Church Of St Mary The Virgin

The Church of St Mary the Virgin is a church dating from 1846, representing a rebuild of a church originally constructed in 1790. The design is by Benjamin Ferrey. The church is built of roughly coursed sandstone with ashlar dressings, and has plain tiled roofs. It follows a cruciform plan, incorporating a lower chancel to the east, a porch to the south, and a tower to the north-west, with a vestry attached to the north side. The building is characterised by its notably tall proportions.

The tower rises through three stages and is topped with a copper broach spire set upon corbelled eaves. It features an offset quoined buttress to the lower stages and a blind lancet arcade on the first stage, with round moulded capitals to the jamb shafts; two bays of this arcade are open with louvred coverings. A three-bay arcade is located below the lancet arcade, with a central two-light lancet window. A stair turret is positioned in the south-east corner, angled with the main church, while the vestry is attached to the north side. Lancet clerestory windows are positioned over a pentice roofed aisles, and other windows are lancet and roundels in an early English style. The aisles are buttressed with corbelled eaves, and the east end is also buttressed, with hood mouldings to the windows.

A gabled porch is situated on the south side, featuring a trefoil opening in the gable apex. The entrance arch is moulded and chamfered, with a single order of jamb shafts, alongside panelled outer doors and a 20th-century inner door. Further doors are found at the west end within a moulded two-order surround under a hood moulding, featuring human head stops and strapwork hinges to the doors.

Inside, the nave features a braced, hammer beam roof. There is a four-bay round pier nave arcade below. Octagonal piers mark the east side of the entrance to the aisle chapels, with chamfered arches and hood mouldings over. A wooden gallery is located to the west end, supported by thin, painted iron columns. The chancel has a king-post roof and is panelled with a billeted band.

Notable fittings include an ogee arch piscina on the south wall of the chancel, a panelled pulpit with a linenfold pattern on the panels, and an octagonal stone font on a panelled stem with deep carving in the panels of the bowl.

Several monuments are present. A tablet on the west wall of the north aisle records donations to the church’s construction, detailing the architects and patrons, dated 1847. A monument to George Duncombe (1694/5) is found on the north aisle wall, featuring a marble cartouche with a coat of arms and winged cherubs with draperies. A memorial to George Sturt, who died in 1769, comprises a rectangular white stone apron with bead and paterae decoration, topped by a grey stone obelisk with an urn and coat of arms. Monuments to Robert Austen (died 1798), in a neo-classical style by Bacon, and to Robert Austen (1759) by James Moorhouse of Greenwich, are also located on the north and south chancel walls respectively. Stained glass windows in the chancel are by Newton Butler Brown, the east window by W.R. Eginton and Samuel Brown, and the west window of the south aisle by Ward and Hughes in 1883.