Church Of St Mark

Church of St Mark, Hilgay

Built in 1846-47 as a chapel of ease, this church is constructed of gault brick with a slate roof and stone-coped gables with kneelers. The building follows Early Pointed Gothic style throughout.

The church has a simple rectangular plan with nave and chancel all in one space. The east end features a triple lancet window with fine mouldings that form narrow shafts in part. The north side has three similar lancets, while the south side originally had two lancets; the space of the third now contains the western entrance door, which was moved eastwards in 1934, apparently to strengthen the corner against subsidence. The stonework of the original doorway was carefully re-used. A matching priest's door stands at the east end of the wall. Both doors have carved head stops to their hoodmoulds. The west window is a similar triple lancet to the east, though its outer lancets were blocked in 1934, also due to subsidence concerns. These same problems led to the truncation of the bellcote and the housing of the bell in a wooden projection on the north side.

The remarkably unaltered interior preserves a set of open pews that project from matchboard dado panelling to the wall end, with moulded symmetrical ends to the centre surmounted by finely carved poppy heads. A font of 1852 displays blind arcading and carved heads on colonnettes. The pulpit and priest's desk feature cusped blind arcading. A simple priest's vestry to the south side of the altar has a screen with blind arcading. The communion rail appears to incorporate re-used elements from around 1700. The floor is unusual in being suspended with four iron ventilation roses, a design response to the waterlogged fenland site. The lightweight boarded seven-bay roof has curved braces rising from hidden wall posts on stone corbels. These braces rise to the point where the principals and collars join and are linked to the posts with short iron bars. Later doubled collars have been added. The windows retain original lattice lights.

The church was built at a cost of £1000, thought to have been entirely at the expense of the rector, Revd. W.J. Parkes. It represents a virtually unaltered example of a simple place of worship built and furnished following Tractarian principles as detailed by the Ecclesiological Society and Oxford Movement in the late 1830s and 1840s. The fine poppy heads to the pews are a particularly notable feature.

The building's design specifically responds to its difficult fenland site. Construction is of the lightest permanent form, with simple lancet windows rather than heavier tracery, a lightweight roof to reduce pressure on soft ground, and a suspended and ventilated floor responding to possibly still waterlogged land. The church's construction reflects the zeal of the Oxford Movement in providing a place of worship much more accessible than the parish church at Hilgay to the enlarged population on the eastern side of the Great Ouse. This growth followed the introduction of the first steam engine drainage in 1819-20 at Ten Mile Bank and its replacement with a larger engine in 1842, which drained far more efficiently than the many windmills previously used. These engines brought under cultivation many thousands of acres of fen. The church's construction coincided with the arrival of the railway in 1846.

The church forms a significant rural group with the First World War memorial adjacent to its south side.