Church Of St Mary

The Church of St Mary is a church with significant fabric dating back to the Saxon period, with substantial rebuilding in the 13th and 14th centuries, and a restoration in 1840. It is constructed of limestone rubble with ashlar dressings and some weatherboarding, with artificial stone-slate and lead roofs. The church comprises a nave, chancel, south aisle, and a west tower.

The chancel retains three original lancet windows on each side wall, a fourth to the south added during a 19th-century rebuilding of the east wall, which includes a three-light window with Reticulated tracery. A blocked priest’s door is located to the north. The steep-pitched roof features the base of a sanctus bellcote on the west gable parapet. The south aisle has an early 14th-century east window of three lights with a large sexfoil in the tracery. To the south are a low 15th-century window of two ogee lights and a 15th/16th-century window of three cinque foil lights. The 14th-century south doorway features keeled roll mouldings that transition to wave-moulding on the jambs. The north wall of the nave contains two similar windows with sexfoils in their tracery, and a blocked 14th-century doorway. A rectangular stair projection is situated at the east end of the wall. The west wall has a three-light window with Perpendicular tracery, flanked by deep, stepped, gabled buttresses, and a 14th-century doorway to the right. The central gable rises to form the base of a weatherboarded tower with a shallow pyramid roof.

Inside, the chancel has a plastered seven-canted roof supported by three heavy tie beams, and a late-medieval aumbry in the north wall. The chancel arch has corbel heads and sits beneath a high, plain imposted Saxon arch. A transitional three-bay arcade features a fluted and scalloped capital on the east side and a masonry pier to the west. The nave has a king-post roof, likely dating from the 16th century. The west tower is supported on internal posts with large curved braces. Fittings include 18th-century panelled pine box pews, a reading desk dated 1632, an elaborately canopied pulpit inscribed “GM/1677”, 17th-century barley-twist communion rails, a late-18th-century Gothic screen forming an entrance lobby (originally from Waterperry House), and a painted Royal Arms dated 1757. The windows contain stained glass from the 13th, 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries, along with 19th and 20th-century additions. Monuments include a 14th-century full-length effigy under an elaborate double-cusped and crocketed canopy; 17th-century alabaster wall monuments to Sir Francis Curson, featuring kneeling figures, and to Magdalen Curson with a framed inscription; a large marble group by Chantry dated 1821; a series of brasses, including one palimpsest; and numerous 17th, 18th and 19th-century ledger stones to the Curson family and others.