Church Of St Mary And Attached Walls, Piers And Gates

The Church of St Mary and attached walls, piers, and gates was built between 1856 and 1862 by F.J. and Horace Herbert Francis. It is constructed of coursed Kentish ragstone with Bath stone dressings, and has a slate roof. The church comprises a sanctuary with a southern chapel and a northern vestry, transepts, a four-bay nave with clerestory and lean-to aisles, and a south-west tower. It is designed in the Middle-pointed Gothic style.

The entrances are in the south side of the tower and the west end, featuring moulded pointed arches on colonnettes with double doors. The tower has diagonal buttresses, a clock on the south face, louvred belfry openings, and a broach spire with lucarnes. The east and west windows have five lights, while the transepts have four. The aisles include a corbel table. The clerestory features unusual three-light windows set under shallow gables, linked to pilasters flanked by colonnettes and a Lombard frieze.

The interior was not inspected but contains a fragment of an early 15th-century brass depicting a nun’s head, possibly that of Emma de St Omer, the prioress, located in the north transept. Stained glass is present in the chancel, created by Clayton and Bell. A memorial window in the north aisle commemorates R.J. Pitcher, organist and professor of singing at the Guildhall School of Music, who invented a device called the Techniquer to aid novice organists learning the pedals.

Attached to the church are ragstone walls with gate piers and cast-iron gates forming entrances. The church was built on the assumed site of the nunnery of Kilburn.