Church Of St Mary

WESTWELL SP21SW Church of St Mary 1/297 (formerly listed as 12.9.55 Church of St Mary The Virgin) GV I

Small Parish Church. C12 origins, chancel C13, porch C15 when the church was remodelled, west bay and bellcote 1869 by E J Tarver. Rubble with Cotswold stone roof and coped verges. Small 2-cell church, the nave now 3 bays, chancel 2 bays. Lancets and corbel table to chancel, east window a large cinquefoil within a roll-mould (unusual but shown on Buckler's drawing of 1825). Square head window to right of porch with 3 cusped-head lights and label (restored). Mid-C12 south doorway with one order, set back nook shafts and flaring chevron, the tympanum has a rebated surface and a scratchdial. Porch has side buttresses and wave-mould doorway, it also has a scratchdial (to replace the one the rendered ineffective by building of the porch perhaps) and inside is a cusped niche the former piscina from the chancel. West bay has plate tracery to north and south, dated label stops on north, flowing ribbon to south. Square-plan bellcote with 3 arched louvred belfry windows on each side. Interior plastered. Roof in part probably C16 with arch-braced collars and queen struts. Tall Norman north doorway (now into vestry). Wide, lightly pointed (? remodelled) chancel arch with chip-carved impost string, cushion caps, with beaded panels (to north). Chancel has a segmental head recess with a C17 communion table - perhaps for Easter sepulchre zone probably for founder/benefactor's tomb - below short north window. The main altar is a re-used mensa slab (discovered 1933). The south chancel window retains evidence of painted decoration, florets etc. 2 important monuments, (cf Pevsner: B of E). Uncharacteristically the chancel monument to the Rev. Richard Thorneton (died 1613) has above it a helm; amateur touching up of the heraldry on shields of tomb-chest. Trinder monument on north wall of nave obviously built without taking into account that it would have to clear the (lost) box pews and so entangles itself with roof structure. Unusual quadrilobe and reeded base chalice - type font. Early C16 glass in south window of nave (? contemporary). Advowson belonged at on time to the Hospitallers of Quennington, later to Edington Priory. Buildings of England: Oxfordshire (ed. Sir Niklaus Pevsner) 1974.

Listing NGR: SP2230910052