Church Of St Mary

The Church of St Mary is a building of the 13th century, extensively altered in the 15th century, with a west tower added in 1722 and a Victorian restoration in 1897. It comprises a five-bay nave, a two-bay chancel, a west tower, a north vestry, and a north porch. The nave is constructed of rubble stone with roughcast rendering, while the chancel is of rubble stone and the tower is finely jointed ashlar. Dressed stone quoins and copings support gabled stone tiled roofs, with Victorian cross finials adorning the gable ends.

The three-story west tower is of a classical style, featuring diagonal buttresses and pyramidal set-offs reaching the midpoint of the second storey. It includes blind and keyed round arched openings to the second storey and similar openings to the bell stage, fitted with wooden louvres. The tower's proportions are slightly compromised by the loss of four stone corner urns. A flat entablature, in keeping with the tower's details, tops the north door, which is of studded planks. A late 19th-century two-light window has been inserted above the door within a classical surround.

The south wall of the nave features one flat-headed two-light Perpendicular window, two 19th-century Perpendicular-style windows under pointed heads, and a 19th-century three-light window with a flat head, all with dripstones. The north wall of the nave incorporates a small Perpendicular cusped lancet under a flat head, a two-light Perpendicular window under a pointed head, a large Perpendicular window of panelled lights, and two renewed Perpendicular two-light windows under flat heads. The chancel’s south wall has two Perpendicular windows: one with four cusped lights and a quatrefoil above under a flat head with a dripstone, and another of three lights under a flat head. The north wall of the chancel contains a plain 19th-century Decorated east window of two lights. The vestry has a two-cusped light window under a flat head. The north porch is timber-faced with a carved bargeboard and a plank door. The north doorway is 13th century, with a moulded trefoiled head supported on slim colonettes and stiff leaf capitals.

Inside, the church has an aiseless interior with open rafter roofs; the nave roof features five heavy tie beams from which spring crown posts. The classical tower arch has a keystone and square abaci, with the date 1722 inscribed on the north side. The 13th-century chancel arch, on plain imposts, retains remnants of the rood stairs behind its north jamb. A 13th-century trefoiled piscina is located in the chancel's south wall. A plain Greek Revival mural tablet on the nave's south wall commemorates Elizabeth Hughes (died 1787) and her sister Mary Ann (died 1805), signed Westmacott. The nave windows contain badly fired mid-Victorian stained glass, transferred from Newbury parish church around 1935. A fine piece of Jacobean woodwork, featuring strapwork and arcading, forms the pulpit, while the altar table is of plain Jacobean design. A six-foot-high painted Royal Arms from 1733 is situated beside the tower arch.