Church Of St Mary The Virgin

Church of St. Mary the Virgin

This church at Otley, dating from the 15th and 16th centuries, is built of flint rubble and knapped flint with ashlar dressings beneath a plain tiled roof. The building comprises a west tower, nave with south aisle, chancel, and south-western and north-western porches.

The tower is the most distinctive feature. Its Early 15th-century west face displays diagonal buttresses with panels of flushwork to their outer faces that die back by four offsets. A projecting plinth, dying back via an offset, carries an arcade of trefoil-headed niches—now blank but probably once containing flushwork. Panels with shields flank the doorway, which has a richly moulded surround featuring colonnettes and casement, ogee and keel mouldings. A Late 15th-century door beneath, much replaced in the 19th or 20th century, shows figures of saints on the central stile and hinge stiles raised on image stools with crocketed pinnacles above in relief (somewhat similar to the door within the Seckford porch at Great Bealings). Ashlar spandrels to the door surrounds contain floral motifs. Shields and floral bosses appear below the first-stage window, a three-light opening with trefoil heads and panel tracery. Above is a single-light window with cinquefoil head and band rising to form a hood mould. A further band at sill level of the belfry opening, which is of renewed ashlar following the original form, features two trefoil-headed lights with a quatrefoil to the apex. A brick string course lies below the 16th-century brick parapet, which is battlemented. The south face is blank below the belfry opening but has a canted staircase turret at the right, dying back at the level of the belfry sill, with ashlar quoins to the corners. The north face is similarly blank below the belfry opening but displays a circular metal clock face with gilded hands beneath the belfry stage.

The nave walling is of knapped flint, perhaps of 19th-century date, save at the right where it is partially replaced by brick. A gabled projecting porch at the far right has diagonal buttresses and a central archway with chamfered surround and hood mould, faced in knapped flint. To its left are two three-light windows with cinquefoil heads and panel tracery—19th-century replacements incorporating fragments of earlier windows. Above these are four two-light clerestory windows with trefoil heads and brick voussoirs. A central buttress to the clerestory is cut back to its lower body and does not appear at the lower level. The south face presents a projecting porch to the left bay with diagonal buttresses having flushwork and some brick patching. A central doorway with broad chamfer shows suspended shields in relief, with a canopied niche above and a shallow-pitched gable above that. Three bays to the right of this have yellow-brick buttresses and windows of three lights with ogee cinquefoil heads and panel tracery. The clerestory contains nine windows, each of two lights with trefoil heads and brick voussoirs.

The chancel, of lesser height and width, has a buttress at the right of centre on its south face. To the left of this is a priest's door with chamfered ashlar surround, and further left a three-light Perpendicular window with cinquefoil heads and panel tracery similar to those of the aisle windows. The north face has a vestry doorway at the left and three lancet lights set in rubble walling with trefoil heads, slightly recessed and to the right. An octagonal chimney with offsets rises above. The east end displays three-light windows with reticulated tracery, with the vestry window to the right being of two lights with Y-tracery, perhaps reset.

The interior features an aisle arcade of four bays with columns of quatrefoil section having fillets to the inner angles and centre of each colonnette. Moulded bases and capitals carry arches with ogee and chamfered mouldings. Moulded ribs to the aisle roof are supported by arched braces rising from short wall posts, terminating in shields to the south side and stone corbels to the arcade side.

The nave roof comprises four-and-a-half bays, the western half-bay canted inwards due to the diagonal buttresses. Hammer beams in the form of angel bodies—which have lost their wings and heads—support the roof; four of these have square tie rods drilled through them. Wall posts, also terminating in angels with lost heads and wings, connect to the hammerbeams via arched braces. Lengthy arched braces further connect to brattished and cambered collars from which rise short kingposts. A moulded ridgebeam and two sets of purlins complete the structure, with a richly moulded cornice featuring two rows of brattishing.

The tower arch has semi-octagonal piers at either side with moulded bases and caps, beneath a chamfered and painted Perpendicular arch. The chancel arch, of 14th-century date, has semi-octagonal piers with moulded caps and cut-back bases. The chancel roof, of three-and-a-half bays, contains trusses of Late 17th or circa 1840 date, with short hammerbeams resting on wall posts with arch braces. Scrolled arch braces connect with the collars; further scrolled braces rise above.

An octagonal font on a square base features lions at the corners and recessed panels to the bowl showing angels bearing shields and defaced lions. An octagonal 17th-century wooden pulpit, with three tiers of rich panelling on a 19th-century plinth, stands within the church. The lower body of a rood screen divides the nave from the chancel, with two arched Perpendicular panels at either side divided by buttresses. A wall monument to John Gosnold, dated circa 1628, occupies the chancel, with an aedicular surround of black marble columns flanking a rectangular tablet, a broken pediment above bearing a coat of arms, and a further coat of arms to the apron. Several medieval bench ends and fragments of benches survive. An immersion font, probably of 17th-century date, was recorded in the vestry.