Church Of St Mary

The Church of St Mary is a parish church dating primarily to the 14th century, although it is not entirely of one build date. It comprises a nave, chancel, and south porch; the tower collapsed in 1690. The church is constructed of rubble flint with freestone dressings, with a thatched roof over the nave, decorated with a ridge, and plaintiles to the chancel and porch. The nave and porch have a moulded stone base alternating courses of stone blocks with squares of black knapped flint. Buttresses are faced with freestone and black knapped flint. At the west end of the nave, the former tower arch has been filled with limestone blocks interspersed with flint rubble, incorporating a blocked two-light square window with a stone mullion on the gable. Two two-light windows with trefoil heads and quatrefoils in the tracery are located on the south side of the nave; a similar two-light square-headed window with a hood-mould sits to the west of the porch and two similar windows are on the north side. The south side of the chancel features three early 14th-century two-light windows, with a recessed arched niche in the wall below. On the north side of the chancel, blocked arches suggest the remains of a former chantry or chapel. The east window is a four-light design with reticulated tracery and a depressed arch, with a small circular opening high in the gable. The porch has an embattled parapet faced with alternating square panels of black knapped flint and freestone and a doorway with a sharply-arched head. A south doorway to the nave has continuous mouldings and a cinquefoil-headed blocked niche beside it. A bellcote for a single bell sits above the porch roof. The interior largely dates from an extensive restoration in 1869. A fine Decorated octagonal font with traceried motifs reminiscent of the font at Honington is present. In the northwest corner of the nave is a section of small inlaid medieval floor tiles. The roof is plastered and barrel-vaulted, believed to retain its original timbers. The chancel arch is flanked by two cusped niches, originally for side altars; there is a piscina with a cusped head in the southeast corner and a shallow blank niche in the jamb of the southeast window. A marble tablet in Classical style commemorates Maurice Dreyer and his wife, dated 1786, is found in the northeast corner. The chancel also contains an open-sided angle piscina and sedilia, as well as fragments of a canopy and base for a statue. The windows contain old crown glass with diamond leading.