to the late 11th century. The western tower dates to around 1200, and the eastern half of the chancel to around 1230. A northern porch was added in the 15th century.

The chancel contains Roman brick quoins approximately 3.5 metres from the west end, indicating the original extent of the 11th-century structure. The eastern extension has limestone quoins, chamfered with step and roll stops. The east wall contains three 13th-century lancet windows with chamfered rear arches on the inside and outside; the middle window sits high above an internal recess with a trefoiled head and modern reredos. The north wall has three similar 13th-century lancets with shallow two-centred rear arches, chamfered internally. The south wall has three similar windows, much restored, and further west is a 13th-century low-side window with a two-centred head, also much restored. A 19th-century doorway lies blocked between the two eastern windows, and a 16th-century blocked doorway with brick jambs and two-centred arch stands between the two western windows.

The 11th-century chancel arch has square plastered responds with chamfered imposts at the east angles and a semi-circular arch with Roman brick voussoirs exposed on the east face. The chancel roof is seven-canted and boarded internally in the 19th century; a high collar in the gable, two pairs of projecting sole-pieces, profiled sprockets and weathered plain bargeboards indicate medieval structure, probably 13th-century.

The nave has Roman brick quoins and a 17th-century brick buttress at the southwest corner, with a 20th-century brick buttress and stack nearby. The north wall contains two windows: the eastern is largely 19th-century except for 15th-century splays and a segmental rear arch, while the western window dates to around 1100 and has plastered jambs and a semi-circular head, enclosed by the north porch. The north doorway is 14th-century with two chamfered orders to the jambs and a two-centred arch of two hollow-chamfered orders, fitted with a modern wooden frame and door. The northeast corner of the nave is cut back to form a reredos with remains of an ornamental ribbed vault and moulded plaster bosses of late 15th or early 16th-century date.

Near the east end of the south wall is a rood-stair within the rubble wall, with early 16th-century brick projecting on the outside; the lower doorway has brick jambs and a four-centred arch, while the upper doorway is blocked, plastered and painted over. Further west are two windows matching those in the north wall, and the early 13th-century south doorway with chamfered jambs and a two-centred arch with a moulded label and a plain boarded door, set below a semi-circular arch of Roman brick dating to around 1100. The nave roof has three original cambered tiebeams, chamfered with square stops, and three more at a higher level, of which the middle one is a modern replacement. The roof is seven-canted, plastered to the soffit, with 19th-century carved wallplates.

The western tower, dating to around 1200, comprises three stages divided by string courses of Coggeshall brick, with a single clasping buttress at the southwest corner to the first stage only. The quoins are of Roman and Coggeshall brick. It is surmounted by an octagonal broach spire clad with timber shingles. The tower arch has square plastered responds and a semi-circular arch, with a plastered bulls-eye window above. In the second stage of the north, south and west walls is an early 13th-century lancet window with Coggeshall brick jambs and timber lintels inside. The bell-chamber has lancet windows in the north, south and west walls, all 13th-century with Coggeshall brick jambs; the north and west windows have 17th or 18th-century brick heads, while the south window has a stone head. The early 13th-century west doorway, restored, has a two-centred arch of two chamfered orders; the outer order of each jamb has a 19th-century detached shaft with heavily weathered foliated capital. There is an original floor of plain horizontal joists on two beams with a framed bell-trap. The spire is reported by the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments to date to around 1600, though it was not examined in detail.

The north porch is 15th-century, restored, and timber-framed in two bays. The outer archway is four-centred with moulded shafts and a square outer head, rebated with unusual converging step stops, flanked by rectangular windows. The east and west walls have plain openings in the north bay with diamond mortices for unglazed windows. The south bay is panelled with old boards and also has diamond mortices. The roof is of simple collar-rafter construction with gauging holes in the rafters.

The church contains significant painted decoration. There are six consecration crosses in red paint on each of the north and south walls—two Latin and one formy—with the formy cross scribed in plaster. Paintings above the chancel arch are arranged in four tiers: at the top, a man on an ass with a tree, probably representing Balaam; below, scenes from the Passion including the Last Supper; below that probably a Doom; and in the fourth tier a row of figures of which only two remain distinct. All appear to date to the 13th century. On the south wall, in the blocked upper doorway of the rood-stair, there is a black letter injunction to pray for King James I and the royal family with traces of a border, and near the west end a head of a man with a cap of 13th or 14th-century date. On the west wall, north of the tower arch, is an illegible inscription in an ornamental frame of early 17th-century date.

The church contains four bells: the third is 14th-century and inscribed 'Vocor Johanes' with the founder's name, Peter de Weston; the fourth is by Richard Bowler, dated 1601. The font is 18th-century, comprising a round marble bowl on a tapering column with an octagonal limestone base. Slate tablets on the south wall of the chancel commemorate Joshua Blower the elder, rector of the parish, who died in 1694, and Elizabeth (Oliver), his second wife, who died in 1656.

The chancel contains a piscina of around 1240 with double hollow-chamfered jambs and a segmental head with mask stops, the round basin cut back, and two sedilia with chamfered jambs and two-centred heads with moulded labels and imposts, two mask stops and a foliate stop. The middle pier is finished with an octagonal shaft having a moulded base and resting on a bracket with a mask-stop corbel, all dating to around 1240. The church contains fourteen early 16th-century benches with moulded top rails and panelled ends, mostly with linenfold decoration; two have panelled backs while the others have plain backs, and one has a similar panelled front.