Church Of St Mary

Church of St Mary

Parish church with fabric originating in the 12th century, with additions and remodelling from the 13th and 14th centuries. The building is constructed from flint, brick and limestone with limestone dressings. It comprises a nave, north porch, crossing tower, north transept, and chancel with south aisle. The nave and porch are slated, the transept is plain tiled, and the chancel has a lead roof.

The west gable of the nave features staged diagonal buttresses and a fine 12th-century west door. This doorway has three orders of shafts with decorated volute capitals, and an arch with orders of roll, zigzag and scallop mouldings. Above the doorway is a renewed three-light window with intersecting tracery. The gable has a parapet with stone kneelers and a gable finial. Much red brick and limestone has been incorporated into the walling, with the nave eaves line raised in red brick.

The north porch is a good example of 14th-century work, built of knapped flint with a base course of flushwork panels. It has two-light windows to the east and west, and diagonal buttresses to the gable with flushwork panels; the apex of the gable was rebuilt or raised in brick. The inner archway has fleuron decoration to its inner order, a square drip mould with shields on traceried grounds in the spandrels, and a niche with a square drip mould above the archway.

The north wall of the nave contains a two-light window with cusped Y-tracery and a round-headed restored lancet. The square crossing tower sits on a base of brickwork, with the upper section of knapped flint dressed with limestone. The bell openings are two-light Y-tracery, much restored, with plain chamfered stone reveals. The parapet is double-stepped and embattled with flushwork panels. A polygonal brick stair turret is positioned on the south side of the tower.

The west wall of the transept has two restored lancets with faint traces of a blocked doorway between them. The north wall has a three-light window with cusped intersecting Y-tracery, and the east wall has two lancets.

The chancel's north side displays a renewed two-light Y-tracery window and three-light Perpendicular windows. The restored east window has three wide lights with intersecting tracery. The parapet of the aisle east wall was rebuilt in brickwork, and its east window was blocked in red brick with a small cusped-headed window inset. The south aisle openings are much renewed, including a small priests' door with brick archway and two renewed three-light intersecting tracery windows with red brick buttresses between them. The south wall of the nave has renewed two and three-light windows with stilted hood moulds on head corbels.

Internally, the nave has a plastered barrel-vault ceiling. The west wall of the nave has a battered internal offset at the cill level of the west window. Eighteenth-century floor slabs commemorate Elizabeth and Philip Carpenter and George and Mary Lee. The north and south tower arches are tall and narrow with four plain chamfers, the outer three dying into a chamfered reveal. The north jamb of the north arch is dated 1633. Semicircular arches with wide chamfers lead to the aisle and transept; the transept arch is now blocked with a 20th-century door.

The chancel roof is 19th-century work with arch-braced principals and wallposts on corbels. A 14th-century piscina and stepped sedilia are located at the south-east corner. Nineteenth-century wall monuments to the Carpenter family are on the north and south walls. Two plain chamfered arched openings access the south aisle. The south aisle roof is now boarded over but displays brattishing and carved heads on the wall plate. A doorway to the vestry in the east wall has a pointed-arched head and double wave moulding to the reveal. A squint arch is present in the south-west tower pier.

The north transept roof is plastered over but reveals a moulded and brattished cornice and arch-braced principals with wall posts. Two central trusses are closely set. The archway to the tower has an arch of four chamfers, the outer three dying into plain square imposts. The east and west doorways are blocked, with a central pointed recess to the east and a semicircular-headed recess to the west. Floor slabs in the chancel include those to Matthew Trott (died 1652) and Matthew Trott (died 1659).

The font is octagonal on a single octagonal riser, with alternating roses and shields around the bowl and head corbels below. The stem has eight attached shafts with moulded caps and bases.