Church Of St Mary

Church of St Mary

A parish church dating from the 11th and 14th centuries, built of roughly coursed flint with stone dressings and a lead roof. The building comprises a west tower, nave and chancel in one, and a south porch.

The tower is embattled with a parapet decorated in flint flushwork tracery and shields. The flint work is galletted with diagonal buttresses also featuring flint flushwork. A polygonal stair turret projects to the south-east. The west window opening contains three lights with straight wooden mullions, while small cusped single lights face west and east. String courses mark the 2-light bell openings, which are set under quatrefoils, and run up to the parapet.

The 15th-century south porch is built of brick dressings with a gable parapet and cross. Its archway has 3 chamfered orders, and above sits a niche bearing an 18th-century inscription reading "LET / these Instances / of Mortalitie / remind thee / of thy own". The returns feature short Y tracery openings. The roof comprises a 2-tier structure of butt purlins and collars with renewed boarding and yellow brick tiles to the floor. The south doorway is of brick with 3 continuous mouldings and a hood. A 15th-century door with renewed battens, lattice and intersecting bracing to the rear remains in place, with part of an arched stoup recess to the left.

The south sides of the nave and chancel contain six window openings: the first is a tall, undressed, double-splayed, semi-circular headed 11th-century lancet; the second, fourth and fifth have cusped Y tracery; the third is a 3-light window with Decorated tracery featuring a large flattened cusped lozenge under a 4-centred arch; the sixth is a single ogee-headed light below the renewed brick outline of a former doorway. The north sides of the nave and chancel feature three cusped Y tracery lights matching those to the south, one short double-splayed semi-circular headed lancet, and a north doorway renewed in Portland stone with continuous moulding and integral stopless hood. The east window contains 3 lights with reticulated tracery and brick hood mould.

Interior

The nave and chancel are separated by an early 15th-century screen with 8 ogee-headed single lights, each with roses to the cusps, panel tracery and carved spandrels; the dado panels have been lost or encased. The nave roof comprises 4 massive ties with octagonal crown posts having moulded capitals and no collars; some rafters have been renewed. Four semi-circular headed low recesses run along the north wall, with three similar recesses and one segmental-headed recess to the south. Stone steps to the south now lead to a preaching platform. A plain octagonal font stands on a fat octagonal stem, accompanied by an early 18th-century font cover of 8 turned colonettes supporting a crown with ogee splats to the central turned finial. A small trefoil-headed piscina sits to the south of the screen, with a stoup recess to the right of the north doorway. A canvas achievement to George II hangs to the right of the south doorway.

In the chancel, the roof rafters are braced from the wall plates, with some timbers renewed. The rood beam tie and adjacent rafters bear medieval floral painted decoration. An aumbry with segmental moulded arch and a trefoil-headed piscina with a small arched opening to the west, leading to a former doorway recess, occupy the south side. A small recess to the right contains a pillar piscina. The east window contains glass of 1917 in memory of Edith Cavell. The priest's chair and chancel benches incorporate fourteen 15th-century poppyhead benchends with borders of feathers or fleurons, while the rails are of early 18th-century turned balusters. A tall tower arch with hollow chamfers opens into the tower, which is accessed by a 4-centred doorway with a ledged and battened door.