The Church Of St Mary

BUSCOT The Church of St Mary SU29NW 1/1 21/11/66 I GV Parish church. Originally a C13 plan with C15 additions, C18 alterations, restored in 1854. Roughcast and rubble stone with stone dressings, stone tiled roofs with dressed stone copings. 3-bay nave, 2-bay chancel, west tower, S porch, N vestry. Perp. tower of 2 storeys with diagonal buttresses, moulded embattled parapet with weathercock and flat-headed 2- light cusped bell openings with dripstones. W tower door with four-centred arch, carved labels and above, a 3-light traceried window with pointed head. Sundial on S face. 2 recut Perp. traceried pointed windows to S wall of nave, one 2-light plain window in N wall. Small 2-light Perp. window above renewed round-arched porch entrance. Plain Tudor arch with dripstone to S doorway. Plain round and pointed heads to chancel windows. Aisleless interior with high Perp. arch to tower. Chancel arch of 3 orders, outer zig-zag, possibly reset, with 2 Transitional columns and capitals with stiff leaf decoration. Plaster barrel vaults throughout, but a tie beam and crown post visible in chancel. 2 late C15 brasses of husband and wife on S wall of chancel. 2 fine Loveden monuments on chancel N wall. Margaret, 1st wife of Edward Loveden Loveden of Buscot Park, died 1784. Two putti by a grey obelisk. At the foot a relief of Charity. She is giving money to a poor man and bread to a girl. Elizabeth, the 2nd wife, died 1788. In front of an obelisk, reclining on a couch. A baldacchino above her on the right. An angel appearing from the left and holding her hand. Both signed by Robert Cooke, the former dated 1786. Other wall monuments include one to the Rev Robert Reading, died 1791, also by Cooke, Susanna Place, died 1686, and Edward Loveden, died 1713. Exceptional set of stained glass by Morris & Co., all designed by Edward Burne-Jones: 1892 chancel E window, The Good Shepherd; 1897 chancel S wall, Angels of Paradise; 1921 nave N wall, Valour and Fortitude; 1921 nave S wall, Centurion and Christ as Love; 1922 tower W window, Hope, Charity and Faith; 1924 nave S wall, Archangel Gabriel and Mary Virgin. Early C16 English Renaissance polygonal pulpit with reset panels of an early C16 Flemish triptych given by Sir Alexander Henderson in 1908. A. C. Sewter, The Stained Glass of William Morris and his Circle, 1975, 2, 40.

Listing NGR: SU2265598140