Church Of St Mary The Virgin

Church of St Mary the Virgin

This church was built in 1752 to replace a medieval church on the same site, and was designed by Stephen Wright, who was Clerk of Works to Hampton Court. The building has been substantially altered and extended since its original construction.

The church is constructed in dun coloured and brown brick with coloured and glazed brick decorations in white, yellow, red and blue. Stone dressings feature on the tower, and the roof is low pitched with hipped slate in bands of green and blue slate. A copper dome crowns the tower, supporting a wooden lantern with a lead roof, gilt sphere and weathervane finial.

The original church comprised a wide nave with a small chancel and west tower. The chancel was enlarged, vestries were added, a porch was added to the west and aisles were extended during the 19th century. An extensive remodelling was carried out by S. S. Teulon in 1857, which added an apsidal chancel with a south chapel and north vestry, and extended the western aisles. A choir vestry to the north was added in 1900. The interior was extensively remodelled in the 1950s.

The tower is four stages in height and is crowned by an octagonal lantern with keystoned arches on compass axes and roundels in the canted angles. Flat lintel openings to the corners are fitted with iron balcony railings. Angle pilaster-pier buttresses rise through all stages to corbelled eaves topped with chamfered angles. Plat bands separate each stage, and additional square pier buttresses rise to the second stage, each topped with a stone obelisk and spherical finial. Large round-headed louvred openings face each side of the upper stage, set under keystones with impost blocks. Stone and gilt clock faces are positioned on the north and south sides below, set under large stone open pediments supported by console brackets. A plate tracery roundel on the west front has a roll moulding and two-step brick surround in red and blue brick in a cog pattern. An elaborate string course above the second stage features square tiles alternating with stone pyramids on a brick dentil course. A two-light window below has a short, round centre mullion on a gablet, with jamb shafts flanking under round caps and cusped lights. The coloured brick round-head arch over features a carved keystone. Tiled impost courses extend to the buttresses. West doors are set under a round arch with stone foliage cap imposts and a carved keystone, with a glazed brick roundel decorated in a panel above the chamfered and shouldered door surround. On the north and south lower stages of the tower are 19th-century bays, angled to the corners with brick broaches, double brick dentilled corbelled eaves and a dog tooth band above. Lancet fenestration is set under round brick arched heads with two-step surrounds to doors.

The north and south sides are strip-buttressed with five bays, a plinth and plat band over the ground floor. A diagonal brick dentil course and plain brick dentil bands decorate the eaves with cut brick quatrefoils and an additional corbel course. The outer bays are narrower; the centre three have round-headed two-light and roundel windows under decorated heads. The apsidal chancel to the east is flanked by ends each under a sloping roof. Two bays on the north and south sides feature chequerwork brick plinths and two-light fenestration with round-columned jamb shafts under foliage caps. Plate tracery wheel windows flank the main apse to the east. The north vestry and choir vestry have a two-bay loggia to the ground floor on the north end, originally open on octagonal columns, with a "Venetian" window in the gable above.

The interior was largely gutted in the 1950s. Only the chancel and chancel chapels remain substantially intact. A tall chancel arch rests on giant attached columns with a coloured and striped brick arch. Stone and marble arcades to the north and south of the chancel feature tall broach-stop pedestals with cusped arcading. Sgraffito decoration of the chancel illustrating the gospels was executed by Heywood Sumner in 1892. An octagonal plinth supports a grey marble bowl font with a gadrooned top.

The north chancel chapel contains three good monuments. An early 18th-century monument on the left features a foliate edge to the inscription panel on corbel brackets with a garland swag. Composite columns flank the monument and support a segmental pediment crowned by an urn and cherubs. The central monument is to Lady Jane Coke, dated 1761. It is very richly executed in coloured red marble with a grey stele, featuring a white marble oval sculpture with a swans neck pediment above. A female figure and angel occupy the main panel, with the inscription panel below set within an egg and dart scrolled surround. A monument to Robert Dyer, dated 1746, is in white marble with flanking scrolls. It features a grey marble aedicule with a pediment under a crowning cartouche and three cherubim in the apron.