Church Of St Mary

Church of St Mary, Monewden

Church containing some 11th or 12th-century fragments, substantially rebuilt around 1300 with 15th-century additions. Built of rubble and knapped flint with ashlar dressings, rendered externally, with a brick and plain tile roof. The building comprises a nave, chancel, west tower and south-western porch.

The west tower presents the church's most elaborate architectural treatment. Its west front features a slightly projecting plinth with an arcade of trefoil-headed flushwork panels to the upper body. Diagonal buttresses with flushwork to their outer faces diminish via three offsets. The central doorway has a richly-moulded ashlar surround with wave and bird-beak moulding, with shields to the spandrels. Above this is a two-light window with trefoil-headed lights, followed by a cusped lancet, and then a two-light belfry opening with trefoil heads and a dagger at the apex, set below a band at sill level. The parapet is battlemented with panels of flushwork tracery below it. The north and south faces of the tower contain similar belfry openings. The south face includes a projecting canted staircase bay to the right with ashlar quoins. The east face, abutting the nave body, displays a similar belfry opening and a drip mould indicating the nave roof was formerly higher or thatched.

The south face of the nave features a projecting brick porch of 15th-century date, positioned left of centre, with diaper work flanking a central moulded arch and three trefoil-headed niches to the gable resting on a brick ledge. To either flank are pointed windows with original ashlar surrounds of two lights with trefoil heads (one still visible), now mostly containing 20th-century glass. To the left stands a two-light Perpendicular window with cinquefoil heads, then a lancet window and a Perpendicular window with ogee trefoil-headed lights. Shoring and diagonal buttresses are positioned at intervals. The north face contains a blocked doorway with chamfered surround and hoodmould, a lancet window, and a two-light Perpendicular window with ogee-headed lights, with brick shoring buttresses at multiple points.

The chancel's south face displays a two-light window with Y-tracery dating to around 1300, a chamfered priest's door, and a Perpendicular window with ogee-headed lights. The north face contains a Perpendicular window with rendered surround. The east face has a window of around 1300 with interlacing tracery.

Interior features include a porch with a crown post roof of two bays, having short wall posts with arched braces connecting to a cambered tie-beam, an octagonal crown post with moulded base and capital with axial and lateral angle braces, collar, collar purlin and common rafters. The nave has 19th-century roofing. An octagonal font with suspended shields in the recessed panels of the bowl stands on an octagonal stem with blind tracery. Eleven nave benches of wholly or partially mediaeval date feature poppyhead decoration. A rood staircase with both openings survives.