Church Of St Mary

A parish church at West Walton, built circa 1240–50 and altered in the 15th century, with a substantial restoration in 1907. The building is constructed in Barnack stone with some brick, comprising a nave, aisles, and chancel.

The west front is dominated by two massive stepped buttresses that interrupt blind arcading on either side of the main doorway. These buttresses reuse plinth courses from an unidentified earlier building and occupy the site of original polygonal turret buttresses. Two tiers of undercut arches survive from the polygonal turrets, which stand on shafts with stiff-leaf capitals. The main west doorway features two undercut arches resting on a central trumeau in the form of a shaft with capital. An undercut round arch encloses these subsidiary arches, with jambs decorated by five orders of shafts, all with restored stiff-leaf capitals. The main arch is enriched with dog tooth, fleuron, and billet mouldings. The west window is a 15th-century replacement: a five-light window with cusped lights under a segmental arch. Similar five-light west windows light the aisles.

Angle buttresses flank the aisles to west and east, stepped to their flanks. On the south aisle, two two-light windows west of the south porch date to the 14th century and feature mouchette tracery under hoods on label stops. Two 15th-century three-light cusped windows stand east of the porch under basket arches. In the eastern bay is a two-light window with bar tracery dating to circa 1240–50, contemporary with the bar tracery of Westminster Abbey. This window has one order of shafts with stiff-leaf capitals and water-holding bases; the lights are arched and without capitals, and support an encircled quatrefoil with pierced spandrels below an undercut moulded arch, with hood mould terminating on head stops. To the right of this window is a priest's door, now mutilated, beneath a deeply undercut moulded arch with hood mould on head stops; stiff-leaf capitals survive below.

The south porch is gabled with an arched entrance flanked by turret buttresses. The buttresses feature arched blind arcade on columns with moulded capitals and water-holding bases, with a set-off below the polygonal turrets that also has blind arcading beneath plain conical finials. The entrance arch has three orders of shafts with moulded capitals and water-holding bases, further decorated by dog tooth between the shafts; the undercut arch carries a single order of dog tooth and a dog tooth hood mould. Above is a 16th-century stepped brick gable. The interior of the porch has blind arched arcade on flanking walls, likewise on columns with moulded capitals and bases. The arched inner door rests on four orders of shafts with stiff-leaf capitals and very elaborate arch mouldings, with further blind arches to right and left.

The south clerestory forms a continuous arcade of arches on corbels, with every third arch pierced by a lancet—eight lancets in total. Above is an eaves-line corbel table. The north clerestory has all arches blocked to facilitate raising of the aisle roof.

The chancel is supported by two stepped buttresses to north and south, though it was originally aisled; lines of two pointed arches remain to each side, with the western arch on the north hidden by a 19th-century lean-to extension housing the organ. An arched south priest's door stands within a square surround. The east chancel window is a three-light intersecting window of 1907. The aisle east windows are 15th-century, five lights below a depressed arch. The north aisle buttressing is irregular, with four three-light 15th-century windows under segmental arches. The north door has a deeply undercut moulded arch supported on four orders of shafts carrying stiff-leaf capitals, with further blind arches to right and left likewise featuring shafts with stiff-leaf capitals. Above the doorway are two punched quatrefoils.

The interior comprises a six-bay arcade of circular piers, each fitted with four free-standing annulated Purbeck marble shafts on water-holding bases. Magnificent stiff-leaf capitals support undercut moulded arches. A string course runs below the clerestory, which has blind arcade on shafts with moulded capitals and bases. On the south, every second arch is pierced by a lancet; on the north, all lancets are blocked. Remains of wall paintings survive in the clerestory arches in the form of wall hangings with various decorative and figurative devices. In the spandrels of the arcade arches are 18th-century painted roundels depicting the ten tribes of Israel.

The west window retains jambs of paired shafts and dog tooth decoration. The chancel arch matches the nave arches but stands on responds with seven annulated free-standing shafts, those to north and south of Purbeck marble, the remainder of Barnack stone. Above the chancel arch, three shafts are set into the gable wall.

The nave roof is of late 15th-century date, comprising hammerbeams and tie beams with two hammerbeams to each tie. The hammerbeams are fashioned as carved figures bearing instruments of passion on shields, supported on moulded arched braces and wall posts. Further moulded arched braces rise to moulded principals with one tier of moulded butt purlins and a ridge piece. The late 15th-century south aisle roof features moulded principals on arched braces with two tiers of moulded butt purlins. The plain north aisle roof is of 18th-century date, with principals on arched braces and three tiers of butt purlins.

The interior of the south-east aisle window has two orders of shafts in the jambs carrying stiff-leaf capitals, those to the east reduced to facilitate a priest's door. The undercut arch carries one order of fleurons and one of dog tooth. A 15th-century octagonal font features arched panels to its stem and bowl, with large pointed quatrefoils in square panels.

The chancel has two arches to each side now blocked except that to the north-west, which retains moulded undercut arches upon circular piers with eight annulated free-standing shafts—those at the cardinal points of Purbeck marble. Five stiff-leaf capitals remain, mostly embedded in the wall blocking the arches. East of the arches is a wall arcade of four blind arches on free-standing columns with moulded capitals and bases. East of the southern arches is a shelf decorated with dog tooth and supported on two brackets, each a transition between dog tooth and stiff-leaf lugs.

In the north nave aisle is a tomb of a priest, dated to the mid-13th century, of Purbeck marble with a reclining effigy upon a pedestal. A trefoiled canopy frames the head.