Church Of St Mary The Virgin

Church of St Mary the Virgin

This is a parish church with origins in the 12th century, substantially developed and altered over subsequent centuries. The building displays a complex constructional history: a 12th-century core was extended with a north aisle around 1200 and a south aisle and lengthened nave in the early 13th century. A fifteenth-century tower and nave clerestory were added, followed by seventeenth-century rebuilding of the nave and chancel. The building underwent major restoration in 1853 and again in 1901.

The church is constructed of rubble flint with brick repairs and stone and brick dressings, beneath an old plain tile roof. The plan follows the original twelfth-century church layout, though the chancel was rebuilt in the seventeenth century and a nineteenth-century north vestry was added. The nave includes a thirteenth-century west bay and fifteenth-century clerestory, while the south aisle dates to around 1300 with a porch rebuilt in 1921. The thirteenth-century north aisle has a nineteenth-century porch, and the fifteenth-century west tower was remodelled in the nineteenth century.

The chancel's east end, rebuilt in the nineteenth century, features a stepped three-light trefoiled window recessed under a pointed arch. The roof overhangs are supported on timber corbels. The south side displays two seventeenth-century two-light square-headed windows, with the western one taller and set low. To the north is a nineteenth-century gabled vestry with a nineteenth-century two-light window to its west. The nave's east gable is tile-hung and exposed. The clerestory features on the north side two fifteenth-century square-headed two-light trefoiled windows to the east, a nineteenth-century copy to the west, and a seventeenth-century square-headed two-light window with a round-headed light at the west. The south side has three nineteenth-century two-light trefoiled windows and a similar seventeenth-century window at the west.

The south aisle has a nineteenth-century two-light trefoiled window at its east end and a seventeenth-century southeast buttress. Windows and buttresses of similar character occur to the south, east and west of the aisle's centre. To the west of centre is a sixteenth-century gabled porch with a twentieth-century south face of diagonal buttresses and a perpendicular doorway containing an eighteenth-century door. The west end of the nave contains a small thirteenth-century two-light trefoiled window with a quatrefoil in the head. The north aisle has a thirteenth-century two-light trefoiled window in its east end, northeast buttresses, and a central north nineteenth-century gabled brick porch. Each side of the north aisle displays a seventeenth-century buttress and square-headed two-light trefoiled window. A northwest buttress and small thirteenth-century square-headed two-light trefoiled west window complete the north aisle elevation. The west bay of the nave has slightly pointed lancets on each side of the thirteenth century and clasps the sides of the tower.

The tower has stepped diagonal buttresses on the west side that rise to an end stage, with a nineteenth-century rendered brick battlemented top stage. A low-set round-headed door opens to the south. Reset into the west wall is a thirteenth-century west door of three moulded orders: the outer order features dog-tooth ornament between beaded rolls, the inner is chamfered, and the outer two are supported on shafts with moulded capitals. On each side are reset fifteenth-century niches above single trefoiled lights.

The interior of the chancel features early nineteenth-century vaults under the sanctuary. The south windows have timber lintels, and a nineteenth-century scissor truss roof covers the space. A fifteenth-century pillar piscina with an octagonal bowl and roses on the sides stands beneath the southeast window, with an octagonal shaft and capital carved with grotesques below. A stone bowl sits on the northwest sill. A nineteenth-century corbelled pointed chancel arch separates the chancel from the nave.

The nave contains a circa 1200 three-bay pointed arcade on round piers with multi-scalloped capitals to the north. The south arcade is similar but with plain capitals. The clerestory has timber lintels. The roof is nineteenth-century with crown posts that preserve earlier tie beams and crown posts; the remainder is plastered. The west bay contains widely splayed rear arches and houses a tall organ. The east floor is laid with slabs commemorating Henry Grey (1719), Rev. Nathaniel Ware (1754), Mary Hendow (1768), and John and Mary Hattatt (1779). A tablet in the northwest records Jane Hattat (1799).

The south aisle has chamfered rear arches to its door and west window. Tablets commemorate John Merch (1763) and Elizabeth Hattatt (1825). An early nineteenth-century benefactors board is mounted above the door. Chamfered pointed rear arches address the north aisle windows. The aisles retain fifteenth-century purlin roofs. The pews are nineteenth-century rebuilds of seventeenth-century pews, which bear various seventeenth-century dates.