Church of St Mary the Virgin

Church of St Mary the Virgin

The Church of St Mary the Virgin at Willesborough is predominantly of the 13th to 15th centuries, with fragmentary Saxon survival and a 19th-century extension and restoration dating to around 1868.

The church is constructed of rag stone rubble with a tiled roof and cedar shingles to the spire. It comprises a five-bay nave with a tower to the west and chancel to the east. The predominantly 15th-century south aisle includes a chantry (now memorial chapel) to the east and a porch to the south. A 19th-century aisle lies to the north of the nave, with a vestry of similar date to the north of the chancel.

The tower features corner buttresses and a distinctive bipartite spire: square at the base (resembling the lower part of a broached spire) and octagonal above. The west doorway is multiply-moulded with shafting and a cusped lancet above. A later south lancet and clock were added at the time of Queen Victoria's diamond jubilee.

The Perpendicular south aisle is separately gabled with paired cusped lights under square heads and an arched three-light east window. The west end contains some Saxon fabric, evidenced by the remains of a small blocked window set high on the west gable. At the east end, the stone plinth of the final bay and diagonal corner buttress mark the 15th-century chantry.

The chancel features a handsome five-light Decorated east window with ogival cusped lights and a large quatrefoil in the apex. The two-light north and south windows follow a similar pattern, with fine carved head corbels. A blocked doorway lies below the south window. The north side comprises a 19th-century vestry and separately gabled north aisle with three-light Decorated windows.

Inside, the south arcade contains four piers—two round to the west and two octagonal to the east—supporting wide double-chamfered arches. The 19th-century north arcade replicates this design exactly. The nave roof has common rafters with braced collars. The 15th-century south aisle roof features octagonal moulded crown posts with four up-braces, resting on moulded tie-beams. This structure is replicated in the south porch and again in the 19th-century north aisle.

The chancel arch has head corbels, with a rood-loft doorway positioned adjacent and high up to the south. The chancel contains a Decorated piscina and triple sedilia on the south wall. Above the south door within the porch is what appears to be a heavily weathered head corbel. Scratch (or mass) dials on the inner face of the south door suggest those stones have been relocated from outside the church. Just east of the doorway is a water stoup, and further east, by the entrance to the memorial chapel, is a piscina.

Liturgical furniture and pews are generally 19th-century, with mid-20th-century furnishings in the memorial chapel including a Roll of Honour on the panelling flanking the reredos. The organ is late 19th-century, with a choir organ added in memory of those who died in the First World War. Various memorials are scattered throughout, the most elaborate being the Warton memorial on the north side of the chapel. Made from Bethersden marble with a central relief bust, it commemorates Charles Warton, who died in 1863, and his wife Lucy, who died in 1896. The floor is predominantly laid with 19th-century encaustic tiles.

The north and south chancel windows contain 14th-century glass. The northern window is particularly complete, depicting saints standing under tabernacles. The south window largely dates from 1868 but is thought to include glass from the original east window, which recorded Edward III's granting of a licence to Abbot John of St Augustine's Abbey in 1349. The three-light east window over the chapel altar contains some 15th-century glass. All medieval glass was reset in 1868 by Clayton and Bell, who also designed the east window featuring scenes from the Passion. The west window in the tower dates to around 1848 by William Warrington, and the window over the piscina in the south aisle is by Herbert Bryans, dedicated to the memory of Reverend T. F. Dixon, rector from 1886 to 1903.