Church Of St Mary

Church of St Mary

Church with origins in the 10th to 11th centuries, visible in herringbone stonework in the tower and stair turret. Rebuilt in the 12th century on a cruciform plan, with 12th-century features surviving in the tower and transepts. Remodelled with aisles from the late 13th to early 14th century. The transepts were raised and aisles re-roofed in the 15th century. The Horde chapel was remodelled in 1702. The church was extensively restored between 1868 and 1870 by Ewan Christian, as dated on rainwater heads.

The building is constructed of limestone rubble with stone slate roofs to the nave and chancel, and lead roofs to the remainder. The church has a cruciform plan with a central tower and transept chapels. The 15th-century moulded parapets feature carved gargoyles, except on the nave and chancel. The west end of the nave has a much-restored 5-light window with intersecting tracery, originally from the early 14th century, and a fine 14th-century moulded doorway with ballflower and fleuron ornament. A shallow gabled west porch of the same date has a wide chamfered arch and gabled side niches.

The 4-bay aisles are late 13th-century with windows featuring trefoil-headed lights arranged in groups of three with taller central lights. The external window surrounds are unmoulded but the rear arches are cusped. North and south doorways are also trefoil-headed. The north aisle has later buttresses and a gabled stair turret rising from the east end. The south aisle features a 15th-century battlemented porch with diagonal buttresses and a Tudor hoodmould over a 4-centred arch. Within the porch are stone side shelves, a shallow cusped niche, a late 17th-century memorial tablet, and moulded roof beams. The south chapel, to the west of the transept, has a cusped niche over a late 13th-century south window and 15th and 16th-century 2-light west windows.

The transepts feature two bays of late 15th-century clerestory windows with three cusped lights and Tudor hoodmoulds. A 4-light south window is also late 15th-century with Perpendicular tracery. Below is a fine 12th-century doorway with a chevron-moulded semi-circular arch of two orders on shafts with carved capitals.

The north transept has a late 13th-century north doorway with trefoil head, a contemporary 3-light west window, and a 19th-century 3-light traceried north window. A later 14th-century chapel to the east of the north transept has a 3-light window inserted in 1908.

The central tower has a tall bell-chamber with pairs of arched transomed lights and a narrow arcaded frieze. An octagonal spire features large 2-light gabled lucarnes at its base and flying buttresses. Each buttress consists of a quatrefoil cluster of shafts with a statue on top, much restored. The chancel has a 19th-century carved head corbel table, a restored 5-light east window with intersecting tracery, and a 19th-century 3-light traceried south window. A lean-to vestry runs along the north side. In the angle with the south transept is the Horde chapel, dated 1702 on an inscription frieze, with a south window of six arched lights, a blocked 2-light east window, and a lean-to porch.

The interior is much restored and stripped of plaster. Double-chamfered nave arcades rest on cylindrical piers with moulded capitals and bases and square plinths. The arcades terminate on piers with slender corbel shafts and restored carved heads. The nave roof is 19th-century, as is that of the chancel. The aisles, transepts and south chapel retain 15th-century roofs with moulded beams on restored carved stone corbels.

The south chapel has a double-chamfered arch to the transept and two piscinae, that near the pulpit with a restored trefoil head and carved corbel. The stair turret at the east end of the north aisle has small internal windows, an aisle piscina, and a heavily reworked east doorway with a semi-circular tympanum.

The central tower is Transitional and has ashlar piers and pointed unmoulded arches of two orders, those to the nave and chancel with nailhead or billet ornament. Within the arch to the chancel is a retained 11th to 12th-century semi-circular arch with dogtooth voussoirs. Over the north arch is a 12th-century window of two arched lights with an octagonal mullion shaft. West walls of the transepts retain 12th-century arched lights with deep splays, only the head surviving in the north transept. The south transept has a 12th-century arch in the east wall, now blocked, with an old door in a moulded 4-centred arch to the Horde chapel. The north transept has a wide 14th-century moulded arch to the east chapel, which contains a tall gabled niche, possibly an Easter sepulchre, with elaborate cusping, crockets and finials on carved stone heads. An aumbry and moulded piscina are in the south wall.

The chancel has a semi-circular headed doorway in the north wall and a much-restored 15th-century Easter sepulchre with two tiers of cusped arches and blind tracery. In the south wall is a fine late 13th-century triple sedilia with trefoil arches, shafts and carved spandrels, and a moulded trefoil-headed piscina. Set below the east window is an early 14th-century carved stone reredos with figures of Christ and the twelve Apostles in crocketed niches, with a recess featuring two arched openings below.

Most fittings are 19th-century but include a 14th-century font base with trefoil-headed arcade, a strapped medieval chest, and some reused 15th and 16th-century panels in the choir stalls.

Monuments include: in the south transept, a very worn medieval effigy of a lady in carved stone; a wall monument to George Tompson dated 1603 with a carved stone effigy lying in a tabernacle with Corinthian columns, carved frieze and strapwork base and pediment; and a stone coffin with a cross on the lid. In the north chapel is a carved stone effigy of a knight, said to be Sir Gilbert Talbot, died 1419. In the Horde chapel are four wall tablets with oval or round inscription panels of grey stone in carved white stone surrounds with putti, mask-heads and skulls, to Thomas and Elizabeth Cooke (1669 and 1668), Stephen Philips (1684), Barbara Trinder (1671), and the children of John and Anne Gower (1679). In the chancel are three brasses to Thomas Plymmyswode (circa 1429), Robert Holcot (1500), and Frances Gardner (1633).