Church Of St Mary At Stoke

Church of St Mary at Stoke

An Anglican town church of exceptional architectural interest, combining medieval elements with a significant 19th-century rebuild. The Church of St Mary at Stoke represents several distinct building campaigns spanning from the 14th century to the 1870s.

The earliest surviving structure is the North-West tower, probably dating from the 14th century. The 15th-century North aisle, North transept and South-West porch follow, with the latter two elements redesigned in 1863 to the designs of Phipps. The remainder of the church was thoroughly rebuilt by William Butterfield in 1870-1871 in the Perpendicular style.

The plan comprises a nave and chancel, North aisle (the former 15th-century nave), North-East chapel, North and South transepts, a North-East vestry roofed parallel to the North transept, North-West tower and South-West porch. The building is constructed in knapped flint and freestone with slate roofs and pierced 19th-century ridge tiles to the nave and chancel. The tower has a brick parapet. The nave and chancel are decorated with stone bands and some chequerboard decoration in the gables. The porch displays flushwork decoration.

The exterior shows the Butterfield chancel with diagonal buttresses and a 5-light traceried East window. The nave is buttressed with 3-light traceried windows, the West window being notably narrow. The North transept has a 3-light North window and diagonal buttresses. The North-East chapel has a 3-light East window with a transom in the tracery and diagonal buttresses. The North aisle features 3-light windows. The unbuttressed West tower displays a 19th-century moulded West doorway below a 2-light Tudor-arched West window, with Y-traceried belfry openings. The richly-decorated South-West porch features a coped gable and diagonal buttresses. The gable is filled with chequered flint and ashlar blocks and contains a roundel window with Flamboyant tracery. Above the doorway is flushwork blind arcading. The doorway itself has a square-headed frame with carved spandrels.

The interior is plastered and painted. There is no chancel arch. The tower arch, now blocked by a later screen, shows a double-chamfered arch on its West face. A simple moulded doorway to the vestry is said to preserve the former doorway to the rood loft stairs.

The North aisle preserves a very fine hammerbeam roof of 15th-century date with two tiers of purlins. The hammerbeams are carved with figures holding shields depicting the symbols of the Passion. An engraving of 1854 shows that the heads of these figures were originally lost, and the existing heads are later replacements. Butterfield provided an arch-braced roof to the nave and chancel, plastered behind the rafters with pierced tracery decoration above the collar. A 5-bay arcade with corner shafts to the piers runs across the interior, the West bay being narrower and taller than the others. Wooden braces rise on carved stone corbels.

Butterfield's 3-bay stone panelled reredos extends across the East wall of the sanctuary and is infilled with 20th-century painting. 19th-century encaustic tiles are present in the chancel. An ogee-arched aumbry in the North wall has a crocketted finial, painted white and gilded. Choir stalls with shouldered ends and poppyhead finials to the rear row have blind tracery decoration on the backs of the second row. An early 20th-century timber drum pulpit sits on a low wineglass stem with sides carved with blind tracery. A 19th-century stone font features an octagonal bowl with carved sides and a brattished cornice on an octagonal stem and plinth, painted white and gilded.

The nave benches are 19th-century work with square-headed ends, moulded tops and two vertical panels.

The stained glass is of high quality. An 1871 East window designed by Clayton and Bell fills the chancel, and an East window in the North aisle, dated 1864, was designed by P R Burrell. A Heaton, Butler and Bayne window in the nave is signed with a memorial date of 1905.