Church Of St Mary

This is a substantial parish church with a complex building history. The core of the present structure consists of 13th-century chancel and transepts, remnants of a smaller building. The nave was rebuilt in the early 15th century with a clerestory and aisles added. The west tower dates from circa 1330. A south porch and south chapel, plus a north chapel (now serving as the organ chamber), were added in the 15th century. The church underwent significant restoration in 1847–9 under George Godwin, who renewed the stonework of many windows, with further work in 1886. The south chapel was restored in 1903.

Exterior

The exterior is built of flint with clunch dressings used for quoins, bands, string courses, copings, offsets, doors and windows. The roofs are lead-covered. The church follows a cruciform plan: a three-bay chancel with a two-bay former north chapel and two-bay south chapel, north and south transepts, a four-bay aisled nave, south porch and west tower.

The 13th-century chancel, heavily restored in the mid-19th and early 20th centuries, has a parapeted roof lower than the transepts. Two 15th-century octagonal turrets, which originally served the rood loft, project above the roof and rise to provide access to the nave and transept roofs. An angle buttress marks the south-east corner. The east window is 19th-century work: a five-light opening in a moulded surround with projecting dripmould and cusped rectilinear tracery.

North of the chancel stands the vestry, 15th-century but heavily restored mid-19th century, with an embattled parapeted roof. It features a restored 15th-century three-light window with ogee-headed cusped tracery under a flat head with projecting dripmould, and a 19th-century arched north door. To the west is the restored 15th-century former north chapel, serving as the organ chamber since the mid-19th century, with a parapeted roof and two two-light windows with cusped ogee traceried heads under flat heads with projecting dripmoulds.

The 14th-century south chapel, restored mid-19th century, has a parapeted and embattled roof with projecting angle buttresses. It contains two 19th-century three-light windows with cusped ogee tracery under flat heads with projecting dripmoulds.

The 13th-century north transept, restored mid-19th century, features angle buttresses and an embattled parapeted roof at a higher level than the adjoining north chapel and chancel. Its clerestorey has two 19th-century two-light windows with cusped trefoil heads under flat heads with projecting dripmoulds. The five-light north window, with reticulated tracery, is 19th-century restoration work.

The 14th-century north aisle, with its embattled parapeted roof, runs for four bays and has angle buttresses with a diagonal buttress at the north-west corner. It contains two restored two-light windows with cusped geometrical tracery, one three-light window, a restored west window with reticulated tracery, and a 19th-century north doorway leading into a 1982 north extension.

The 14th-century south aisle also has an embattled parapeted roof over four bays, with one angle buttress and a diagonal buttress at the south-west corner. The south porch is 15th-century with 19th-century side windows and a restored doorway featuring carved spandrels under a flat dripmould, angle buttresses, and an embattled roof. The restored 14th-century doorway from the south porch opens into the second bay from the west. The aisle has a restored three-light west window with reticulated tracery and three restored south windows with curvilinear tracery.

The nave clerestorey was raised in the 15th century and has a parapeted embattled roof with four three-light windows with cusped trefoil heads, all restored.

The west tower rises in five stages with offset angle buttresses featuring clunch quoins, four stone bands, an embattled parapet, and a recessed leaded needle spire known as a 'Hertfordshire Spike'. A two-light window sits over the west doorway. The fourth stage contains a clock with faces to the west and south. The bell chamber has four two-light windows with mouldings and an inner arch carried on colonnettes with moulded capitals and bases.

A 15th-century doorway with moulded arch and jambs, fitted with a 15th-century door with original locks, is set in the north chancel wall. Further west is a 15th-century arch into the organ chamber.

Interior

The sanctuary has early 20th-century steps, an 1893 marble dado, and a mosaic floor. In the south chancel wall stands a 15th-century piscina with moulded jambs and pointed arch under a square head, a 19th-century three-light window, and part of a 13th-century moulded window jamb adjoining a large round-headed arch. This arch is divided in two by moulded stone tracery springing from a central Purbeck marble column of four clustered shafts separated by hollows.

The chancel roof is 19th-century tie-beam and king-post construction with traceried panels painted with arms including those of Trinity College Cambridge, the Diocese of St Albans, and the Diocese of Rochester. The corbels of angels playing musical instruments that support the braces to the tie-beams are restored 15th-century work.

The north chapel has been occupied by the organ since 1866 and has an 18th-century arch opening into the north transept.

The south chapel contains 19th-century windows and a 19th-century restored roof with corbels and moulded beams divided into panels originally decorated with biblical scenes. In the south wall is a restored sedilia with piscina alongside, circa 1380, featuring moulded cusped ogee arches and carved heads. These heads are traditionally held to be portraits of Henry Tudor and his mother, Margaret, Countess of Richmond. The oak communion rails circa 1640 were brought from Benington Church, along with a Jacobean altar and a reredos and panelling installed during the 1886 restoration. Late 18th-century panelling of the dado around the chapel was fashioned from the Ware Park pew, formerly standing in the nave. A 15th-century oak screen divides the south chapel from the south transept, installed across the late 14th-century arch from the south transept.

The 19th-century rebuilt north transept window has wave-moulded inner jambs and rear arch, probably 13th-century. Two arched recesses appear in the north wall: one central and low down below the window with moulded jambs and a segmental arch, and another to the right with a segmental and cinquefoiled arch with leaf sub-cuspings and an ogee crocketed head with head stops and a foliated finial.

The 19th-century rebuilt south transept window has 15th-century double-ogee moulded jambs and inner arch. A decayed 14th-century piscina sits in the south wall.

The aisles have a 14th-century string course below the windows. The nave arcade dates from circa 1410 and features complex mouldings with colonnettes recessed within the main profiles which run through uninterrupted. Four two-light clerestory windows, all restored, retain their 15th-century inner arches and jambs. The nave roof is 15th-century, restored in the 19th century, of chestnut with moulded tie-beams and braces carried on corbels circa 1865 carved with figures of the Apostles, and traceried spandrels. Squat moulded king-posts and moulded purlins and principal rafters are decorated with heraldic shields, faces and grotesques. The tower arch is 14th-century with chamfered jambs and a moulded arch.

Fittings

The font, circa 1380, stands in the westernmost nave bay. It is octagonal and stone, with quatrefoil panels on the short stem, and on the bowl figures in high relief of the Virgin and the Archangel Gabriel, and Saints, alternating with angels holding musical instruments and emblems of the Passion. The plain cover from 1979 by Riley and Glanfield, carved by Sigfried Pietzch, replaced an elaborate late 1840s Gothic-style cover carved by Philip Wynne, now displayed in the north aisle.

The mid-17th-century pulpit is oval and in Jacobean style with lozenge-shaped raised panels and tapered pilasters.

In the south aisle west bay are former communion rails circa 1633, oak, with moulded top rail and vase-on-vase balusters. These were removed during the 1848 restoration and reinstated in their present position in 1933. At the time of their original installation, these rails caused the resignation of the Puritan incumbent, Reverend Charles Chauncy, who subsequently emigrated to the United States and became the second President of Harvard College, Massachusetts.

Stained Glass

The east and west windows are by Wailes, 1849–50. The Chapman Allen window in the south aisle is by Shrigley and Hunt, circa 1885. The Page memorial window in the north transept depicts Christ in Majesty flanked by Saints, circa 1910 by Christopher Whall, influenced by Burne-Jones, donated by Elizabeth Ann Croft. By the same artist is the nearby north aisle window, also donated by Mrs Page Croft in 1905 as a thank offering for the safe return of her son wounded in the Boer War.

Monuments

Monuments include, in the chancel, a tablet in memory of Reverend Charles Chauncy, Vicar of Ware 1627–1633 who emigrated to the United States, and a large Soane-style wall memorial to William Murrell, 1826 by Rouw. On the east wall of the south transept is a large carved marble aedicule flanked by unfluted Ionic columns surmounted by arms above a broken segmental pediment, commemorating Sir Richard Fanshawe, Baronet, Privy Councillor and Ambassador to Spain, 1666. On the north aisle wall adjacent to the north door is a memorial to Reverend Robert Atkinson by H Cox, Northampton, an elliptical plaque with a tapered surround surmounted by an urn, with a shelf below with books, inkwell and foliage, 1756. Brasses commemorate Elene Warburton 1454 in the north transept, a lady circa 1425 in the south transept, and W Pyrry 1470 with wives and children.

Historical Note

The rebuilding of Ware Church circa 1380 is traditionally associated with Joan of Kent, the 'fair maid of Kent', wife of the Black Prince, mother of Richard II, and Lady of Ware Manor. Local tradition associates the carved heads at the termination of the arched opening between the chancel and south chapel with portraits of Joan of Kent and Edward III. The crowned head at the apex of the arch of the 14th-century doorway from the south porch is said to represent the Black Prince.

After the dissolution of the monasteries, Henry VIII gave the former Alien Priory, the church living, and the land to Trinity College, Cambridge as part of its endowment. The college retains the living.

The church fell into decay in the 17th and 18th centuries and was badly damaged by storms in autumn 1703 which blew out the clerestory windows. The porch was repaired, windows shuttered, and porch doors were installed.

By 1847 the Vicar, Reverend JW Blakesley, set about restoration and appointed George Godwin, editor of The Builder and The Ecclesiologist, as architect. He removed the gallery erected in the north transept in 1687 for the Bluecoat boys from Place House, resited the organ in the north chapel, and restored and substantially rebuilt the stonework and windows. The pews were installed in the 1880s.

In 1982 a large north extension containing church offices and classrooms was constructed leading from the north door through a linking corridor. It is not of special architectural interest.