Church Of St Mary

The Church of St Mary is a parish church built by Sir Hugh Hastings between 1330 and 1347, replacing an earlier church of which a small fragment remains in the west wall of the nave. The structure is made of flint with ashlar and some brick dressings, topped with pantile roofs. It features a west tower, an exceptionally wide aisleless nave with north and south porches, and a chancel with a contemporary vestry to the north.

The west tower has angle buttresses and incorporates a stair turret on the northwest side. It includes a west doorway with dying mouldings and a 2-light traceried window above, featuring mouchettes and daggers. The tower has 2-light bell-openings with similar tracery and is topped with a crenellated parapet adorned with flushwork and crocketted corner pinnacles. The nave and chancel also have crenellated parapets. The nave porches feature ogee-headed and trilobe cusped entrances, with an ogee-headed north door that has double cusping and a hood mould with a fleuron.

There are six 3-light nave windows with fine Decorated tracery, each consisting of a pair of diagonal petals with a shorter vertical petal or dagger above. The cusping is wide, except for the two easternmost windows on the north side, where it is doubled. The chancel has two 2-light windows to the south and one to the north, all with paired mouchettes and dagger tracery. The east window is a 5-light design with nine flamboyant mouchettes, and there is a blocked entrance to a vault beneath it. The contemporary vestry has a 2-light Y-traceried east window.

Inside, there is a tall tower arch of two plain-chamfered orders on polygonal responds. The church features a triple sedilia cum piscina with cusped ogee heads, a mutilated life-size brass in the chancel to Sir Hugh Hastings (who died in 1347) with an effigy surrounded by figures in architectural canopies, and a 14th-century octagonal font with a bell-shaped bowl and blind tracery. The font has a contemporary restored cover with tracery, flying buttresses, and a crocketted spire. There is a surviving chancel screen dado with mutilated paintings and fragments of 14th-century glass in the chancel.