Church Of St Mary

Church of St Mary, Rougham

A parish church of the 14th and 15th centuries, built in random flint with freestone dressings and plaintiled roofs. The building comprises a nave, chancel, north and south aisles, a south porch, and a west tower. A small lean-to vestry of mid-19th-century date stands on the north side of the chancel, and a taller late 19th-century choir vestry with a crenellated flat roof is positioned on the south side.

The roofs of the nave and both aisles are embattled, with the north aisle merlons pierced with quatrefoils and the remainder featuring enriched lozenges. The north aisle is lit by 3-light windows in Perpendicular style, while 2-light windows with flamboyant tracery light the east end of both aisles. Three buttresses display partly obliterated inscriptions and the date 1514. One reads "We pray you to remember us that causyde ye yle to be made thus" and another reads "DNS JOHES SYMTH LE CURATOR ISTIUS ECCLESIAE WILMS..". The south aisle has cusped 3-light windows without tracery and one lancet at the west end, along with two blocked arches low down in the wall, interrupted by a later buttress. The clerestorey is lit by four 2-light windows without tracery. The chancel has similar 2-light windows to north and south, and a 5-light east window with reticulated tracery, with angle buttresses at the east end.

The south porch is a fine early 14th-century structure featuring a plain freestone parapet, moulded copings, and an ornate cross at the apex of the gable. The 3-light side openings are divided by circular shafts with ornate ogee-arched heads. The coved open timber roof has a moulded main beam and is dated 1632. A 14th-century south doorway has continuous mouldings.

The splendid west tower has traces of external render, a stepped base, and diagonal buttresses. It rises in four stages of varying height, with a 3-light window without tracery to each face of the top stage. The stepped battlemented top carries crocketed pinnacles at the angles, decorated with flushwork panels bearing inscriptions and devices: on the south face, "pray for ye sowle of John Tillot" and the initials T and D; on the north face, "Drury"; and on the east face, the entwined MR of the Virgin Mary and her emblem of a pot of lilies. Below the parapet is a frieze of tracery motifs infilled with flushwork.

The interior of the nave is fine, featuring a single hammer-beam roof in ten slightly irregular bays, with the trusses spaced to enclose the clerestory windows. The short hammer-posts extend upwards to form arched braces to the high collars. The hammer-beams are recumbent headless figures bearing various shields and devices. The supporting arched braces have carved spandrels and capitals, with canopied niches below containing standing figures. All roof components are moulded, and a frieze in three stages covers the wallplate, decorated with quatrefoils and cresting. The aisle roofs have roll-mouldings to their main cross-beams, with carved bosses at the intersections and a cornice with florets and pierced cresting.

The 14th-century arcades run for 4 bays to both aisles, with piers formed of four main shafts and four subsidiary shafts in the diagonals; the high chancel arch receives similar treatment. Short spur walls link the arcades to the chancel: on the north an empty ogee-headed niche with cusping set back, and on the south a small blocked pointed doorway to the rood-loft with continuous mouldings. Early 14th-century cusped piscinae are present in both aisles. The east window of the north aisle retains remains of medieval glass, and some resited ornate Jacobean panelling is present.

The church contains an octagonal font with traceried panels to the bowl. A fine set of 15th-century benches with traceried ends and poppyheads, all different, originally occupied the nave: eight pairs are original, the remainder are good copies. The figures on the arms have been cut off, while the backs are carved with quatrefoils and a cresting. Simpler benches in the aisles, with moulded ends and poppyheads, have been converted into low box-pews.

The chancel has been Victorianised, with a renewed scissor-braced roof, a much-restored sedilia and piscina on the south wall. The church contains a large brass to Sir Roger Drury and his wife, died 1405, and a number of 17th-century marble wall tablets, including one to Sir Robert Drury and his wife, 1621. Two worn early 18th-century black ledger slabs are set into the floor of the nave. Records from 15th-century wills indicate that the medieval dedication of the church was to St. John rather than St. Mary.