Church Of St Mary (Church Of England)

Church of St Mary

This is a Grade II* listed parish church built in 1870-71 by Henry Woodyer for William Robert Baker of Bayfordbury. The church incorporates a font and monuments from a medieval church that was demolished in 1803 and replaced by a yellow brick church built in 1804 on a site to the north. That 1804 church was demolished in 1870 to make way for the present building. The pulpit carving was completed in 1872. The chancel east end and roof were decorated in 1890 by Heaton Butler and Bayne to designs by Sidney Gambier Parry.

The building is constructed of squared coursed Kentish ragstone with red back for quoins, eaves band and plinth offset. Bath stone is used for window dressings, doorways and string courses. It has very steep pitched handmade tile roofs and lead covering to the fleche. The church is a tall cruciform structure in Early English style with a roof continuous over an unaisled nave and a slightly narrower buttressed chancel with a canted apsidal east end. The roof extends down over a transeptal south chapel and a north organ chamber and vestry. A gabled south porch, possibly slightly later in date, has a pointed arched entrance with double doors and a polychrome tile floor with side benches. The porch has a purlin roof with ashlar pieces to the feet of rafter couples and 3-light trefoil windows in each side. The south door outside has Early English style detailing with a trefoil arch, jamb shafts with annulets and dog-tooth band carving, and vigorous flower carving to the drip stops.

A tall slender 6-sided oak belfry and fleche with vane sits over the chancel screen. There is a row of small triangular dormer vents on the roof slope, and a large triangular dormer with a circular grid-pattern wooden window surrounded by tilehanging on each transept.

The nave has paired lancet windows. The chancel has tall single lancets between buttresses. The west wall has 2 lancets, a large wheel window above, and a small window in the top of the gable.

The interior has a 4-bay open timber roof to the nave on scissor-braced trusses with tie-beams and one purlin to each slope, with ashlar pieces to the rafter feet. The nave has 3 twin-lancet windows in each side wall, each with a single pointed rear arch and chamfered jambs. A moulded stone string links the bottoms of the windows.

Fixed to the west wall on an iron crane is a very tall 19th-century wooden font-cover in the form of an Early English spire with carved stages, crockets and finial. There is a late 15th-century octagonal clunch font on a heavy moulded base, with panelled sides of the bowl alternating between a Tudor rose in a quatrefoil and trefoil panels, and a moulded under edge.

The nave windows contain vivid stained glass by Clayton and Bell, except for the windows in the north wall where the middle and western windows are by the Kemp Brothers for the Clinton Baker family, dated 1901 and 1904. There is a coloured tile floor throughout.

A war memorial tablet of alabaster is positioned on the north wall, referring to a memorial cross at the crossroads outside the church. Memorial tablets on the south wall include one to William Robert Baker (died 1896) in alabaster recording that he built this church in 1871, which is dedicated to St Mary the Virgin; one to Charles Robert Barclay (died 1900) in repoussé copper in Arts and Crafts style with an inset armorial escutcheon and rectangular enamelled panel of St George and the Dragon with the motto QUO FATA VOCANT; and one to William Clinton Baker (died 1903) on a black marble panel in a white marble frame lettered in gold with an armorial achievement carved with drapes on the upper part. A framed black panel lettered in gold contains a Board of Fees relating to the minister, clerk and sexton formerly in the church built in 1803.

The chancel is slightly narrower to the left side due to piers with prominent quoins. It has an arcaded oak Early English chancel screen with very attenuated shafts with annulets. There are 2 bays on each side of a central entrance with a heavy 2-centred dog-tooth ornamented arch and a pair of black embattled ironwork gates picked out in gold. An overhanging panelled rood loft supports a giant crucifix with an angular gabled canopy fixed back to the roof truss and with heavy convex curved down braces on each side. The chancel has similar arcaded openwork Early English screens in the openings to the transeptal south chapel and north organ chamber. The open timber roof is similar to the nave but consists of 4 narrower bays and terminates in a decorated 3-sided apse at the east end with wallpaintings and wall shafts. The windows have trefoil rear arches and stained glass by Clayton and Bell.

The chancel contains a broad aumbry with a square head and Caernarvon arch. There are bold stone 2-seat sedilia with a stone gable and grey circular shafts, trefoil heads and a quatrefoil above. In a large arched niche on the north side sits an alabaster tomb-chest panelled and inscribed with a recumbent figure of a man in half armour wearing a ruff, trunk hose and jack boots lying on a straw mattress. This is Sir George Knighton, who died in 1612.

Brasses fixed to the rear of the recess date from around 1545 and are all palimpsest cut from a Flemish brass of a bishop or abbot of around 1480. Two more pieces of this brass are said to be the Wayte brasses at Upminster in Essex. The brasses were found in a box in the church in 1870 and are thought to be to the Knighton family. There is a painted arcaded reredos, with steps to the altar in polychrome tiles, some encaustic. The altar rail is simple with gilded ironwork standards. Lighting is provided by 6 candle lamps hung on chains.

The south chapel contains many memorial wall tablets, some moved from the older church. These include one to William Baker (1824) with a white marble portrait medallion; one to John Mayo (died 1675) in white marble draped with cartouches; and one to William Yarrell (1784-1856), an eminent Victorian zoologist. There are other wall monuments to the Baker family and others here and in the north transept.