Church Of St Mary

TL 97 NE CONEY WESTON HOPTON ROAD

1/21 Church of St. Mary 14.7.55

• I

Parish church. C14 throughout, but not all of one date. Nave, chancel and south porch (the tower fell in 1690). Rubble flint with freestone dressings; thatched roof to nave with decorated ridge, plaintiles to chancel and porch. The nave and porch have a moulded stone base with a course of stone blocks alternating with squares of black knapped flint. Buttresses faced with freestone and black knapped flint. At the west end of the nave the former tower arch has been infilled with courses of limestone blocks interspersed with flint rubble; a blocked square 2-light window with stone mullion on the upper face of the gable. Two 2-light windows to the south side of nave, with trefoil heads and quatrefoils in the tracery; to the west of the porch, a 2- light square-headed window with hood-mould, and 2 similar windows on the north side. 3 early C14 2-light windows to south side of chancel, with a recessed arched niche in the wall below. On the north side of the chancel the blocked remains of arches indicate a former chantry or chapel. 4-light east window with reticulated tracery and a depressed arch; a small circular opening high in the gable. Porch with embattled parapet faced with alternating square panels of black knapped flint and freestone. Doorway with a sharply-arched head which fits badly on the capitals. South doorway to nave with continuous mouldings and a cinquefoil-headed blocked niche beside it. There is a bell- cote for a single bell above the roof of the porch. Inside the building, most fittings date from an extensive restoration of 1869. The fine Decorated octagonal font has various traceried motifs reminiscent of the font at Honington. In the north-west corner of the nave a section of small inlaid medieval floor tiles: illustrated in the Suffolk Historic Churches Trust booklet 'Medieval Floor Tiles in Suffolk Churches', by David Sherlock. Plastered barrel-vaulted roof, said to have its original timbers. Chancel arch flanked by 2 cusped niches, originally for side altars; a piscina with cusped head in the south-east corner, and a shallow blank niche in the jamb of the south-east window. In the north-east corner, a marble tablet in Classical style to Maurice Dreyer and his wife, 1786. In the chancel, an open-sided angle piscina and sedilia. Across the south-east corner, fragments of a canopy and base for a statue. The windows contain a quanity of old crown glass, diamond-leaded.

Listing NGR: TL9715978395