Church Of St Mary The Virgin

The Church of St Mary the Virgin is a parish church containing elements from the 14th century chancel, the 15th century nave and tower, and north additions from 1875. It is constructed of flint with stone dressings and has green slate roofs. The church includes a west tower, nave, south porch, north aisle, chancel with a north chapel, and a south vestry.

The tower is a fine 15th-century structure of four stages, featuring a stone plinth, dado, and parapet string courses. It has ashlar-dressed angle buttresses with six set-offs and battlements. A Perpendicular west door is framed by a moulded hood mould, and above it is a three-light window. Further windows in the tower are of two and three lights with tracery, and the bell chamber has four three-light windows with tracery. The south side of the nave has three three-light Perpendicular windows, and is punctuated by four ashlar-dressed buttresses with two set-offs. The 15th-century south porch has angle buttresses with two set-offs, a re-cut 19th-century arch composed of colonnettes with moulded bases and capitals, and two stone ogee-headed niches with pedestals and miniature vaults. North and south return windows are two-light Perpendicular designs with brick arches. A three-bay north aisle was added in 1875, constructed in the High Victorian Gothic Decorated style by Frederick Preedy. The 14th-century chancel has two 'Y' tracery south windows and a brick south window. A mid-19th-century south vestry addition also serves as a private porch entry from Docking Hall. The east gable features angle buttresses. A recut 19th-century five-light Reticulated tracery east window retains a 14th-century label moulding with label stop heads and an ogee cresting finial. The chancel roof was lowered in the mid-19th century, leaving the earlier pitch visible on the nave’s east gable. Further north additions were made to the chancel in 1875.

Inside, the nave is wide, with a four-bay north arcade leading to aisles and roofs constructed in 1875. A Perpendicular tower arch is visible, as are the internal reveal to the west door of the tower, the internal tower stairs door, and brick stairs at the northwest corner. A 14th or 15th-century octagonal stone font has a chamfered base and is decorated with eight standing female figures with children, other iconography against the octagonal stem, four mutilated angle beasts, a carved and figured coving section featuring the Evangelists' symbols, roses, and angels, and a bowl depicting seated figures of priests, deacons, bishops, and doctors, potentially representing the Seven Sacraments. The figures are also identified as Saints Andrew, John, and Apollonia, and are separated by miniature buttresses and framed by crocketted ogee niches with miniature vaults. The chancel arch dates to 1875. A two-light 14th-century Decorated former north chancel window now opens into the north vestry. The church is associated with the Elizabethan Jesuit Martyr, St. Henry Walpole, who was baptised here in 1558.