Church Of St Mary

Church of St Mary, Bathwick Hill

Church. Designed around 1810 and built 1817–20 by John Pinch the Elder on a site donated by the Earl of Darlington. The chancel was added around 1873 by G.E. Street; a baptistery of around 1906 was designed by Charles Deacon of Liverpool.

The building is constructed in limestone ashlar with a slate roof. It follows a symmetrical rectangular plan with five bays, side aisles, and a tower at the west end, with a church hall and related buildings at the east end.

The three-stage tower, which equals the width of the nave and stands 34 metres high, features a pierced battlemented parapet between octagonal clasping buttresses that terminate in 5-metre-tall panelled and crocketed finials. Narrow panelled strips and spandrels flank the openings. The upper stage has paired two-light pointed arch louvred bell openings with an apron of nine trefoil-headed panels and a clock to the front. Below these sits a horizontal frieze of seven square quatrefoil panels over a four-light blind window with panel tracery to the head and below the transom. A similar frieze with diagonally set square panels sits above a taller glazed window below the transom. Between the string courses encircling the buttresses are delicately carved crowns signifying the Virgin Mary, Queen of Heaven, with MR monograms in shields. Flanking the tower in front of the aisles are porches with similar smaller parapets, 3-light windows over label moulds, and Tudor arched vertically panelled double doors with foliate spandrels.

The nave has panelled and crocketed finials to semi-octagonal buttresses articulating the bays, three-light four-centred arched clerestory windows, and a battlemented parapet with a cross finial to the east end. The aisles have similar parapets, buttresses, finials, and taller three-light windows with hood-moulds.

The chancel exterior is more archaeological in character, featuring a trio of two-light windows with Decorated tracery and a seven-light east window with a rose window to the centre and heads of reticulated tracery to the sides.

Interior

The interior was originally a five-bay Georgian preaching box with a lectern placed towards the west end. This arrangement was replaced in the 1870s with a High Anglican, liturgically correct layout. The plaster groin-vaulted ceiling and galleries on three sides survive from the original phase, with slender four-shafted piers rising in front—highly characteristic of Gothic church design of this period. An organ by Father Willis stands to the north of the chancel, with a Lady Chapel to the south.

Fittings include an early 16th-century Netherlandish polyptych as the altarpiece, above an alabaster altarpiece depicting Christ laid in the tomb. The former altarpiece by parishioner Benjamin Barker, showing the Adoration of the Child, now hangs on the west wall. The chancel was decorated by Clayton and Bell, who furnished the stained glass and former stencilled decoration. The sanctuary panelling was carved by Harry Hems in a mixed Gothic and Wren style. Painted decoration above the chancel arch depicts gold ground angels either side of the Annunciation. The pulpit, carved by Thomas Earp of London, features high relief angels. Metalwork was supplied by Singers of Frome, and the floor is laid with encaustic tiles.

The baptistery, added around 1906, is particularly sumptuous. The gates have grilles with high relief lilies. Painted decoration by Alfred O. Hemming dates from around 1906 as part of Charles Deacon's programme of embellishment, which also affected the chancel. Sydney Gambier Parry converted the sanctuary into a Lady Chapel around 1896, lining the walls with green marble and pink alabaster. The pitch pine pews date from around 1866.

Numerous monuments occupy the walls. The New Sculpture memorial on the south wall to Lieutenant Ralph Ellis RFC (died 1917) is particularly notable.

Setting and Subsidiary Features

The boundary wall features octagonal piers of stone with two orders of trefoil-headed lancets, moulded bases, and finials. Dwarf stone walls with iron railings above line the street front.

History

The foundation stone was laid on 1 September 1814, as the old, small and inconvenient church had fallen into a ruinous and useless condition. The rising suburb of Bathwick received a notable new church in a prominent position at the junction of several new streets, conceived as the centrepiece of the never-completed Bathwick New Town development. Builder Walter Harris began work around 1817, and the church was consecrated on 4 February 1820, having cost approximately £20,000. The expense was largely financed by selling pew space.

Around 1870, plans for a new east end were prepared by local architect J Elkington Gill but were abandoned in 1871. G.E. Street instead designed a new east end in Decorated style, which was erected in 1873. This included a Lady Chapel, sacristy, and chancel, and prompted a comprehensive re-ordering of the church. Vestries were added around 1880 and enlarged in 1885.

Pinch's church—one of only two he designed in Bath, the other being St Saviour's—was among the finest new churches in the Gothic style in the country and has been cited as an influence on James Savage's celebrated church of St Luke's, Chelsea, of around 1820. The church gained a reputation for its music and High Church liturgy later in the century, and its richly appointed interior reflects its status and character of worship. Pinch's drawings are held in the Somerset County Record Office, Taunton.