Parish Church Of St Mary

TL 41 SW GILSTON GILSTON LANE (east side )

2/32 Parish Church of St Mary 24.1.67

GV I

Parish church. Later C13 incorporating early C13 N doorway. Upper part of tower and projecting stair C16. Restored 1852 by P C Hardwick for John Hodgson of Gilston Park (Kelly (1914) 105) when S aisle rebuit, and S porch and vestry added (VCH (1912) 322). The church of a deserted medieval village. Chancel and nave continuous, N and S aisles with 4-bay arcades and separate roofs, W tower and spire, S porch and N vestry. Flint rubble walling with stone dressings, steep old red tile roof and gable parapets with moulded stone copings and kneelers. E wall plastered. From 7 metres height tower in C16 red brick with 3 sided brick stair projection on S with brick roof (cf Sawbridgeworth Church), reset C14 windows, flint-faced embattled parapet and slender octagonal reticulated lead spire. Low pitched slated roofs to aisles. Cl9 S aisle in uncoursed knapped flints with random stone blocks and Bath stone dressings. C19 gabled tiled vestry of uncoursed field flints with stone dressings. C19 tiled timberframed S porch with elaborate carved bargeboard and gable, and dressed stone plinth. S doorway C19 in early English style. W doorway of late C13 with shafted jambs and moulded arch of 3 orders. Blocked fine early C13 N doorway with greenish stone shafted jambs to outside, moulded head and weathered leaf capitals. Lancet windows generally, those at W end of chancel in N and S walls have unusually low sills. 2- light window in N aisle with elementary plate tracery and trefoil top. The E angle of the N aisle is chamfered. C19 roof with arch-braced collar trusses defining 4 nave bays with plain stone corbels and 3 chancel bays, boarded under the rafters, on carved corbels. Arcading of important late C13 wooden screen reframed in C19. C13 double piscina with central marble shaft and hexagonal cusped blind figure in spandrel (with plaster rose applied later). Encaustic tile surrounds to memorial floor slabs. E wall has C19 painted diaper decoration by Percy Bacon Bros. Quatrefoil C13 stone nave pillars with low pointed arches. Hexagonal C12 Purbeck marble font bowl with blind arcading, on later base. Late C16 tower arch with 1 shaft to each jamb. 2 fine mural monuments, Bridget Gore d 1657; and Sir John Gore d 1659 by Joshua Marshall. 2 stone coffin lids on floor of N aisle probably C14. A late C13 parish church, preserved from destructive enlargement by desertion of the village, with features, fittings and monuments of great interest and a C13 wooden screen of outstanding importance. An important landmark and the centre of a mixed architectural group. (EHAS Trans (1902) 57-60: RCHM (1911) 91-2: VCH (1912) 322-3: Pevsner (1977) 146).

Listing NGR: TL4398113526