Church Of St Mary

CHURCH OF ST MARY

A medieval parish church with fabric dating from the 14th to early 16th centuries, undergoing restoration or renewal in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The multi-phase boundary wall includes 18th-century gate piers topped with crowned skull finials.

MATERIALS

The walls are constructed of flint with limestone dressings. The roofs are covered in metal or slate.

PLAN AND SETTING

The church is traditionally orientated east-west and stands in a very large and elevated churchyard on the south side of High Road. It comprises a nave with lower north and south aisles, a north porch with parvise, a chancel with a north vestry, and a west tower.

EXTERIOR

The west tower is four stages high with polygonal buttresses and stepped crenellations. A striking display of flint flushwork panels covers the west face, three sides of the bell-chamber, and all sides of the parapet and buttresses. The date '1616' is written on the north face in large iron numerals. The west door sits within a Perpendicular Gothic portal with angel spandrels, a shield of friezes, and flanking statuary niches with heraldic crests of the church's donors. The doors themselves are marked with tools of the farrier's trade, possibly indicating guild patronage.

The nave roof has a shallow pitch and terminates in a small bellcote at the east end. The Perpendicular clerestory is faced in limestone and has eight three-light traceried windows.

The north aisle features a two-storey porch with flint flushwork on the north face, crenellated parapet, and angled buttresses. A polygonal stair turret sits on the west side. Above the central archway with quatrefoil spandrels is a niche with two small windows either side. The ground floor contains a tierceron vault with crowned bosses. Beyond the porch are three three-light Perpendicular windows, followed by the Gawdy chapel, which has cement render, a three-light window, and a small doorway beneath a carved tortoise. The vestry at the east end has two storeys of smaller two-light windows.

The east elevation is covered in cement render and has a five-light window with Perpendicular tracery.

The south side of the 14th-century chancel has stepped buttresses, a priest's door, one reworked Perpendicular Gothic window, and a Y-tracery window. The buttress adjacent to the priest's door bears a group of scratch dials. The south aisle of the nave has three three-light Perpendicular windows and a doorway in a two-centred arch with a trefoil window above.

INTERIOR

The nave is basilican in section with floors covered in ledger slabs and pamment tiles. The walls are plastered and limewashed. The arcades are four bays long with octagonal piers and pointed arches. A hammerbeam roof rises from carved stone corbels. The 19th-century oak pews have bench ends carved with blind tracery.

At the west end, in front of the tower arch, stands an organ built by Holdich in 1843. The screen of linenfold panelling around its base was installed in 1897 to mark the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria. At the base of the tower is a late 17th-century staircase with a closed string, vase-and-bottle balusters, and broad handrail. The stair cuts across a painted 15th-century consecration cross. Within the ringing chamber an historic exhortation is painted on the wall reading "Use no Bad Words! THIS is a Sacred Place!!!"

In the south aisle, the octagonal stone font was replaced in the 19th century. It bears the signs of the evangelists alternating with angels holding symbols of the Passion in panels on each side and stands on a stem supported by four lions.

The 16th-century south door has linenfold panels and the initials A and T, possibly referring to William Alen and William Tompson, churchwardens in the 1550s.

Above the chancel arch are the arms of Queen Anne, installed in 1707.

The 1858 pulpit has a 'wine glass' form and blind tracery carvings.

The Gawdy chapel is approached through a private pew with carved fronts and a gateway with tortoise finials. The chapel reredos is a monument to the Wogan family, produced by J. Francis Moore for Elizabeth Wogan (died 1788), depicting a woman's soul received into heaven.

Several noteworthy funerary monuments are present, including medieval ledger slabs, the chest tomb of Sir Thomas Gawdy (died 1588), and a mannerist wall-mounted plaque to Tobias Frere (died 1655) erected in the Commonwealth and attributed to Martin Morley.

The 1920 rood screen was made from oak grown at Gawdy Hall and incorporates 12 15th-century painted panels that have been heavily overpainted.

The chancel comprises a choir and sanctuary and is dominated by a mixture of late 19th- and early 20th-century joinery, including the choir stalls, panelling by J.A. Reeve, an intricately carved reredos dated 1897, and triple sedilia. The sanctuary rises three steps on woodblock floors. The waggon roof was created in 1864.

The vestry originally had a second storey but is today a single volume. A piscina and aumbry on the south wall suggest it may historically have been a chapel or chantry. A segmental panel with an arched frame on the south wall showing the tetragrammaton appears to be a relocated remnant from a 17th- or 18th-century reredos.

The earliest surviving stained glass is by S.C. Yarington in the Gawdy Chapel (1825). Later glass includes work by Ward & Nixon (north aisle, around 1850), Thomas Baillie (south chancel, around 1866), and Herbert Bryans (east window, early 20th century).

BOUNDARY AND GATEWAY

The northern churchyard boundary wall is approximately 140 metres long and varies in character according to its different phases of building and rebuilding. It is largely brick laid in a variety of bonds, with round brick copings, and lower portions in flint towards the east.

The principal gateway stands at the top of a flight of steps in line with the north porch. It has two brick piers with limestone capitals, bases, and scrolling consoles at the top of a pair of brick jambs. The piers are surmounted by limestone 'memento mori' skulls crowned with laurel wreaths.