Church Of St Mary

Church of St. Mary

This is a parish church of 13th-century origin with later additions, built in flint with ashlar dressings. The roofs are covered in clay plaintiles with alternating bands of plain and fishscale tiles. The building comprises a nave and chancel, a west tower, and a south porch.

The Early 14th-century tower is constructed mainly in kidney flint, partly coursed, with angle buttresses faced in ashlar. It rises in four stages with three string courses. The top stage displays a Y-window on each face, the second stage has one Y-window on the west side, and the third stage on the south has a small square window. The tower is topped with a plain crenellated stone cap.

The south porch is a particularly fine example, built in black knapped random flint with a stone-panelled base from which the flint flushwork has been lost. It is buttressed diagonally. The front features delicate flushwork panels, three empty canopied niches above the doorway, and a crenellated parapet with flushwork panels alternating with crowned monograms. The entrance arch is decorated with fleurons. The porch roof is open timber construction with butt purlins and arch-braced collars. The south doorway of circa 1300 features a continuous arch without capitals.

The nave is constructed mainly in kidney flint. The south side is partly covered in old render, whilst the north side has been re-rendered in the 20th century. It comprises four bays with two-light windows having cusped heads and pointed hood-moulds.

The chancel is rendered and contains three lancet windows on the south wall and two on the north wall, all with very wide inner splays. The south-western lancet has a low side window below it, which is blocked but retains its wooden hinged shutter in situ inside. The priest's door has a simple cavetto-mould surround. The east window consists of three lancets.

The interior of the nave contains crudely-carved mid-19th-century benches in a curious Jacobean Gothic style, with a few 15th-century benches featuring damaged poppyheads and figures positioned at the rear. The five bells, now dismounted, stand on the floor at the rear. The font consists of a plain octagonal bowl with a moulded shaft on a high round base, topped with a damaged Jacobean cover.

The north wall retains remains of four medieval paintings: St. Christopher, St. George and the Dragon (twice), and the martyrdom of St. Edmund. The remains of a Doom painting survive above the chancel arch. On the south wall is the heraldic achievement of James I, repainted for George I. The south-east corner contains the remains of a piscina with a cusped ogee head.

All the heads of the nave windows are filled with fragments of medieval glass. A 15th-century carved screen with one-light divisions, crudely gilded and repainted, is surmounted by a 19th-century cross. A fine Jacobean pulpit stands with a reader's desk in front, the latter constructed from heavily-carved 17th-century panels, probably reused from an overmantel.

The nave is roofed with a plain six-bay rafter roof with collars and scissor-bracing but no tie-beams. The floor is paved with old four-inch tiles in black and red, set diagonally.

The chancel features Jacobean panelling along the side walls. Reused panelling behind the altar is said to be the front of the rood loft. A double piscina with restored traceried head is present. Several 15th-century benches with poppy-heads and animal carvings survive, including one apparently depicting a mermaid. The chancel roof is of 15th-century date, comprising three bays with moulded butt purlins and solid arched braces to high collars, and is finished with a moulded cornice.

Three memorial tablets hang on the north wall of the chancel, the central one commemorating Lieutenant Henry Capel-Lofft, killed near Badajoz in the Peninsular War. The east window contains memorial stained glass dating to circa 1960.