Church Of St Mary The Virgin

The Church of St Mary the Virgin is a parish church with origins in the late 12th and early 13th centuries, significantly altered in the 14th century and heavily restored in 1883-4 by T. Blashill. It is constructed of ragstone, partly rendered, with a plain tiled roof. The church consists of a chancel, a nave with a shingled bell turret, a western porch, and a south vestry. The 19th-century western porch has timber upper walls on a flint and stone base, incorporating window tracery removed during the restoration, and features a trecusped bargeboard. A rounded triangular oculus serves as the west window. The shingled turret has small lucarnes and a weather vane. A timber-framed 19th-century south vestry is also present.

The nave and chancel have cusped lancet windows and 2- and 3-light windows with a cusped sexfoil above, featuring offset buttresses, a chimney, and a stoke hole at the southern re-entrant angle to the chancel. The east end largely dates to the 1883-4 restoration.

Internally, a double-framed gallery/belfry support, possibly originating in the 17th century but now largely 19th-century, is a notable feature. The roof is composed of two tall crown posts on moulded tie-beams, all much restored in 1883. The chancel arch is set within a stepped-in chancel and has a heavy chamfered arch on octagonal responds with deeply undercut capitals. The chancel ceiling features a late 19th-century crown post roof, which is a copy of the nave roof.

Fittings include a simple chamfered piscina in the chancel, a roll-moulded piscina in the nave, and a small ogee-headed niche or stoup near the south door. Other fittings include a colonette rail to the altar, choir stalls, a reading desk/half-screen to the chancel, and a wooden pinnacled lectern, all of good quality and dating to the 19th century. The alabaster font stands on an Early English style column with Evangelists’ symbols carved on the bowl. A "Tudor" style Roll of Honour, a carved wooden tablet commemorating 1914-18 with additions for 1939-45, is also present. Stained glass from 1888, 1893, and 1898, by Holiday, is prominent. Much of the glass and monuments are late 19th and early 20th-century memorials to the Oliver family.

Fragments of masonry on the west wall include late 12th-century (Canterbury style Early English) capitals (one dated 1884) and two coffin lids with bottonée calvary crosses. The Royal Arms of 1828 are displayed above the west door, and painted 19th-century texts—“In Obitu Pax” and “Post Tenebrus Lux”—appear above the chancel arch and west doorway.