Church of St Mary

Church of St Mary

Church, built 1876–8 and enlarged 1911–13, designed by J. Oldrid Scott in Decorated Gothic style. Constructed of red brick with Bath stone dressings and lacing courses, featuring some banded flint and brick chequerwork, diaper work, and string courses. Tile roofs with parapeted gable ends and lead aisle roofs.

The building comprises a five-bay nave with aisles, south-west porch, north-west tower, north and south transeptal chapels at the west end of the nave, a lower two-bay chancel, and a south vestry.

The tower rises in three stages with diagonal buttresses and a gabled south-west newel turret rising to the second stage. It has a battlemented parapet and panelled corner pinnacles with flying buttresses rising to a stone spire with lucarnes on the cardinal faces. The bell stage has two-light louvred openings with Y-tracery in recessed moulded arches with hoodmoulds and carved stops. Clocks are positioned beneath to the north, east and west. The second stage features paired cusped lancets to east and west with four blank arches below. The first stage has a window to the north with Y-tracery, hoodmould, and carved stops. The western entrance comprises two boarded doors with a surround featuring flower ornament, recessed in a moulded archway with shafts, cusping, and a virgin and child in a quatrefoil at the apex of a projecting gabled surround.

The nave clerestory has paired round arches with alternating traceried circular windows and gabled buttresses. The west front features a tall central two-light window with hoodmould and finial, two low flanking buttresses, two lower flanking lancets with hoodmoulds, and a small rectangular opening in the gable end.

The aisles have paired two-light windows with hoodmoulds and carved stops.

The south-west porch is of square plan with angle buttresses, a parapet, and a pyramidal lead roof with finial. It has two boarded doors to the west with a chamfered arch, hoodmould with carved stops, and a lancet to the left. Paired lancets are positioned to the south.

The transeptal chapels feature large four-light moulded windows to north and south with central shafts and geometrical tracery, and lean-to porches to the west with arched west doorways.

The chancel has angle buttresses and two moulded lancets to north and south. The five-light east window has a moulded arch, shafting, a slightly taller central light, and geometrical tracery. A carved frieze runs at eaves level, and five stepped ogee arches are positioned in the apex of the gable, with the outer pairs blank and the central one glazed.

The vestry has three two-light windows to the south with a boarded door between the first and second from the east, and a three-light east window under a segmental head.

Internally, the five-bay aisle arcades have circular piers with foliated capitals and trefoiled circles in the spandrels, with shafting to the roof. Internal window shafting and double arches occur at the west end of the aisles. A moulded chancel arch with foliated capitals is flanked by two arches to north and south in the chancel with quatrefoils in the spandrels. A triple-arched chancel screen features shafts, foliated capitals, pierced spandrels, and a stepped parapet.

Interior fittings include a tiled sanctuary triptych, a wrought iron altar rail, an arcaded octagonal marble pulpit, and a marble font with four shafts around a central larger shaft.

The west windows contain glass from 1915 by Alfred A. Wolmark consisting of an entirely abstract arrangement of geometrical shapes, important as pioneer works unmatched for at least 40 years. Other glass is by Kempe.

An outside stone plaque in the east wall of the chancel is inscribed "In Dei Gloriam MDCCCLXXVI" (1876). An outside stone plaque in the north wall of the tower is inscribed "In Dei Gloriam MCMXII" (1912).