Church Of St Mary

The Church of St Mary is a parish church dating back to the 14th century. It was restored in 1846-7 by Cottingham, and again in 1888-9. The church comprises a nave, chancel, south porch, and west tower. It is primarily constructed of rubble flint with plain freestone dressings. The bases of the nave walls and porch are of black knapped flint. The roofs are tiled with high, plain parapets. The nave has plain stone-faced buttresses, while the east end of the nave and chancel have diagonal buttresses. There are high, two-light windows to the nave with flowing tracery. The northeast window is blocked except for the head, and the northwest window contains fragments of medieval glass in its head. The chancel has two-light windows with cusped Y-tracery, and a three-light east window with flowing tracery and 19th-century stained glass in the head. All windows have diamond-leaded panes and some crown glass.

The 15th-century south porch has an open timber roof with an ovolo-moulded main beam. The south face is decorated with rectangular flushwork panels of black knapped flint, a canopied niche above the doorway, and trefoil-headed canopied niches on each side. The south door has reused iron fittings, including 17th-century hinges, and a canopied niche above featuring a reinstated figure of the Virgin and Child.

The west tower consists of five stages, with two intermediate string-courses and a plain parapet of black knapped flint. A stair turret on the south side has a conical, stone-tiled roof. Each face of the top stage has a two-light window with curvilinear tracery. The east face of the tower reveals the line of a higher, earlier roof.

The interior of the nave and chancel has been altered in a Victorian style, with all fittings dating from the 19th-century restorations. The nave features a very plain double hammerbeam roof, with upper hammerbeams supporting arched braces that meet in a central pendant below the collar, and a simple pierced and dentilled cornice. Some ovolo-moulding is present on the main timbers. The roof, described as 19th century, may instead be 17th century, and a six-bay single-hammerbeam roof in a similar style could be of the same date and reused. Hanoverian arms, painted and framed, are displayed on the north wall of the nave.